This Privacy Policy sets
forth the privacy practices carried out with respect to information accessible
to Distinctive Designs International, Inc. ("Distinctive Designs") by
your use of the www.distinctivedesigns.com website or the www.distdesigns.com
website. If you do not agree to all the terms, conditions, and practices
set forth below, do not access this site or any of its pages. Use of this
website or any of its functions is an acceptance of the terms, conditions, and
practices described in this Website Privacy Policy and in the Terms and Conditions.
Users of this website should understand that this is a business-to-business
site, and that because of the potential presence of sensitive information and
the concomitant need for confirmation of identity, data obtainable by this site
will be used to verify identities to the fullest extent possible. Anonymous
access to this site is prohibited.
1. Information Collection and Use
The www.distinctivedesigns.com website is intended to be a valuable
business-to-business tool. In order to fulfill this mission, the website is
designed to be capable of collecting certain information about persons who
access the site or attempt to use its account functions, just as "caller
ID" is used in call tracking. Types of information that are or may
be collected by the site are non-exhaustively set forth below.
Distinctive Designs is the sole owner of the information collected on this
site. To the extent that Distinctive Designs provides access to this
information to others, the parameters for disclosure are disclosed in this
statement. Distinctive Designs collects information from our users at several
different points on our website. This Section 1 sets forth the types and
sources of data collected, along with some specific uses of each type of data.
Additional uses of data are described in Section 2.
a. Registration and Applications
In order to use this website, a user must first complete the registration form
and agree to the Terms
and Conditions and this Website Privacy Policy. During registration a user
is required to give verifiable business contact and identity information, just
as we require potential business customers to provide verifiable information
prior to engaging in or moving toward opening accounts or allowing transactions
by fax, market order, sales representation interaction or other non-digital
means. This information is used to establish the identity of account holders
and will be retained. The information will, where possible, be confirmed
by such methods as may be available to Distinctive Designs from time to time,
including those listed in the remainder of this Section 1. If you submit an
application for a product or service to us through our site, Distinctive
Designs will collect and retain the content of the application that Distinctive
Designs receives, the email address from which it is sent, and our response.
b. Electronic Mail and Forms
Transmission of email sent to us through our site using our customer service
web forms is secure; email otherwise sent by the Internet (to customerservice@distdesigns.com
or to another distdesigns.com or distinctivedesigns.com email address) may not
be secure. Please be aware that when you receive a receipt acknowledging
your email, it means that the message has been routed into the Internet, and
not that the message has been received by us. Distinctive Designs will
retain the content of any customer service web form or email that Distinctive
Designs receives, the email address from which it is sent, and our response.
c. Search Engine
When a user performs a search on a search engine within the
distinctivedesigns.com domain, Distinctive Designs may collect information
regarding the search query, topic, and identity of the user. As necessary to
provide service, Distinctive Designs also may record information for every
search request and use that information to solve technical problems with the
service and to calculate overall usage statistics.
d. Orders and Purchases
Distinctive Designs requests information from the user on order forms and
financial applications. Here a user must provide identity information, contact
data, shipping addresses, and financial information (like credit card number,
expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill
customer's orders. If Distinctive Designs has trouble processing an order, this
contact information is used to get in touch with the user.
e. Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's hard drive containing
information about the user. This site employs cookies, but will not use cookies
to obtain data from your hard drive or knowingly to obtain confidential or
sensitive information. Users can set their browsers or third party software to
reject cookies. If a user rejects the cookie, they may be unable to use
portions of our site. Cookies enable us to track and target the interests of
our users, to enhance the experience on our site, and to retain items in your
shopping cart from visit to visit within such time limits as may be set by
Distinctive Designs from time to time. Some of our business partners and
advertisers may use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control
over these cookies.
f. Log Files
We use IP addresses and web server log files to analyze trends, administer the
site, track user's movement, and gather broad demographic information for
aggregate use. Because this is a business-to-business site containing sensitive
information, one of the most important functions of this type of information is
to enable us to verify identities and information provided during registration
or elsewhere. Additionally, due to the sensitive nature of some of the
business information that may be available on the site, we may use this
information from time to time to police the site for unregistered users (but
Distinctive Designs undertakes no obligation to do so). Information of this
type may be combined with cookies or other sources of information for these
purposes. Through the use of web server log files, any or all of the following
information may be accessed, collected, analyzed, and stored during or after
your visits to our site: the name of the domain from which you access the
Internet (for example, Aol.com if you are connecting from an America Online
account); the date and time you access our website; the pages that you visit on
our site and the sequence in which you visit them; the amount of time that you
spend on any given page of our site; the Internet address of the website that
you visited immediately before visiting our website; the Internet address of
the website from which you linked directly to our site, if any; the Internet
address of the site that you visit immediately after leaving our site; the type
of operating system on your computer; the type of browser that you are using to
view the site.
g. Newsletter
If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information
such as name and email address.
h. Surveys & Contests
If you submit information in response to surveys or for entry into contests,
your submission is completely voluntary and any information submitted may be
used for any of the purposes in Section 2.
2. Internal Use
Distinctive Designs will use the information obtainable from the website for
editorial and feedback purposes and for the following purposes.
a. Marketing
Distinctive Designs will provide information from the sources listed in Section
1 to its in-house and independent sales representatives. Distinctive Designs will
also use the information for marketing and promotional purposes, for a
statistical analysis of visitors' behavior, for product development, to inform
advertisers as to how many visitors have seen or clicked on their
advertisements, to target markets and to formulate its own proprietary business
strategies and plans. Any information that you actively supply to us, such as
names, postal and email addresses, and phone numbers may be added to our
databases and used by us to contact you regarding site updates, and new
products and services.
b. Sales
Where completion of a sale or shipment requires the use of information, such as
credit card information, shipping addresses, and contact persons, Distinctive
Designs will use the information to the extent necessary.
c. Web Development and Enhancement
Distinctive Designs uses the data collected to analyze trends, administer the
site, track user's movement, and gather broad demographic information for
aggregate use, to monitor or to improve the use and satisfaction of this site,
and to customize, upgrade, or configure the layout and content of the site.
d. Site Security
Because this is primarily a business-to-business website, one of the most
important functions of the type of information we collect is to enable us to
verify identities and information provided during registration, on order and
inquires, or elsewhere. Distinctive Designs will use the information
obtainable, and will combine information from different sources as necessary,
to verify and confirm such identities and information. Additionally, due
to the sensitive nature of some business information that may be available on
the site, we will use this information from time to time to police the site for
unregistered users. Distinctive Designs' use of information for these
purposes is within Distinctive Designs' sole discretion for its own benefit
only, and no commitment is undertaken by Distinctive Designs hereby to
regularly or effectively employ any information for these purposes.
3. Sharing
a. General
We will share aggregated demographic information with our partners and
advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify
any individual person.
b. Transaction Requirements
We use outside shipping companies to ship orders, outside credit reporting
agencies to assess requests for credit, and outside credit card processing
companies to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not to our
knowledge retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for
any secondary purposes.
c. Partnering
We may from time to time partner with another party to provide specific
services. When the user signs up for these services, we will share only the
names and other information that is necessary for the third party to provide
these services. These parties are not allowed to use personally
identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services.
4. Links
This website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Distinctive Designs
is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We
encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the
privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally
identifiable information. This Website Privacy Policy applies solely to
information collected by this Website on the distinctivedesigns.com domain.
5. Security
This website takes precautions to protect our users' information. When a user
submits sensitive information via the website, the information is protected
both online and off-line, as set forth in this section. All requests for
financial and business sensitive information (to the extent such sensitivity is
known), and all online responses in the normal course thereto are encrypted and
protected with the SSL encryption software. You can confirm that pages are
encrypted by viewing the lock icon on the bottom of most browsers. We
also take the same measures off-line to protect you financial and known
business sensitive information as we use to protect our own such information.
Questions about the security at our website should be addressed by email
to customerservice@distdesigns.com.
6. Site and Service Updates
We may from time to time send the user site and service announcement updates
regarding such information as Privacy Policy and Terms of Use updates.
7. Notification of Changes
We will notify you of changes to the Website Privacy Policy by posting an
updated policy on this page with a notification link to this page from the
homepage, What's New Page, or Customer Service page. You agree that continued
use of the Service is an acknowledgment and acceptance of any terms contained
in this Website Privacy Policy, as it may be amended from time to time.