The Art of Tea » Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

We NEVER collect or store any personal data without your prior knowledge and consent. At The Art of Tea, LLC, we are committed to you and to protecting your privacy. Please read further for details.

How Does The Art of Tea, LLC Collect Information?

Your IP Address
Your IP address is a unique identifier we use to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our web site tracking. We also use your IP address to help identify you when you make repeat visits to our site, keep track of your shopping cart contents, and to gather demographic information so that we can see what types of people are interested in our site.

Cookies
The Art of Tea, LLC uses a feature on your Internet Web browser called a "cookie." A cookie is a small piece of information stored on your hard drive. It assigns a unique identification number to your computer and helps us maintain your preferences to provide a more personalized experience for you. The Art of Tea, LLC uses cookies to keep track of your shopping cart and to tell us whether or not you have visited our site before. We also collect non-personally identifiable information, such as anonymous session numbers, with them.

What About Personal Information? Do You Collect That?
The Art of Tea, LLC does not house or collect any personal information about you unless you knowingly and willingly provide it.

Membership Registration
The Art of Tea, LLC has a registration process through which you voluntarily sign up to access the members-only features of our Website. During the registration process, we ask for your name, email address, how you got to know us, your age range and your ZIP code. Also, to make sure that nobody else can access our members-only features using your name or ID, we ask that you create a unique username with a password.

Newsletter Subscription
When you subscribe to our FREE newsletters, we ask for an email address to send them to. You may opt out of receiving future mailings or cancel your subscription(s) at any time. (See the subscribe/unsubscribe section below.)

Contests and Promotions
When you enter a contest or take part in a promotion, we may ask for your name, mailing address and email address. Should a third party sponsor the contest or promotion, that party will have access to this information. We need this information in order to notify our winners and, when applicable, ship the winners' prizes.

Online Purchases
At The Art of Tea, LLC, we sell a lot of merchandise to our customers. When processing an order, we need to know your name, mailing address, email address, credit-card number, security code and expiration date. This information is necessary to process your order and to keep you updated on your shipping status.

Disclosure of Information to Outside Parties
The Art of Tea, LLC does not and will not share your personal information with any outside parties unless you have knowingly and willingly consented to do so (e.g., by entering a contest, promotion or sweepstakes for which we would publish a list of winners). We do collect demographic and profile data, which is aggregated and shared with advertisers. Here's an example of what our advertisers would receive. "Of the 46,554 clicks your banner received, 47% of those were by users between the ages of 29-39."

Links to Outside Third Parties
The Art of Tea, LLC does not release any information to third parties. All orders are placed on a secure server.

Children's Guidelines
The Art of Tea, LLC does not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of 18. We encourage parents and legal guardians to monitor their children's Internet use. Also, we strongly encourage parents to help us enforce our privacy policy by instructing their children to never provide personal information on this site without permission.

Public Forums
The Art of Tea, LLC has public access chat rooms, forums/message boards and newsgroups available to its users. Please remember that any information disclosed in these areas becomes public information. Exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information. As these forums are public and open for users to interact with each other, The Art of Tea, LLC expects all its users to respect the rights of others. All community sections are moderated in a professional manner by an employee of The Art of Tea, LLC.

Security
The Art of Tea, LLC has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. We are able to keep your personal information safe and secure by utilizing Secure Socket Layers (SSL) encryption technology. For maximum security, we use a secure server that encrypts all your ordering information, including your name, address and credit-card number.

Subscribe/unsubscribe
Should you choose to in the future, The Art of Tea, LLC provides its users the opportunity to opt out of receiving communications from us and our partners. If you would like to cancel your registered membership, remove your information from our database and not receive future communications from us, you simply need to email your request to cs@artoftea.com