Chocolate Heaven is committed to website user privacy. To prove it, we have disclosed our information and privacy practices for your review below. We feel our privacy policies are in compliance to the strictest standards and guidelines  set by the Internet industry.

An overview of our privacy policy:

1. Information Collection and Use
   1. Information Collection and Purpose
   2. Credit Card Information
   3. Ordering Information
   4. Information Use
   5. Profile Information
   6. Cookies
   7. Third Party Advertising
   8. Log Files
   9. Clear Gifs (Web Beacons/Web Bugs)
2. Communications from our Site
   1. Special Offers and Updates
   2. Newsletter
   3. Service Announcements
   4. Customer Service
3. Data Sharing
   1. Legal Disclaimer
   2. Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable)
   3. Third Party Advertisers
4. These are the instances in which we will share user's personal information:
   1. Your Firm
   2. Third Party Intermediaries
   3. Service Providers
   4. Business Transitions
5. Choice / Opt-out
6. Links
7. Surveys & Contests
8. Tell-A-Friend
9. Security
10. Address Verification
11. Purchasing History
12. Enhancement of Marketing Profile
13. Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating Personal Information
14. Notification of Changes
15. Contacting Us

If users have questions or concerns regarding this statement, they should first contact us by sending email to privacy@chocolateheaven.com, or call us at (415) 421-1789.

Information Collection and Use

Information Collection and Purpose
Chocolate Heaven is the sole owner of the information collected on our site. We collect anonymous and specific information from our users at many different points through-out our web site. We give all users the ability to control any specific information we do receive and how we can use it. Every user may opt out of the various services and features we provide.

Credit Card Information
Credit Card numbers are collected and used only long enough to process the purchase transaction at hand. While handling credit card numbers, for maximum security, we transmit only with full SSL encryption and when displaying, we only show the last 4 digits. Chocolate Heaven does not store, keep or retain credit card numbers.

Ordering Information
We request information from our customers on our order form. A customer must provide contact information (such as name, email, and shipping address) and financial information (such as credit card number, expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fulfill customer orders. If we have trouble processing an order, this same information is used to contact the customer.

Information Use
All personally identifiable information collected is used solely for our mutual business transacting needs, internal marketing and club offers. It is not shared with ANY outside party except as needed to process online transactions (credit cards and/or shipping requests), or as required by a legal law-enforcement request (see 'Legal Disclaimer' below). Some non-personally identifiable information may be disclosed (amount of users currently active, time spent per page, entry points, exit points, referrers, browser types used, OS used, IP and city locations) for the sole sake of identifying trends, assisting manufacturers in product interest, and ultimately tailoring our site to provide what our customers what they want.

Profile Information
We store information that we collect through cookies and log files to create a profile of our customers. A profile is stored information that we keep on customers in general (aggregate) that details their product preferences. Collected information is not tied to the customer personally identifiable information. These profiles are used to tailor a customer's overall visit to our Web site, and to direct pertinent internal marketing promotions to these customer groups as a whole. These general demographic profiles may be shared in future use.

Cookies
A 'cookie' is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user, and is used primarily for the user's current and future site usage and ease. We currently use only session ID cookies. For the session ID cookie, once a user closes the browser, the cookie simply terminates and no longer exists. Session cookies typically store temporary variables for processing of the user's page requests and nothing more. A persistent cookie is a small text file with more specific user information and requests stored on the user's hard drive for an extended period of time. At present, Chocolate Heaven does not use persistent cookies.

Some of our links to outside companies or our news articles that we provide, have or may utilize, persistent cookies through their sites and/or articles themselves. Please note, we have no access to or control over these cookies or the companies that generate them.

Third Party Advertising
At this point in time we do not utilize any direct onsite advertising from third parties. However, we may make reference to or through related links to other companies or news articles within our site, receive indirect advertising from third parties. Third party advertisers will not have the same privacy policies as we do. We therefore encourage you to be aware of these independent, third party privacy policies.

This privacy statement covers the use of information by our site (chocolateheaven.com) only, and does not cover the use of information by any other advertisers or other affiliated or unaffiliated parties.

Log Files
We, like most standard Web site servers, use log files. This information collected includes Internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses, etc. are not linked to personally identifiable information, but can indirectly lead to local city identification.

Clear Gifs (Web Beacons/Web Bugs)
We do not employ the software technology called 'clear gifs' (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs).

Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier that are simply used to track the online page views of Web users. Clear gifs are invisible on the page and are very small, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Clear gifs do not tie to a user's personally identifiable information.

Clear Gifs can 'work with' existing cookies on a computer if they are both from the same Web site or third party company. That means, for example, that if a person visited www.companyX.com , which uses an advertising company's clear gif, the Web site or advertising company could match the clear gif's identifier and the advertising company's cookie ID number, to show the past online behavior for that computer. This collected information could then be given to the advertising company or Web site. While we do not use this practice, other firms may.

In addition, we may use clear gifs in our future HTML-based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by the recipients. This would allow us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.

Communications from our Site

Special Offers and Updates
We send all new members a welcoming email to verify password and username, and for the customer's records. Established members will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, and a newsletter. Out of respect for the privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see the Choice and Opt-out sections below.

Newsletter
If a customer wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address. Out of respect for our customer's privacy we provide a way to opt-out of these communications. Please see the Choice and Opt-out sections below.

Service Announcements
On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, or change in site procedures, we might need to send customers an email. Generally, customers may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service
We communicate with customers on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regards to issues relating to their account, we reply via email or phone, in accordance with the users wishes.

Data Sharing

Legal Disclaimer
Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our Web site.

Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable)
From time-to-time we may share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. The purpose of this is solely to gauge the overall performance of our site, and its ability to meet the needs of our consumers. This data is not linked to any personally identifiable information.

Third Party Advertisers
We do not share any personally identifiable information with any third party.

These are the instances in which we will share user's personal information:

Your Firm
Sharing information is conducted within and with your direct firm only -- and only with authorized/superior level personnel -- for intra-office/business needs.

Third Party Intermediaries
We use an outside shipping company to ship orders, and a credit card processing company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do retain and store personally identifiable information.

Service Providers
Our site is hosted on a third party platform/ISP. All web site files are stored on these remote systems. However, no customer data is stored on these computer systems. With the exception of credit card information, customer data is also stored locally at our main office.

Business Transitions
Please be aware that should we ever go through a business transition, such as a merger, being acquired by another company, or selling a portion of its assets, a customer's personal information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred. Customers will be notified via [email] prior to a change of ownership or control of their personal information. If as a result of the business transition, the user's personally identifiable information will be used in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection they will be given choice consistent with our notification of changes section.

Choice / Opt-out
Our customers are given the full opportunity to opt-out of having their information used for purposes not directly related to our site - at the point where we ask for this information. For example, our order form has an opt-out mechanism so users who buy a product from us, but don t want any related or unrelated material, can keep their address information off of our internal lists.

Customers who no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying to 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. We also offer an opt-out mechanism on the member information pages under 'My Account', or the user may contact us at via email; privacy@chocolateheaven.com, by phone; (415) 421-1789, or by mail; Pier 39, D1 San Francisco CA 94133.

Users of our site are not always notified when their information is being collected by any outside parties. Particularly when we reference other supporting manufacturers or through related news articles featured on our site. Please be aware of all outside company's individual privacy policies.

Links
This Web site contains links to other sites, most notably those that are related to our products and services.  Please be aware that we are 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 Web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site (chocolateheaven.com).

Surveys & Contests
From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys and/or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose any included information. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code, product interests, etc.). Contact information will be used (and maybe shared with any contest/survey sponsors) to notify the winners and award prizes. Company sponsored survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site.  User's personally identifiable information is not shared with third parties unless we give you prior notice and choice. Though we may use an intermediary to conduct these surveys or contests, they may not use a user's personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

Tell-A-Friend
If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about our site, we ask them for the friend's name and email address. We will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to visit the site. We store this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and tracking the success of our referral program. The friend may contact us at privacy@chocolateheaven.com to request the removal of this information from our database.

Security
This Web site takes every precaution to protect our user's information. When users submit sensitive information via the Web site, their information is protected both online and off-line.

When our registration/order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best and latest encryption software - SSL 3.0. While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes 'locked', as opposed to unlocked, or open, when users are just surfing non critical pages. SSL encryption is based on an individual 'key' for every unique connection. We use the highest level of 128bit encryption for domestic purposes only.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our user's information, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use password-protected and user level specific access within our systems to gain appropriate customer access. Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Further, any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our user's information is protected. Finally, the servers that store personally identifiable information are in a secure professional facility.

Currently all online transaction processing and SSL encryption certification is provided by Verisign, Inc.  Should you have any concerns or questions, you can verify our standing and level of service right here, by clicking on the link below, or by visiting www.verisign.com/products-services/security-services/index.html.

If users have any questions about the security at our Web site, users can send an email to privacy@chocolateheaven.com.

Address Verification
We use shipping provider's verification services (such as UPS, FedEx, etc.) to verify a user's address to ascertain proper shipping locations and appropriate freight rates.

Purchasing History
In order for this Web site to enhance its ability to tailor the site to a user's preference, we combine information about the purchasing habits of users with similar information to create an easier -- more tailored -- personalized site experience.

Enhancement of Marketing Profile
On occasion we may purchase third party marketing data and add it to our existing user database to better provide pertinent offers we believe our clients would be interested in. This information is used to enhance or overlay the profile of our aggregate users. See also 'Profile Information.'

Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating Personal Information
If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as zip code, phone, email or billing/shipping address), or if a user no longer desires our services, we provide a way to correct, update or delete/deactivate user's personally identifiable information. This can usually be done at the member information page (under 'My Account') or by emailing our Customer Support at CustomerService@chocolateheaven.com. Or, contact us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed within the contact page.

Notification of Changes
If we need to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

If, however, we are going to use user's personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify users via email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. However, if users have opted out of all communication with the site, or deleted/deactivated their account, then they will not be contacted, nor will their personal information be used in this new manner. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices that do not affect user information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice on our Web site notifying users of the change. In some cases where we post a notice we will also email users, who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices.

Contacting Us
If users have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at:

Chocolate Heaven
Pier 39, D-1
San Francisco, CA 94133

Phone: (415) 421-1789
Email: mailto:privacy@chocolateheaven.com