store.activheat.com

Privacy is an important issue to everyone these days.  Stories of identity theft are still common on the news, reports of credit card theft are rising, and fear for the information that defines our personal identity increases.  Fortuntely, theft of credit card and other personal information from a modern PCI compliant website, like the one you are on now, is almost impossible.  We are fully compliant with the PCI requirements demanded by VISA, MasterCard & Discover, so you have little fear that your information will be compromised.

Possibly the biggest potential risk to you would be the VOLUNTARY distribution of your personal information.  WE WILL NEVER sell or distribute your personal information to anyone, for any reason! The selling of personal information, in some unethical circles, is common and your personal information, along with your buying habits, is quite valuable to some marketers.  We have NEVER understood why any merchant would sell the customer information they gather for small amounts of money.  Customers are extremely valuable to ActiVHeat.com.  Our total aggregate cost of gaining your confidence and making you a satisfied customer is very expensive.  Advertising, web hosting costs, website design and maintenance are FAR MORE EXPENSIVE than any small amount we could obtain for releasing your information. We generate our income when we sell you products, not by trading your information.  WE WILL NEVER sell or distribute your personal information to anyone, for any reason!

We think you are entitled to complete answers to all of your information security concerns.  We have created a special Help page to answer all of these questions.  Please view our Privacy Policy for the details of our information preservation policy.  Most of all, remember that you can trust ActiVHeat.com to stay current of all of the latest security protocols and  to protect your interests and ours.

General Personal Information Security.  Website security is one of the most important issues for ActiVHeat.com. Like you, we view the protection of ALL of the information on our website as critical. Remember, you are not the only one at risk if there is a security breach in our system. We have an enormous number of hours of development time in our website design and product information. We CANNOT afford for anyone to defeat our security system, alter or remove our information, and steal or damage any of the information on our site.  We employ a number of password and identity identification schemes to allow only authorized employees access to our data.    Our passwords aren't the cute types of word phrases that anyone could guess.  

 

Most of the pages of our website are open pages, available to anyone with a web browser. When you reach the point of entering personal information like your name, address, phone number, email, and credit card number, that is done only through our secure server with full SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protection. You know when you are in our secure server by the presence of the lock icon on your browser screen and by the presence of the https:// precursor in the address bar of the browser.  The screen image of the Internet Explorer browser below shows both of these indicia in the red circled areas.

 

 

Outside Security Scans.  We also subscribe to an outside service that validates our security processes and provides you with assurance that our site is completely secure.  Our Volusion SSL website security service provides complete 128 bit encryption of all information transmitted during our checkout process, or any time that you are entering sensitive personal information on our website.  The left hand menu column of every page has the "Certified Secure Site" Volusion SSL emblem.  You can click on this emblem at any time for an up-to-the-minute scan of the security of our website.  When you click on this emblem, you get a pop-up box that displays the results of that scan.  Click the Volusion SSL emblem below for a security scan right now.

Credit Card Numbers.  Credit card numbers are even more protected.  The credit card industry has recently initiated a series of security protocols known as the PCI (Payment Card Industry) Data Security Standard.  Compliance with this security protocol  is required by Visa, MasterCard and several other credit card companies.  Among other requirements, the PCI protocols prevent the storage of a customers credit card information beyond the moment necessary for card authorization and approval.   VISA card has gone even further by publishing an additional standard known as the Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP), which not only requires compliance with the PCI industry protocols, but also includes processor site surveys to further ensure the protection of cardholder data.  Few online scuba stores are in compliance with these standards; choosing instead to store your credit card information for years.  This opens the opportunity for compromise and theft of your information.

 

ActiVHeat.com is proud to operate an e-commerce website that is COMPLETELY compliant with the mandated PCI protocols for card security, and the additional Visa CISP requirements.  Even though you enter your credit card number on our website during the checkout process, NO PERSON at ActiVHeat.com ever sees your credit card number!  We have no way to view it and no way to retrieve it.  It can't be stolen from us, because we never have it!  As soon as you hit the "Submit Order" button, your credit card number is IMMEDIATELY transmitted to Authorize.Net, one of the worlds largest credit card gateway services for e-commerce.   When received by Authorize.Net, your card is verified, security checked against information held by your card issuer, and funding for the amount of your order is authorized for payment.  That approval information is then sent to our credit card merchant holder, FastTransact and to the Automated Industry Clearing House, which handles financial transactions for all credit card issuers.  This takes only a matter of seconds.  After approval of your credit card, Authorize.Net sends a special 32 character code to our website to allow us to "capture" the funds after any final adjustments to your order, packing of your order items, and placement of your order for shipment.  When we ship your order, we get our money by clicking a "Secure Funds" button in our order management software.  This button transmits the 32 character code, along with our IP address authenticator, and your card is "officially" charged.   Again, we never know your credit card number, just the necessary code for securing payment.  Remember, we DO NOT STORE YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER. Also, this is why it is much safer for you to order through our website compared to ordering over the telephone and telling us your credit card number!

 

Saved Previous Payment Methods. When you place an order, our website may offer you an opportunity to save  your payment method for future orders.  You can feel free to do this in absolute security,  When you approve the storage of your payment information, we do not store your credit card number.  Instead, we store code that can only be interpreted by Authorize.Net.  Your saved credit card information cannot be stolen or compromised from our web server.  Authorize.Net manages the approval of your subsequent orders.  You can click on the Authorize.Net image below to get an up-to-the-minute status report of our relationship with Authorize.Net.