General Privacy
H2O Pool Products requests certain specific information from our customers in order to perform business operations in the store. This information is, unless otherwise noted, not shared with any parties.

Credit Cards
In the process of purchasing products from H2O Pool Products Store you will be asked to complete the purchase with a credit card. This credit card data is NOT stored on H2O Pool Products in any way, shape or form. When you supply your credit card information the transaction process sends it to Authorize.net over a secure encryption for validation and charging. That is the only place your credit card data will go.

Account Information
When you create an account at H2O Pool Products Store you will be asked for specific information. This includes your name, address and contact information. This information will be stored in the H2O Pool Products database. This information may be provided to the following people or groups in order to complete the transaction:

  1. Credit Card Processor (for credit card validation)
  2. USPS/UPS/FedEx/Freight Carrier for shipping

Purchasing History
Unfortunately, the USA PATRIOT Act as passed by the United States Congress states that I may be required to provide information about your purchasing history to the United States Federal Government (in fact every on-line store in the US is affected by this, though most will not tell you). According to the Act, if they request my records, I am not permitted to advise you of such and I must comply with the law. Additionally, if required by a subpoena from any branch of the government, we will have to comply in providing the information that they request. This information is not limited to your account information and may also include your purchasing history. We do not like this any more than you do, but there is nothing that we can do about it (feel free to complain to Mr. Ashcroft or any of the 99 US Senators that voted for the Act).

Cookies
Yes, we use cookies on the store. This is a transaction-based application and uses cookies to maintain state. The cookies we use can only be recovered by this site and are used strictly to maintain transactional state. There is no credit card or purchasing information maintained within the cookies that we use.

USA Patriot Act
On December 13th 2003 US President George W. Bush signed into law portions of the expanded USA Patriot Act (Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004). The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of "financial institution," which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business "whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters." In other words, even though I claim that you have privacy, the US Federal government can demand that I supply your information to them at any time, without a warrant, and that I can not tell you or I will face criminal prosecution (yes, those are really the rules). Actually, if you read the law you have no privacy. We just wanted to make sure that you were aware of it and that we have no control over it at all. So, besides that, we will continue to do all we can to protect your privacy in every other way.