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We take the security of your personal and credit card details very seriously, and we have put together this page which describes how we handle your details which we hope will reassure you.
If after reading this page you are still worried about entering your credit card details into our online order form, then you can telephone or fax us your order (see our Ordering page for more details), or even drop into our shop in person. See our About Us page for contact details.
We are not just an internet shop, we are a real "clicks-and-mortar" business (as the saying goes) based in the UK. The servers which host our web site are also based in the UK and are part of a commercial package - no 'free' web accounts here!
When you click on a "Check-Out" link or button on the site, you are taken to a secure form where you enter your personal and credit card details. You then click on a button to send the details to our server.
When the secure form appears you will notice that there is a small picture of a closed lock or an unbroken key at the bottom of your browser window. Which of these you will see depends on which browser you are using (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc). You will also notice that the location displayed near the top of the browser window begins with https: instead of the usual http:
This shows that your browser is now in 'secure' mode, and all of the information sent between your browser and our server will henceforth be encrypted. In technical terms the browser and server are using SSL to communicate with one another. Most shopping sites utilise SSL to retrieve personal and credit card details from their customers in a secure encrypted form - you will probably have already seen the closed lock or unbroken key if you have made purchases on the web before.
But this is only half of the story. So your credit card details have been safely sent to the server, but what happens to them next?
Well here's what we do. When your order details arrive at our server via SSL, our shopping site software encrypts them a second time and then sends them on to us via encrypted email. Normally email messages are not secure (which is why you should NEVER send credit card details in an email message), but in this case the whole email message has been encrypted using a system which is even stronger than SSL.
The only way to decrypt the email message is by using a private key. The only private key which can decrypt your order details is held by us at Wheels - no-one else holds this key. Furthermore this private key is stored on a computer which is completely isolated from the internet and from other computers. As if this wasn't enough, the private key is also protected by a pass-phrase - and can only be used by someone who knows what it is! Your order details are manually transferred and the private key is used to decrypt them. When we have processed your order, these details are destroyed.
No, no, a thousand times no! We do not pass any of your details on to any third parties.
Do you use cookies?
Yes or no, whichever you prefer! You can either have cookies enabled or disabled in your browser settings, and you will still be able to browse our online catalogue and make purchases online. However, If you have cookies disabled then there are certain restrictions which you must be aware of - we will detail these in a moment, but first we'll tell you why we use cookies.
Our shopping site uses a single cookie in order to 'remember' the contents of your shopping basket as you move around the store. Without this cookie, as you moved to another page on the site the contents of your basket would disappear as if it had a hole at the bottom! Almost all shopping sites use a cookie for this same purpose - and many of them (but not us) won't allow you to shop until you have cookies enabled.
It may come as a surprise, but the contents of the basket vanish because the web server has no memory of who "you" are from one request to the next - each time your browser moves to another page the server treats it as if it was a request from a "new" person. So it's hardly suprising that it can't remember what you have in your basket as you move around the shopping site! That's how the web was originally designed. And that's where that cookie comes in!
When you first enter our shopping site our server sends your browser a cookie. The cookie is just a number. It doesn't contain any personal information about you at all - it is just a number. Now when you move from page to page on the shopping site your browser sends a request for each new page to the server, and in each request it also sends this number. The server can now tell who you are as you move around the store and can remember the contents of your shopping basket! It isn't being nosey or invading your privacy, all it sees is a number.
This also means that you can even leave our site completely and return later, and the contents of your shopping basket will still be there waiting for you to continue shopping. Of course we don't hang on to your shopping basket forever - if you do not visit our shopping site again for a few hours then the basket is deleted and the number is forgotten, and your next visit will then be as a completely new customer.
And that's our story on cookies. Nothing invasive. Nothing sinister.
So even if you like to have cookies disabled in your browser, we do recommend that you enable cookies while you are shopping with us. If you are in the habit of buying on-line you probably have to do this a lot as most sites use a cookie in the same way.
However even if you have cookies disabled you will still be able to use our shop provided that you stay within the product pages of the shop. This means that you should only click on Category names or perform product searches. You can also click on "add to basket" buttons and the "View Cart" and "Checkout" links on each page, and you can proceed through the checkout to make your purchases. But if you move anywhere else (even on our own site) the server will lose track of who you are and your basket contents will vanish! If you have cookies enabled in your browser settings you won't encounter this problem.
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