We collect various types of information depending upon how you use our site. We gather this information through email requests, responses to surveys, entries to sweepstakes/contests or other solicitations.

When you request to be on our mailing list (for e-mail or regular mail), we collect your name, address, e-mail address and phone number.

When you respond to a survey, or enter a sweepstakes or a contest on-line, we usually collect your name, address, e-mail address and phone number. We also may ask you for additional information, such as your age, interests, product preferences or zip code. When you submit a question to customer service, we need your e-mail address to respond, and you also may provide us with various types of information to allow us to answer your question.

A cookie is a small piece of information sent by a website that is saved on your hard disk by your computer's browser. It holds information a site may need to interact with you and personalize your experience. At Bhagwati Gems, we use two kinds of cookies, session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies exist only for as long as your browser remains open. Once you exit your browser, they go away. We use session cookies to maintain information we need to have in order for you to shop at Bhagwati Gems. For example, the Session_ID cookie that we ask your browser to hold retains the ID for your shopping bag. Without the Session_ID cookie, you cannot add merchandise to your bag or make any purchases. Persistent cookies, in contrast, last from visit to visit; they do not go away when you exit your browser. You can browse our site without accepting a persistent cookie. However, you cannot add merchandise to your bag or make any purchases. You may set your browser options to reject persistent cookies. Alternatively, you can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, which provides you with the opportunity to decide whether you want to accept it or not. In many instances, the "help" button on your browser tool bar will tell you how you can take these steps. How Is The Information Used?

To improve the content on our website. For example, we may use cookies to find out which parts of our site or our products are visited most often. For marketing and promotional purposes. We send out e-mails and direct mail or catalogs to our customers about products or events that we think may be of interest to them. We also may send you special promotions, new arrivals or new site features. Is The Information Shared?

The information gathered may be shared with third parties with which we have a relationship. We may share your personal information with outside companies that perform services for us. For example, we may retain an outside company to manage a database containing certain customer information or to create and distribute an e-mail offering. In those situations, the outside party is performing work for us, and Bhagwati Gems takes appropriate steps designed to ensure your information is used only to provide the services requested by us, and not for other purposes.

Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with the law or to protect our interests or property. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers or government agencies in connection with issues related to fraud or government subpoenas and warrants.

At Bhagwati Gems, we are committed to providing our customers with a secure shopping environment. We maintain practices and procedures designed to ensure the security, integrity and confidentiality of customer information, and use various security measures to ensure that your credit card information is protected, including the latest in security technology. When you place an order through our shopping basket, your personal information is protected by Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption technology, the industry standard security protocol for encoding sensitive information. SSL creates a shared digital key, which only lets the sender and the receiver of the transmission scramble or unscramble information. To everyone else, the SSL transmission is indecipherable.

Encryption is based on the mathematical scrambling and unscrambling of messages. The type of encryption we use assigns two keys - one is a public key and one is a private key. When you send us a message, you use our public key to encrypt your message. Once we receive your encrypted message, we use the private key to decode it. The same key cannot both encrypt and decrypt information. So, information encrypted using the private key can only be decrypted using the public key, and vice versa- ensuring the security of your information.

This technology, together with our other security measures, protects your personal information as it moves from your computer to our server. We also restrict and limit access to customer information only to those employees who require it to carry out their business functions, and educate our employees about safeguarding customer information and preventing its unauthorized access, disclosure, or use. We constantly monitor and adopt, as appropriate, new technological improvements designed to protect and ensure the accuracy and security of customer information.

When using this feature the information gathered will only be used for this purpose, unless permission is otherwise granted.

Our customers are given the opportunity to opt-out of having their information used for purposes not directly related to their transaction at the point where we ask for the information. Customers who no longer wish to receive communications may opt-out.

Your confidence in the Bhagwati Gems shopping experience is our highest priority. If you have any concerns about privacy and security that have not been answered in the above policy, please contact us and we'll do our best to answer your questions and put your mind at ease.

As we continue to grow and take advantage of technologies to improve the services we provide, this policy will change. We encourage you to refer to this policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current privacy policy. This policy was last updated on May 26, 2004.