The Rug Emporium.com understands your concerns regarding Internet security. The Rug Emporium.com secure software encrypts all of your personal information including credit card number, name, and address, so that it cannot be read as the information travels over the Internet.

1. Starting Your Order
Every order at www.TheRugEmporium.com is secure. All data submitted via the checkout form is encrypted using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption.

2. Making a Positive ID
After you´ve selected items to purchase, you´ll be prompted to continue your order by clicking on "Place Your Order" or "Place Order." At this point, your browser looks for a "site certificate" to confirm that it is communicating with www.TheRugEmporium.com. Once a positive ID is made, your order continues.

3. Entering "Secure Mode"
At this point, your computer and our server begin communicating in secure mode, sending data back and forth in an encrypted format. We are ready to ask you for your credit card information. The encryption features of browser software are exceptionally powerful and ensure the security of this data as it is transmitted to our server.

4. Your Order Is Complete
What Happens Next? The credit card numbers are placed in a database on the TheRugEmporium.com web server. A user must have login privileges on the web server (requiring a password) to be able to access the database, which also requires a password.

Order information, including the credit card numbers, is retrieved by the staff at TheRugEmporium.com through a web interface. This interface challenges the user for a password twice, and then "expires" the session after ten minutes, requiring the user to login again. All communications during these sessions are encrypted again using SSL. No credit card numbers are ever sent via email, due to the fact that email is not secure.

The standard, unsecured URL address begins "http://". When you enter secure mode, the beginning of the URL address will change to "https://"; the "s" stands for secure. You will also notice that the beginning of the page address will begin with the word secure, ie. https://secure.therugemporium.com. Most browsers in secure mode also display a blue line along the top of the browser window. Netscape Navigatorª (versions 3.0 and earlier) display a broken key symbol in the lower left corner of your browser window when you are not viewing a secure page of a site. This key will become solid when you enter secure mode. Netscape Communicator 4.0 uses a padlock, in the same location as the key, to indicate if you are in standard or secure mode. The padlock is open in standard mode and closed in secure mode. In Microsoft´s Internet Explorer¨, you´ll see a padlock symbol at the bottom of your browser window when the browser is in secure mode.