Privacy Policy

Muir Woods Tours LLC

Thank you for your interest in our business. We have taken all security measures and precautions to protect your personal information when shopping on our website. These are our privacy policy and Terms:

I Privacy Policy

Introduction: Thank you for your visiting our website and privacy policy page. We appreciate and value your interest in our business. We take the safety of our guests' personal information very seriously. All of the data and information we collect from clients as individuals, groups, merchants, or business owners who submit their personal and or bank information on our online reservation system, are meticulously treated, filtered and encrypted in order to protect your privacy and secure your transactions. We work only with the most reliable and accountable financial institutions like the US Bank, Citibank, and Authorize.net. The Authorize.net Fraud Detection Suite (FDS) has been added as an additional measure to secure and protect your data and transactions against hackers and frauds. The required information is processed through Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts the information and gathers it on secure server where access is extremely monitored, and limited to highly authorized, accountable persons within these financial institutions.

Please read our privacy policy to learn why and how we use and treat your business or personal information. When entering information on this web site, we take your privacy rights and personal information very seriously and make your security our priority. In this perspective of transparence, we are pleased to add the below clauses so you understand whether a website is secure or not before you enter your credit information, something many websites or businesses don't share with users or customers on their privacy policy pages. You are entitled to ask questions, understand and then determine whether the website is secure or not before you place your order online:



II- Safety and Security Concerns

How to Identify a Safe and Secure Website?

Secure and Encrypted Transactions: Our website is Secure and daily tested and certified as a hacker safe website complying with the PCI (Payment Card Industry). We also use a high-grade encryption level to ensure that your transaction and credit card information are encrypted and secure using a certified SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). Be aware of all online reservations that don't display this secure ‘lock icon’ shown on the reservation page and the letter ‘S’ must also display within the url in your browser as follow: https://www. The above lock icon indicates that the connection between the reservation page and the web server is secured using encrypted connection to protect your privacy and personal information. - Hacker Safe: Our Web site has been awarded the Trust Wave and Godaddy™ the hacker safe Site Safe seal — certifying that our website is daily tested and passes the Trust Wave and Godaddy ™ Safe security scan, certifying that our website is totally secure for shoppers and users.

- What is a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): It's a web cryptographic protocol that provides a secure communication over the Internet between a website and a server. This SSL protocol encrypts the segments of network connections above the online Transport Layer using asymmetric cryptography for keys (codes), exchange symmetric encryption and authentication of these codes to ensure privacy, integrity and safety

III- Merchant and Transactions:

Do we have a Merchant Account and how it works? Yes we do have one. Our merchant bank legally collects payments from customers who agree to shop on our secure website and securely verifies the accuracy of your credit card information and the availability of your funds, then authorizes your transaction( you approve when shopping on our website) in order to obtain the required funds and then transfer them to our merchant account. If you do not agree with our terms and tour prices, you can at any time stop this transaction before you process it on our website. All our prices are clearly posted on our website in US currency and the price is per person tax included unless otherwise noted. Our Payment Gateway: As an e-commerce certified merchant and website, we provide a complex and secure virtual payment gateway to ensure a secure and encrypted concoction between our website and the server. We take every online secure measure to protect your privacy and personal information. Our payment gateway is very reliable and well known (www.Authorize.net).



IV-Privacy and the Use of your Personal Information

Visiting our Website: All web users and customers can visit our website 24/7 without revealing their identity or providing any personal information. When you visit our website site, we may eventually collect usage information that remains anonymous to help us to improve our website to better meet user's expectations and navigation.

We have prepared this Privacy Policy to help you to understand how we collect, use and seek to safeguard this Personal Information you provide on our website when you book any of our tours

How and why we collect your personal information? We collect from your secure reservation web page and from the use of our website four types of information:

-Personal Information including your name, phone number and email address in order to fulfill your booking, confirm you reservation and or issue your tour voucher by email, by mail or by fax. This information is required so we honor your tour based on your personal information and tour preference (time and date you required).

- Through our secure reservation page, we also require a valid credit card and billing address in order to accept and authorize your transaction so we guarantee and deliver your tour.

- We also collect other kind of information such as demographic and geographical information, type of language you speak and the tour (s) you are interested in so we organize your guided tour in the required language and or based on your interest and expectations. For instance, if your email ends in gmail.it or gmail.es, we may ask you whether you want the tour in Spanish, Italian or English. If you have kids, we may ask you the age of your kids as we are required by law to provide baby car seats depending on the age of your kids. Other third party providers including Horseback tour providers and or hot air balloon businesses do require the extract age and even weight of each person in your party for your own safety. - We do collect the above information to allow our staff to confirm your reservation and to send you an email or a tour voucher confirming your tour, the number of persons in your party and your pick-up time. We also use your email address to send this tour voucher as a confirmation of your tour or service you booked on our website. How do we use your personal information? Some of the personal information we collect maybe shared with a third party or with one of our service partners, hotels or any other business provider. For instance, if your tour includes accommodation or any other reservation you book through our website, we have to provide some of your personal information like; your name, the kind of language you need, the age and the number of participants in party, arrival and departure time or and even the weight of each participants in your party required by certain providers or business partners like horseback or hot air balloon rides providers. This piece of your personal information allows us and our business partners to accommodate your travel needs, assigning the right horse and choose the right basket for your hot air balloon ride to ensure your safety and same way for all other services you may require like hotel reservation. We may also use or disclose your personal information under applicable state or federal law to comply with a legal process or any other similar circumstances, when applicable.

V- "Cookies" and How We Use Them?

- There are many reasons why a website and a browser might use cookies. One of these purposes or benefits is that cookies can actually help you to navigate faster and easier websites via your browsers especially the website that you visit more often or make purchases from.

-Many famous and infamous browsers use cookies including internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, among other browsers. A "Cookies" is small piece of information stored on your ipad, on your smart phones or on your computer's hard disk by your browser. Web browser use cookies to tailor user's web pages based on their preferences and behavior. Most of web browsers offer a feature to allow users to turn on or off cookies. Turning off cookies often limits the use of some websites but its' doable.

- Definition of a ‘cookie’: There are many kind of cookies (web cookies, tracking cookies, secure cookies, thirds party cookies…) Most of dynamic websites collect cookies but not static websites. Our websites are static and do not collect cookies except our reservation form that may require harmless cookies to better serve you. A website like ours may use what we call web cookies that's is also called browser's cookies used by browsers for many purposes like identification of an internet users' session and preferences, IP address, shopping cart contents and or other purposes. Many cookies are harmless, cannot be programmed and cannot carry viruses or malware on the host computer. However, they could eventually be misused by spyware or hackers to track users' behavior or activities. Ensure that your computer is always protected and that your virus protection is up-to-date. You may also disable or delete such cookies from your browser anytime you want. Don't shop with any suspicious or unsecure website. Ensure that the website is safe as described in the above section II ‘Safety and Security Concerns’.

Secure cookie A secure cookie is only used when a browser is visiting a server via HTTPS, ensuring that the cookie is always encrypted when transmitting from client to server. This makes the cookie less likely to be exposed to cookie theft via eavesdropping and ensures that users' (your) personal information is encrypted between your computer (browser) and the destination server like our ours to complete your purchase or reservation with maximum safety and security precautions. If you visit our secure reservation page, you will notice that our URL is secure and the letter ‘S’ is indeed configured within the URL as follow: ‘HTTPS’. -Privacy and third-party cookies First of all, we do not use third party cookies unless we need to verify your transaction and personal information when you book a tour on our website to honor your reservation. However, it's your right to understand what "third-party cookies" stands for: Third-party cookies are the cookies that are set at your end when browsing and retrieving information (navigation) between a website you are visiting and the destination server you are inquiring about. The standards for the use of cookies specify that browsers should protect users' privacy and do not allow third-party cookies by default. But most browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and even Google Chrome do allow third-party cookies by default to make it easy and or to speed up navigations between the website and the server destination via users' browsers (you) install on their (your) computers.

Right now, customers can only book through our site and not through a third party website. We have no intention to change that policy but if we do, we will keep you posted and update this privacy policy page accordingly. However, our transactions transit through our merchant and online gateway called Authorize.net who encrypts your personal information to connect with your bank securely to authorize your transaction. In other words, this is a secure third party server as mentioned above in section V "Secure Cookies".

Your privacy and the option "Opt-Out": If any or some of your personal information like an email account has been used by us or by any of our business partners for any other reasons than business, please notify us or simply remove us or and any other users from your contact list or social media accounts. You may also set up your browser for not receiving and restricting the kind of cookies you receive from visiting website like ours or a browser and block any email you may receive in this regard. Please note that we use the same browsers like you including Google Chrome, Intern explorer or and Firefox, Safari and have no control over their web operations and the way these independent browsers and or servers operate.

VI- Acceptance of Our Privacy Policy

By accepting our Privacy Policy, terms, and conditions, you consent and authorize our business, and all our partners, companies, and the financial institutions working in conjunction with us, to share your data and bank information. These institutions may exchange this information with other organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and risk reduction. This includes, among other things: the amount of the transaction, the consumer's name, the credit card number and expiration date, the checking account number, the billing address, and all other required information which will ensure the security of your transaction. It's your responsibility to ensure that you provide us and our business partners and financial institutions with the correct, accurate, and required information. This may include your home and cell phone numbers, a valid email address, and your mailing address (which should match your credit card and bank records). Also, please ensure that you provide your Card Verification Value Code (CVVC). We may also ask you to provide your date of birth as well. We assume no liability or responsibility for missing information or incomplete orders. Our products and services are very clear, and delivered as explained and advertised on our websites. Therefore, we assume no responsibility for charge disputes, or any chargeback fees that may occur or and any legal expenses in this regard. No refunds will be issued for any customer's mistakes, or misunderstandings of our cancellation policy, terms, and conditions.

VII- Miscellaneous:

How to Contact us, learn about us, send us a Travel Enquiry and or make a Secure Reservation? We reserve the right to add under this section we call "Miscellaneous" any new rules, policies, articles or and clauses that may or may not apply on the above sections listed on this page, but also that may apply on our website including our terms and conditions. How to contact us or send us a Travel Inquiry: You can contact us by clicking here: "Contact us" You can also send your Travel Enquiry by clicking here "Tour Request"

If you have a special request, you can add it under "Step 3-Submit Reservation" in the section "special request" located at the bottom of this secure and encrypted form.

VIII- Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to modify, change, or cancel all or any of the provided information, the listed of financial institutions, features like fraud detection suite, business partners, web host, our SSL, and/or the gateway providers at any time without prior notice. We reserve the right as well to change our terms and policies including our Privacy Policy as time goes by in order include new tours, services and requirements. Thank you for your interest and faith in our business. We will do our very best to meet and hopefully exceed your expectations. We are grateful for your business and do appreciate your trust and faith in our ability to secure and protect your personal information. You can now shop with confidence on our online secure reservation form.