Privacy policy

What this page covers

This covers information collected through this website and through email sent to us. It applies to Four Waters^™, a trade name of Proxura LLC, a small handmade goods business operating in Michigan. Proxura LLC is the data controller for everything this page describes: it decides what is collected and why, and it is who you write to about it.

What we collect, and why

The contact form

When you use the contact form we receive the name, email address and message you type into it. We use them to answer you. That is the entire purpose.

Two things are saved with them that you did not type. One is which page of this site you were on when you wrote, which your browser passes along and which can only ever name a page of ours. It tells us whether a question came from the flour page or the FAQ, and that is how we work out what to answer first. The other is the date and time the message arrived.

The form carries one more field, hidden from you and from screen readers and taken out of the tab order. A person never sees it and never fills it in, so anything that does fill it in is a script. When it comes back filled we drop the submission and write nothing down.

Your message is stored in a database we run on Cloudflare, and that is where we read it. When we write back, the reply travels by email like any other.

Waitlist and notify-me sign-ups

If you ask to be told when a product is back or when a new one is ready, we store your email address, which product you asked about, which of those two questions it was, and the date. We use it to send you that one message. It does not become a marketing list.

The address is stored in lower case, which is what lets us tell that you are already on a list. Asking twice does not make a second record, and it is not a problem. Nothing else about you goes in.

Orders

Placing an order means giving us the name, shipping address and email address the order needs, plus a record of what you bought. Card details are handled by our payment processor and never reach us. We do not see or store a full card number.

The order record also keeps the address your order was placed from and the browser that placed it. Those two are the evidence we would have to produce if someone told their bank they never ordered, so they stay with the order. The abuse counter described below still holds no address at all.

And it keeps how you arrived: which link or ad brought you, the page you landed on, the site that referred you, the visitor number your browser carries, and your own answer to "How did you hear about us?" if you give one. That is there so we can tell which of our ads is worth paying for. None of it is used to advertise to you somewhere else, and it comes off the order after four months; see how long we keep it, below.

Your cart

Your cart lives in your own browser, in local storage, under the key fourwaters.cart.v2. It holds product identifiers, how many of each, which option you picked where a product has options, and any add-on you chose. There is no name in it, no price and nothing about you. It stays on your device and is not sent to us until you check out. Clearing your browser storage clears it.

Ordinary server records

Our hosting provider keeps the usual records that any web server keeps: the address the request came from, the page requested, the browser making the request and the time. These exist to keep the site available and to stop abuse.

The counter that keeps the forms from being flooded

A public form can be hammered by a script, and a database full of junk stops working for the people it is there for. So we count how many times a form has been sent recently from the same place on the internet, and we slow down anything going far too fast.

Your internet address is not what we write into that counter. What goes in is a fingerprint of it: the address, the form it was sent to and the current time window, mixed with a secret of ours and put through a one way calculation. Out comes a string of letters and numbers that is good for exactly one thing, which is matching the next submission from the same place in the same window. Reading that table tells you nothing about where anyone is, because there is no address in it to read, and the fingerprint is not tied to your name, your email or your message.

Because the time window is part of the fingerprint, a stored row stops matching anything once that window has passed. If the counter ever stops you, waiting a moment and sending again is all it takes, and you can always email us instead.

What we do not do

• We do not sell, rent or trade your information to anyone.
• We do not run an advertising network on this site. The measuring tools we do run are named below, with what each one records.
• We do not add you to a mailing list because you contacted us or ordered.
• We do not build a profile of you across other websites.

Cookies, analytics and ads

This site uses first-party cookies and your browser's own storage to remember your cart and which link or ad brought you here. The cart itself is local storage rather than a cookie, and it is readable only by this site in your own browser.

It also uses tools run by other companies to understand how the site is used and to measure our ads: Microsoft Clarity (how pages are used) and the TikTok Pixel (whether a TikTok ad led to a visit or an order).

When you place an order, we send TikTok a scrambled (hashed) copy of your email and, if you give us one, your phone number, never the plain text, so it can tell us whether an ad worked. The address your order was placed from and the browser that placed it go with it as themselves, not scrambled, along with what you bought; the list further down says exactly what that includes. We do not sell your information.

You can clear or block cookies in your browser settings, and you can manage ad personalization in your TikTok account settings.

The rule we hold ourselves to is this: any measuring tool we use is named in the list below, along with what it records, and it goes in that list before it records anything. If one of them watches what a visit looked like rather than just counting visits, we say so in those words. That makes the list the answer. A tool that is not named in it is not collecting anything about your visit.

Sessions on this site may be recorded by Microsoft Clarity, for security and for reviewing a dispute about an order. What you type into a form is masked before anything leaves your browser, so the recording does not carry your name, your address or your card details.

Who else handles your information

A small business runs on other people's infrastructure. The services below see some of your information because they have to in order to do their job.

• Cloudflare, which hosts this site, runs the database that holds what you send through the contact and sign-up forms, and screens traffic for abuse.
• Resend, which carries the email we send you (order confirmations, shipping notices, waitlist messages). It sees your email address and the message, and nothing else.
• Stripe, which handles card payments. Card details go straight to Stripe and never reach us.
• Microsoft Clarity, which records how a visit looked (the pages, the scrolling, the clicks) with form inputs masked. It is given the random visitor number this site sets, and on the order confirmation page the order number. It is never given your email address, in any form.
• TikTok, which is told which pages you opened on this site and, when you place an order, what you bought, the order total, the address the order was placed from, the browser that placed it, the identifier from the ad you clicked, and a scrambled copy of your email address and, if you gave us one, your phone number. That is how it can tell us whether one of our ads led to the order. The email address and the phone number travel scrambled and never as themselves; the rest travels as itself.

Anything else that starts handling your information goes in that list before it does. Naming a service after it already holds your details is too late.

How long we keep it

Messages are kept while they are useful for answering you and for remembering a conversation we have already had. Waitlist addresses are kept until the product ships or until you ask to come off the list. Order records are kept because a business has to be able to show what it sold and to whom. The abuse counter is the short-lived one: it is tied to a window of time, and it never held an address in the first place.

The one number we do hold ourselves to is for the advertising details. How you arrived, the fingerprint of the address you arrived from, and the browser string we keep beside it are cleared off orders older than 120 days, because after four months no advertising decision is being made on them. The order itself, what you bought and what you paid, stays.

We have not set a fixed number of days for each other kind of record, and we would rather tell you the rule we follow than invent a number. The rule is this: when something is no longer needed to answer you, to send you an order, or to keep our books straight, we delete it. Ask us to remove your details and we will.

Your choices

• Ask what we hold about you, and we will tell you.
• Ask us to delete it, and we will, except where we have to keep an order record.
• Ask to come off a waitlist at any time.
• Ask us to correct something that is wrong.

Email customer.support@four-waters.com for any of the above. We answer every message within 1 business day.

Children

This site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has sent us information, email us and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

When this changes, the updated version appears on this page with a new effective date. We will not quietly widen what we collect.

Questions

Email customer.support@four-waters.com or use the contact page.