Cookies

Cookies are used by our web site to support several features that help enhance your shopping experience. Please read the information below for more details on cookies and how we use them.

What is a 'Cookie'?

A cookie is a small set of textual data that is stored by your web browser when you visit a web page that sends a cookie. Next time you visit that same web site, your browser will send the textual data from the cookie back to the web server. Note that a cookie is only sent to the same web site that wrote it in the first place.

What are Cookies good for?

Cookies allow a web site to 'remember' information when you go from one page of the site to another. They are typically used to make a web site more user-friendly and customizable for the person viewing the site.

How does this site use cookies?

We do not store any personally idetifiable information in cookies. We use cookies to support several features of the site, including the following:

Shopping Cart: When you add an item to your Shopping Cart, the item's product ID number and the quantity you added are stored as text in a 'cart' cookie sent to your browser. The cart cookie is set with an expiration of 6 months, so it will be saved by your browser to your hard disk when you close your browser (assuming you left any items in your cart.) This allows us to 'remember' the contents of your cart as you move from page to page around our web site. When you Checkout, we read the cart cookie from your browser and convert it into an order, and when you submit the order, we delete the cart cookie from your browser.

Sessions: Session is a term used to describe the time that you spend at a particular web site from the first page that you view from that site, until you leave that site or close your browser. Our site uses sessions for two main features: first, to remember which page you were shopping on when you added something to your shopping cart so that you can return there from the cart page; and second, in the Customer Area, sessions are used to remember that you are logged in (so you don't have to log in to every page) and also to send information from one page to the next (like to remember the state of your order while you update your billing address.)

Our site uses a cookie to support sessions. When a session starts, a cookie is sent to your browser with a random-looking sequence of letters and numbers. This is known as the 'session ID'. Pages of our site that use the session can save information on the web server that is associated with that particular session ID. So when you view a page after the session has started, that page can make use of the information associated with your session. The session cookie is temporary, so when you close your browser it is deleted.

Custom Search Results Format: We provide a feature on the Item Search Results page that allows you to customize the format of the search results (you can choose which columns to show, and how many rows to show per page.) This feature uses a cookie to store your custom format. Click here for more information on this feature.

What if I disable cookies?

If you disable cookies for our web site, then none of the features described above will work. You will not be able to use the Shopping Cart and you will not be able to create 'Your Account'. We highly recommend that you enable cookies for our site.

How do I enable cookies?

If your browser settings have disabled cookies, then here are some tips on how to enable them:

(If you do not know your browser version, select Help -> About... from your tool bar)

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
On a PC:

• Select Tools -> Internet Options and click on the 'Privacy' tab.


• The default selection, 'Medium', supports cookies, but you can click on the Edit' button to enable cookies specifically for this web site. Type 'www.mtn-niche.net' (without the ' ' characters) into the 'Address of Web site:' box and click the 'Allow' button.

On a Mac:

• Select Edit -> Preferences.


• Scroll down until you see "Cookies" under Receiving Files. Make sure that 'Never Ask' is selected.

Netscape Communicator 4.0 (and above)

• Choose Edit -> Preferences and click on the 'Advanced' option.


• Select the radio button next to 'Accept all cookies' and click 'OK'.

All other browsers
Please consult your documentation or online help files.