Privacy

Seems to us that “Privacy” is an important idea and that it deserves its own page here.  It’s certainly more complicated to talk about privacy on an internet site that we thought.  So here’s what we think, what we try to do, and some cautions and warnings about using this site.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it:

First, we want you to know that we do not re-sell, share, or otherwise provide your email address or personal information to any “mailing lists” or other folks who want to solicit your donation. We do use your email several times during the year to let you know that Sprouts are ready for pick up, or to ask you to share your gardening experiences with us so that we can plan for next year’s planting. We also may send personal appeals to you for funding (we are a nonprofit and staffed entirely by volunteers but seed, sprouting soil, and sprouting supplies are a cost to us.) But please know that these messages and requests are coming from us, to you.

Except as we’ve outlined on this page, your contact information isn’t shared with others, unless you give us separate, specific permission to do so. (For example, one P-Patch gardener might ask to contact another of you. We will ask you for permission before providing your contact information to the person requesting it.)

We also use the information that you provide to us to create posters and spreadsheets which tell the Seattle Community and City of Seattle about the good things done by the P Patch community, and about the challenges that the P Patch Community faces. Your name and identifying information are not linked with this data, however.

Also, there’s some technical things that affect your privacy just because this is a website. The information that follows this paragraph describes what these are.

If you participate in the “Comments” section on this site, or upload images, here’s some cautions to know about:

Comments: When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media: If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms:

Cookies:  If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded Content from Other Websites:  Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics:

Who we share your data with and How long we retain your data: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information provided in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data: If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data: Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

We also use the information that you provide to us to create posters and spreadsheets which tell the Seattle Community and City of Seattle about the good things done by the P Patch community, and about the challenges that the P Patch Community faces. Your name and identifying information are not linked with this data, however.

Your contact information: Except as we’ve outlined on this page, your contact information isn’t shared with others, unless you give us separate, specific permission to do so. (For example, one P-Patch gardener might ask to contact another of you. We will ask you for permission before providing your contact information to the person requesting it.)

Additional information:
How we protect your data: We use the standard protections available from Word Press, Microsoft, and Google.

If you think you’re getting something weird and inappropriate from us we really want to know. Please “contact us”.

What data breach procedures we have in place: If we think your personal data has been breached we will let you know by separate email.

What third parties we receive data from: We do not solicit or receive data about you from third parties.

What automated decision-making and/or profiling we do with user data:
We do not do automated decision-making and/or profiling with user data unless Word Press has flagged your message to us as SPAM. If it has (and if we personally agree) we will not read any messages that you sent to us and will delete them.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements: We will disclose and report any breach as required by law. We will report anything that we personally believe constitutes a direct threat of harm to others to the appropriate law enforcement agency.