Who We Are
The Herpetology Collective operates this website, herpcollective.org, offering herpetological education including the Certified Herpetological Guide online course. If you have questions about this policy or about your personal data, you can reach us at learnaboutcritters@gmail.com.
What Personal Data We Collect and Why
Course Enrollment and Learning Activity
When you register for an account or enroll in a course, Tutor LMS and WordPress store information needed to provide the course, including your name, email address, profile information you choose to provide, enrollments, course progress, quiz or assignment submissions, and certificate or completion records. We use this information to deliver the course, track progress, provide support, and document completion.
Purchases and Payment
WooCommerce stores the information needed to create and manage your order, such as your name, email address, billing information, products purchased, order status, and purchase date. Payments are processed through PayPal. We do not store your full payment-card details ourselves; information needed to process or support a payment is shared with PayPal.
We retain order information for accounting, tax, fraud-prevention, customer-service, and recordkeeping purposes for as long as reasonably necessary or legally required.
Contact Forms and Support Messages
Our contact form is provided through Contact Form 7. Form submissions may be stored in this site’s WordPress database by Flamingo so that we can answer messages and maintain support records. A submission may include the information you enter in the form, along with routine technical information associated with the submission such as its time and source.
If we use Jetpack CRM to organize a customer or contact record, that record may include contact information, purchase history, support history, notes, and related communications needed to serve that person. Jetpack CRM is hosted with this WordPress site rather than functioning as a separate public social network.
Jetpack Services
We use Jetpack services for site functions including account protection, uptime monitoring, security-related infrastructure, and other WordPress features. Automattic, the provider of Jetpack and WordPress.com-connected services, may process technical information such as IP address, browser or user-agent information, referrer information, and request details when needed to provide those services. Automattic’s privacy information is available at https://automattic.com/privacy/.
Comments
If you leave a comment on the site, we collect the data shown in the comment form, plus technical information WordPress records in connection with the comment, such as your IP address and browser user-agent string. An anonymized string created from your email address (a “hash”) may be shared with the Gravatar service to check whether you use it. After an approved comment is public, any public profile image associated with it may also be visible.
Media and Location Data
If you upload an image or submit a wildlife photograph, be cautious about embedded location information such as EXIF GPS data, particularly for sensitive species. Images made publicly available can sometimes expose metadata or other clues about where a photograph was taken. Course fieldwork never requires you to publish precise locality information for sensitive wildlife.
Cookies and Browser Storage
WordPress, Tutor LMS, WooCommerce, PayPal integrations, and other site functions may use cookies or browser storage to keep you signed in, remember cart contents and preferences, maintain sessions, protect accounts, and make the site function correctly. Accessibility settings may also use browser-side preferences so the site can remember choices such as display adjustments.
Google for WooCommerce
Google for WooCommerce is installed on this site. If our store catalog or related Google services are connected and enabled, relevant store, product, order, or conversion information may be shared with Google as necessary for the enabled feature. We will update this policy if we enable additional advertising or analytics uses that materially change how visitor data is handled.
Embedded and Linked Content
Some lessons and pages include content embedded from services such as YouTube or link to outside databases, journals, conservation organizations, and other resources. Embedded content can behave as though you visited the outside service directly. Those services may collect data, use cookies, or monitor interaction according to their own privacy policies. Following an ordinary external link likewise takes you to a site whose privacy practices we do not control.
Who We Share Your Data With
We share information only as needed to operate the site and provide services. This can include PayPal for payment processing; Automattic/Jetpack for connected WordPress services; Google when a Google for WooCommerce feature is actually enabled; and outside services whose content you choose to load or visit. We do not sell your personal data to advertisers or other third parties.
How Long We Retain Your Data
We generally retain account, enrollment, progress, and certificate information while it is useful for providing ongoing course access and documenting completion. Order information is retained as needed for accounting, tax, fraud-prevention, and customer-service purposes. Contact-form submissions, CRM records, and support communications are kept only as long as they remain reasonably useful for support, administration, or legitimate recordkeeping. Approved comments and their metadata may be retained indefinitely so follow-up comments can be recognized and managed.
What Rights You Have Over Your Data
If you have an account on this site, have placed an order, submitted a form, or left comments, you may contact us to request information about personal data we hold about you, an export where available, or deletion of data we are not required to retain. We may need to keep some information for administrative, accounting, security, fraud-prevention, certificate-verification, or legal purposes.
Where Your Data Is Processed
Our site and the services connected to it may process or store data in countries other than your own. For example, payment information is processed through PayPal and connected WordPress services may be processed by Automattic’s infrastructure. Those providers apply their own privacy and security practices to data they process.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy as the site, course platform, or connected services change. We aim to keep the policy matched to the tools we are actually using rather than describing services that are no longer present.
Contact Us
If you have questions about this privacy policy or how your data is handled, please contact us at learnaboutcritters@gmail.com.