Who We Are
The Herpetology Collective operates this website, herpcollective.org, and the Herpetology Collective app, 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 hivemind@herpcollective.org.
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. Monthly support (the supporter levels on our Support page) is billed through Stripe. You enter your card details on Stripe’s own checkout page, not on our site, and we never see or store your card number. We keep only what is needed to connect your account to your subscription: Stripe’s customer and subscription reference numbers, your level, and whether it is active. You can change or cancel monthly support at any time from your account page, which opens Stripe’s customer portal.
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
The contact form and the account help form are part of this site’s own software. What you send is stored in this site’s WordPress database so we can answer you and keep support records, and a copy is emailed to us. A submission includes what you enter in the form, the page it was sent from, and the time; we do not store your IP address with it. Contact details on messages we have finished handling are blanked after 180 days, and messages are deleted after two years.
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.
Location Tools
What Lives Near Me, What’s Calling Near Me, the Field-Trip Planner, Ways to Help and Crossing Watch can use your location. You can type a ZIP or postal code or a place name instead. If you tap “Use my location,” your device asks your permission first. The coordinates are rounded to about 1 km before they are used or passed on, and are used only to answer that request: to find your county, the local forecast, and nearby places and projects. To answer, our server (not your device) sends the rounded point, the ZIP code or the place name you typed, without your IP address or anything about your account, to these public services: the U.S. Census Bureau’s geocoders, the National Weather Service, the Regional Climate Centers’ ACIS service, OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass), iNaturalist, the National Park Service and Recreation.gov. Answers are cached on our server for up to 7 days under a scrambled key, and like any web address a request can appear in our host’s server logs for a short time. Our usage counts keep only the state and county (and, for the species finder, the first three digits of a ZIP code). Crossing Watch remembers your last place on your own device only. Accessibility needs you tick in the Field-Trip Planner are used to filter the results and are counted only as anonymous daily totals, never linked to you.
If you send a “Something wrong?” report from a tool, we store the message you write, the species and place it concerns, and the email address you optionally provide so we can reply. Frog and toad calls on the species finder and on What’s Calling Near Me stream directly from iNaturalist’s servers when you press play, so iNaturalist receives the same technical information (such as your IP address) as any website you visit; nothing is streamed until you press play. Plays are counted in Google Analytics only when analytics cookies are allowed (see Cookies and Browser Storage).
This Site’s Own Usage Counts and Searches
Every tool records usage counts in this site’s own database: which tool and feature was used, short codes such as a state or county, and a visitor code made from part of your network address with a secret that changes every day. The code is erased within a few days and the counts are deleted after 400 days. If you reject analytics cookies, your counts are kept without the code. Words searched on the site, in the Library and in the Name Decoder are counted as daily totals with no account, IP address or visitor code, and are kept for up to 400 days. The Research Desk sends what you type, from our server and without anything that identifies you, to iNaturalist, OpenAlex and (for web results) Brave Search. Games keep your scores on your own device; sharing a score sends only what you choose to share.
The Android App
The Herpetology Collective app on Google Play is this website shown in an app window (an Android Trusted Web Activity, run by Chrome). It collects only what the website collects, as described on this page. It has no ads and does not use an advertising ID. You cannot buy anything inside the app; orders made on the website still appear in your account there. If you turn on notifications, the app uses the push notifications described below. You can ask us to delete your account and data at herpcollective.org/delete-account/, from the app or the website.
Notifications and Email Updates
If you choose to get notifications from us, we keep what is needed to send them and nothing more. In your account we keep a list of notifications about your own orders for 180 days, which announcements you have read, and the topics you chose. If you are not signed in, those choices stay in your own browser. If you turn on push notifications on a device, your browser gives us a push address for that device and two keys that let us send it messages that only your device can read; we also note a simple device name such as “Chrome on Android” and when the device last visited. We send push messages through your browser maker’s push service (Google for Chrome, Edge and Android browsers, Mozilla for Firefox, Apple for Safari and iPhone, Microsoft for some Windows browsers); the message is encrypted so that service cannot read it. A device is forgotten when you turn push off, when its push service tells us it is gone, or after 90 days without a visit.
If you sign up for email updates, we keep your email address, the topics you picked, and when and how you agreed (including the wording you saw). You can sign up on your account page or by ticking the box at checkout; the list is kept separate from your orders. We ask you to confirm by email first; an address that is not confirmed within 14 days is deleted. Our emails are sent from our own website, have no tracking pixels or tracked links, and every one has a link to change your topics or unsubscribe. When you unsubscribe we delete your address and keep only a scrambled code made from it, so that we never email it again by mistake. We never sell or share these details. You can ask us for a copy of them, or to delete them, at any time.
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. Display and reading settings are remembered in your browser and, if you are signed in, with your account, so they follow you between devices.
When you first visit, a small notice explains this. If you are in the EU, UK, or Switzerland, analytics and marketing cookies are set only after you choose to allow them; elsewhere they are on unless you opt out. Either way you can change your choice at any time using the link, which also appears in the footer as “Cookie Settings”. We honor the Global Privacy Control signal that some browsers send, treating it as an opt-out. Payment, cart, sign-in, and security cookies are always active because the site cannot work without them. The cookies and browser storage currently in use are listed below.
Site Analytics
We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used, such as which pages are visited and which species-finder lookups are made, and Jetpack Stats (Automattic) for basic page-view counts. In the EU, UK, and Switzerland these analytics run only if you allow them in the cookie notice; elsewhere they run unless you opt out, and Google Analytics is set up to respect your choice through Google Consent Mode. Google’s privacy information is available at https://policies.google.com/privacy.
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.
Children
Accounts, email updates and notifications are for people 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, contact hivemind@herpcollective.org and we will delete it.
Who We Share Your Data With
We share information only as needed to operate the site and provide services. This can include PayPal and Stripe for payment processing; Automattic/Jetpack for connected WordPress services; Google for site analytics (in the EU, UK and Switzerland only if you allow it; elsewhere unless you opt out); the public location and wildlife-data services listed under Location Tools, which receive a rounded point, ZIP code or place name with nothing that identifies you; iNaturalist when you play a frog or toad recording; 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 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. Deleted data can remain in our host’s routine backups for a short time before those backups are overwritten.
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. You can ask us to delete your account and data at herpcollective.org/delete-account/. 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 or Stripe 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 hivemind@herpcollective.org.