Who we are
Our website address is: https://ssarherps.org. We are run by the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (herein ‘SSAR’).
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
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
In order to respond to users seeking information about herpetology, we offer the ‘Herpetology Hotline’ contact form, which requires users to share their email, name and sometimes other personal information. These data are NEVER shared beyond the needs of accurately answering the user’s questions. We may categorize and record questions and responses and general locations for internal purposes of tracking the use cases to improve this service. We do not use nor share identifiable information for these purposes.
Users may also contact the SSAR through our contact form which may request user’s email and name in order to respond to inquiries or requests. These are never shared or sold to any third-party user beyond the SSAR.
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 visit our login page, 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.
Please see further the use of cookies below.
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
By default WordPress, the content management framework we use, does not share any personal data with anyone.
This website uses Google Analytics to compile web usage statistics. From Google Analytics: We collect information to provide better services to all our users — from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which YouTube videos you might like. The information Google collects, and how that information is used, depends on how you use our services and how you manage your privacy controls.
When you’re not signed in to a Google Account, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers tied to the browser, application, or device you’re using. This helps us do things like maintain your language preferences across browsing sessions.
When you’re signed in, we also collect information that we store with your Google Account, which we treat as personal information.
How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services
Many websites and apps use Google services to improve their content and keep it free. When they integrate our services, these sites and apps share information with Google.
For example, when you visit a website that uses advertising services such as AdSense, including analytics tools such as Google Analytics, or embeds video content from YouTube, your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page that you’re visiting and your IP address. We may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.
Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse and personalise content and ads that you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See our Privacy Policy to learn more about how we process data for each of these purposes, and our Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising and how long Google stores this information.
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 they provide 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 collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, email address, and the comment itself).
Your contact information
SSAR may be contacted at ssarherps@gmail.com
Additional information
How we protect your data
We implement a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate compatible with modern web browsers to indicate encrypted exchange of data.
Children’s Privacy
We do not knowingly collect personal information from users under the age of 13. If you are the parent or guardian of an individual under the age of 13 who may have submitted data to us, please contact us at ssarherps@gmail.com.