Privacy Policy

Last updated: February 6, 2019

Welcome to Your Green Homestead (YGH)! Our mission is to inspire people to use sustainability principles and analysis in the design of their households. We consider the practice of reviewing and sharing opinions about rules, regulations, terms & conditions, and policies governing various communities, organizations, and households to be sustainable. We encourage the users of the YGH online community to provide their feedback about the outlined below YGH Privacy Policy in the forum named YGH Governance dedicated to these topics.

Who we are

Your Green Homestead (“us”, “we”, or “our”) operates yourgreenhomestead.com (the “Site”). Our Privacy Policy informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information we receive from users of the Site. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or our practices, please refer to the “Contact Us” section below.

We may use information shared with us for any legal purpose, including to run and improve our Site and for marketing purposes, but in each case solely in accordance with applicable law, the scope of your consent to use such information (if applicable) and, where Your Green Homestead acts as a data processor for a data controller, solely on the basis of instructions from such data controller. For example, our Site includes an e-commerce platform where our user (or Vendor) is the data controller and Your Green Homestead is a data processor.  As a data processor, Your Green Homestead does not have a direct relationship with the person (Customer) whose personal information we collect and process at the direction of our user (i.e. the data controller).  If you are a customer of one of these users and no longer want to be contacted by that user or want to access and change the personal information we collect and process as a data processor, please contact the user you interacted with directly. By using yourgreenhomestead.com, you agree to the collection and use of the information in accordance with this policy.

What personal data is collected by Your Green Homestead?

Your Green Homestead may collect personal information as further described below through: (a) Personal Information provided by you, (b) Automatically Collected Information, (c) Billing Information, (d) Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies, (e) Third Party Analytics Data, (f) Mobile App-Based Data and (g) Cross-App and Cross-Device Information. We do not collect or use “sensitive consumer information” and do not offer or sell to any third party any data based on sensitive consumer information.

(a) Personal Information provided by you. We collect personal information (e.g., name, email address, phone number, and other information that we can use to identify or contact you as an individual) when you:

  • register an account with us,
  • contact our customer support services,
  • enter our promotions or contests,
  • post content on Your Green Homestead website, forum, or blog.

We use this personal information in order to provide you with our service, to respond to billing inquiries, and keep you updated with news from Your Green Homestead online community members, the Site, and our partners in accordance with your consent preferences as applicable.

(b) Automatically Collected User Information. When you access and use our Site we automatically collect and store, in log files, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, clickstream data, and other user information as part of our Service analytics (individually and collectively, “Automatically Collected Information”). We do not link this Automatically Collected Information to other information we collect about you and such Automatically Collected Information does not directly identify you as a person.

(c) Billing Information. If you sign up for a Vendor account or purchase another paid service, we require your billing information in order to process the transaction. Billing information includes your name, address, telephone number, credit card details, PayPal email address, and other information necessary to process the transaction. We will retain the last 4 digits of your credit card number, credit card type, name, address, and some other billing information, so that you may identify that card used in the future. Your Green Homestead does not store your full credit card number or CVV2. This information is discarded after your transaction has been processed.

(d) Cookies and Tracking Technologies. Your Green Homestead and our affiliates, partners, and service providers (such as marketing, analytics, and customer support partners) may use cookies, pixels, and similar technologies for analyzing trends, site administration, tracking mobile application installations, understanding how users interface with our site, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual, device specific and/or in an aggregated basis.

UNLESS YOU ARE AN EU RESIDENT, VISITING YOUR GREEN HOMESTEAD WITH YOUR BROWSER SET TO ACCEPT COOKIES OR USING OUR MOBILE APPLICATIONS OR OTHER SOFTWARE TELLS US YOU WANT TO USE OUR SERVICE AND YOU CONSENT TO OUR USE OF COOKIES AND OTHER TECHNOLOGIES TO PROVIDE YOU OUR SERVICE.

We use cookies for a number of purposes, some of which are strictly necessary, including but not limited to our shopping cart, to remember user settings, and for authentication as follows:

  • First party cookies – Used to provide basic functionality of our Site, including for authentication and security purposes, configuration, and support.
  • Third party cookies – Used to enable certain analytics and tracking tools, as well as interest based advertising and chat functionality.
  • Session cookies – Used to enable certain analytics and tracking tools, interest based advertising, as well as for app configuration, monitoring tools, to pin user session to a specific server, and to prevent cross site request forgery.
  • Persistent cookies – Provides functionality of first party cookies and third party cookies across sessions.

You can control the use of certain cookies at the individual browser level or in your operating system preferences. If you opt-out of such cookies, you may still use our Site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our Site may be limited.  You can find out more about your rights in relation to cookies and how to control them here: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

The use of cookies by our partners, affiliates, and service providers is not covered by this Privacy Policy. We do not have access or control over these cookies. Our partners, affiliates, and service providers use session ID and persistent cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our site.

(e) Third Party Analytics Services. Some parts of our Service use third party analytic services to help us create a better user experience.

Google. You can opt-out of Google Analytics at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

(f) Do Not Track. Currently, we do not support Do Not Track or “DNT.” DNT is a preference you set in your web browser to tell visited websites you do not want to be tracked. You can enable or disable DNT through the preferences or settings of your web browser.

(g) Sensitive Consumer Information. Your Green Homestead does not collect or use “sensitive consumer information” and does not offer or sell to any third party any data based on sensitive consumer information.  For purposes of this Privacy Policy, “Sensitive consumer information” includes social security numbers or other government-issued identifiers, insurance plan numbers, and precise information about past, present, or potential future health or medical conditions or treatments, including genetic, biometric, genomic and family medical history nor does it include racial or ethnic origin information, information about sexual orientation, criminal records or trade union membership information. Your Green Homestead maintains internal policies and procedures designed to safeguard against the collection or use of such information.

How your personal information is used by Your Green Homestead?

We collect personal information about you when you request to engage with our Site for a variety of uses based on different reasons. For example, some of the information we collect from you we need to enable us to deliver the services to you, sometimes we are required by law and regulations to collect and process this information about you, at other times, we consider it is in our legitimate business interests to collect and process this information, taking into consideration your privacy rights.

We use information about you for a number of purposes:

To provide a requested service or carry out a contract with you.
  • Personal information you provide to us. We use this personal information in order to provide you with our service, to respond to billing inquiries, and keep you updated with news about Your Green Homestead, our Site, and our partners.
  • User Site Membership/Registration. When you register, or are invited to register, we store and use your information solely to provide administrative services in support of our member feature (such as account set-up and password reset).
Where we have your consent
  • Marketing Communications.  To send you marketing communications from us or any of our members and partners where you have given your consent to this or it is otherwise lawful for us to do so. You can choose not to receive any of these marketing communications by following the unsubscribe instructions included in these emails (where applicable). You may also notify us by using the details in the contact us section below.
  • Testimonials. We display personal testimonials of satisfied customers on our Site in addition to other endorsements. Where you agree to this, we may post your testimonial along with your name. If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, you can contact us at info@yourgreenhomestead.com.
  • Phone Calls and Messages.

Your Green Homestead may contact you at any telephone number you have provided us, including phone numbers you have made publicly available on your website(s) listed in Your Green Homestead profile for:

  • Account notifications;
  • Account troubleshooting;
  • Dispute resolution;
  • Debt collection; or
  • As necessary to service your account or enforce our Terms & Conditions and policies, applicable law, or any other agreement we may have with you.

We may collect other telephone numbers for you and may place manual, non-marketing calls to any of those numbers. Standard telephone minute and text charges may apply and may include overage fees if you have exceeded your plan limits.

If you do not wish to receive such communications, you may change your preference in your account settings (Edit Profile) or by sending us an email at any time.

Where we have a legitimate interest

Investigating, detecting and preventing or reporting fraud, misrepresentations, security breaches or incidents, other potentially prohibited or illegal activities or to otherwise help protect your account. We do this as we are required by law to ensure effective fraud prevention processes are in place. We also do this to prevent our Site from being misused for fraudulent activities which is in our legitimate interests as a provider of the services and other payment processing services.

Protecting our, our customers’, or your customers’ rights or property, or the security or integrity of our Site. We do this as we are required by law and in our legitimate interest to prevent our Site being misused for fraudulent activities.

Contacting you to resolve disputes, collect fees and provide assistance with our Site. We process this information given our legitimate interest providing you with our services, to measure the adequate performance of our contract with you, and to comply with applicable laws.

Conducting surveys and collecting feedback about our Site. We do this to pursue our legitimate interests to understand if the Site is helpful to you and to evaluate the effectiveness of any updates we provide.

Providing, maintaining and improving our Site. It is in our legitimate business interests to continue to maintain our product and service offering to individuals in order to keep running our business.

Developing new products and services. It is in our legitimate business interests to continue to improve our product and service offering to individuals in order to develop and grow our business.

Delivering the information and support you request, including technical notices, security alerts, and support and administrative messages including to resolve disputes, collect fees, and provide assistance for problems with our Site. We need to communicate with you to fulfill our own obligations or meet your requests that arise from the Terms & Conditions between you and us and we need your identification information in order to deliver this information to you. If you do not provide this information, we will not be able to fulfill our obligations or meet your requests under the Terms & Conditions.

Improving, personalizing, and facilitating your use of our Site. For example, when you sign up for an account, we can associate certain information with your new account, such as information about other accounts you had or currently have, and prior transactions you made using our Site. We do this in order to ensure our legitimate interests that content from our Site is presented in the most effective manner for you.

Measuring, tracking and analyzing trends and usage in connection with your use or the performance of our Site. We want to understand how current products and services are used in order to develop and enhance our products in our legitimate interests. In order to ensure that our legitimate business interests of striving to deliver a consistent, secure and continuous service are met, we need to carry out certain analytics on the performance of our Site.

Third Parties

Our Service includes links to other websites whose privacy practices may differ from ours. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policy of any website you visit.

Other Uses

For any other purpose disclosed to you in connection with our Services from time to time. If we intend to process your personal data for a purpose other than that set out above, we will provide you with information prior to such processing and will obtain your consent where necessary.

Some of our processes for how we use your information can involve profiling, automated processing and automated decisions. We need to do this to meet our own contractual obligations, to comply with applicable law (i.e., for fraud prevention purposes or where we have a good faith belief we are under a legal or regulatory obligation to do so), and as it’s in our legitimate business interests to engage in such automated processing.

For example:

Fraud and crime detection and prevention: We have developed processes, for the purposes set out above, to check that our Site is not being used for fraudulent purposes. We will consider information you provide to access our Site, information you provide to enhance your experience, information we automatically collect from your use of our Site, and information we collect from other sources. We regularly check that our processes are up to date and implemented robustly and fairly to ensure that we can deliver the Site to you and that it is safe to use. If we believe in good faith that our fraud and crime prevention processing detects activities or use of our Site which could be used for fraudulent or criminal activities, we may not be able to provide our services to you.

Product development and creation: We can process the information you provide to us, the information we collect from your use of our Site and the information we obtain from third parties automatically to improve our products and develop new products. The information we use will help us to understand what is important to our users, and how we can create better products and services.

Marketing: With your consent we can process the information you provide to us, the information we collect from your use of our Site and the information we obtain from third parties automatically to market new products and services to you by using cookies to serve ads to you.

Who does Your Green Homestead share your personal information with?

Your Green Homestead does not share personal information we learn about you from your use of the Site with others except as described in this Privacy Policy and in connection with: (i) the completion of transactions; (ii) research, promotions, and contests; (iii) third party marketing; (iv) a merger or sale; (v) publicly accessible information; and (vi) with our affiliates; (vii) other lawful disclosures.

  • Completion of Transactions.  Your Green Homestead may share your personal information on a secured basis where it is necessary to complete a transaction; to operate, improve, or communicate to you about the Site; to detect fraud or compliance with export regulations; or to do something that you have asked us to do. We use other third parties such as payment processors to bill you for goods and services. These third parties are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us and are prohibited from using your personal information for promotional purposes.
  • Research, Promotions, and Contests.  From time to time, Your Green Homestead or a partner may sponsor a research panel, promotion, or contest on Your Green Homestead. You may be asked to provide personal information including name, email address, or home address, or to answer questions in order to participate. This information will be used strictly for purposes of the research panel, promotion, or contest administration and fulfillment, as well as for internal business purposes.
  • Third Party Marketing. Your Green Homestead may share anonymized and/or aggregated information with third parties for their marketing, advertising, promotion, or other uses. In addition, from time to time we may share your personal information with third parties who want to promote goods and/or services that we think would be of interest to you. If you are located in the EU, we will only share your personal information for any marketing purposes where you have consented to this after being provided with information on the concerned third parties or where it is otherwise lawful to do so. If you want us to stop sharing your contact information with third parties, you may notify us through the details in the contact us section below.
  • In the Event of Merger or Sale.  As we continue to develop our business, we may also buy or sell all or part of our business. In such transactions, personal information you have shared with us is generally one of the business assets that will be transferred. The transferred personal information will remain subject to the promises made in this Privacy Policy or subsequent notices to which you have consented. If Your Green Homestead is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our site of any change in ownership or uses of your personal information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information.
  • Publicly Accessible Information. If you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, like blogs, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return. Any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To have your personal information removed from our blog or community forum, submit a request through the details in the contact us section below. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.
  • With our Affiliates. We may share personal information with our affiliates. This is necessary to provide our Site to you and fulfill our obligations in our Terms & Conditions and in our legitimate interest to do so.
  • Lawful disclosure. Your Green Homestead may disclose personal information about you under the following circumstances: In response to lawful requests by public authorities, including but not limited to national security or law enforcement requests. We may also disclose your personal information as required by law, such as to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or similar legal processes, to establish or exercise our legal rights or, defend against legal claims, or if in our judgment in such circumstances disclosure is required or appropriate. If we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our various terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.

How long does Your Green Homestead retain your personal information?

As further described below, we will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you our services, but in no event longer than permitted by applicable law.

Notwithstanding the foregoing:

  • Your Green Homestead uses Automatically Collected Information and Mobile App-Based Data for no more than 13 months.
  • We maintain stored data for a period of up to 24 months in order to comply with audits, court order or law enforcement inquiries and for the purpose of ensuring that our technology is functioning properly, and preventing fraud across our Service.
  • After 24 months, all of the stored data is destroyed.  Summarized data consisting of aggregated statistical data or other anonymous data may be kept indefinitely.

When determining the relevant retention periods, we will take into account factors including:

  • our contractual obligations and rights in relation to the personal information involved;
  • legal obligation(s) under applicable law to retain data for a certain period of time;
  • statute of limitations under applicable law(s);
  • (potential) disputes, and
  • guidelines issued by relevant data protection authorities.

Otherwise, we securely erase your information once this is no longer needed.

How does Your Green Homestead keep your personal information safe?

We take reasonable steps to put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect the integrity and security of personal information about you and to prevent unauthorized or unlawful processing of personal information and the accidental loss, destruction, or damage to personal information.  These measures include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures (Strong password protection and industry standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions), as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where we store data.

We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information you input. We reveal only the last four digits of your credit card numbers when confirming an order. Of course, we transmit the entire credit card number to the appropriate credit card company during order processing. It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when finished using a shared computer.

However, data transmissions over the Internet and methods of electronic storage are not 100% secure. Consequently, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk.

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.

What data breach procedures we have in place

If Your Green Homestead learns of a security systems breach, we may attempt to notify you electronically so that you can take appropriate protective steps. We may post a notice on our Site if a security breach occurs. If this happens, you will need a web browser enabling you to view the Site. In these circumstances, we may also send an email to you at the email address you have provided to us. Depending on where you live, you may have a legal right to receive notice of a security breach in writing. To receive free written notice of a security breach (or to withdraw your consent from receiving electronic notice) submit a request through the details in the contact us section below.

What are your Privacy Rights?

Your Green Homestead as Data Controller. Upon request, we will provide you with information about whether we hold or process your personal information on behalf of third parties. You can access and edit your account information with Your Green Homestead at any time by logging into your account. You can also contact us via the details in the contact us section below, and we will respond as soon as possible, but at most within 30 days.

You can delete your applicable account by visiting the applicable account deletion page; however, some personal information, primarily your contact information, may remain in our records to the extent necessary to protect our legal interests or document compliance with regulatory requirements, in each case solely to the extent permitted by applicable law.

If your personal information changes, or if you no longer wish to use our Site, you may correct, update, or delete such information by making the change on your user account page, or by submitting a request through the details in the contact us section below.

Your Green Homestead as Data Processor. Your Green Homestead acknowledges you have the right to access and change the personal information we collect and process as a data processor.  An individual who seeks to access or to correct, amend, or delete personal information should direct their request to Your Green Homestead user (Vendor) who is the data controller, and not to Your Green Homestead directly. If the data controller requests Your Green Homestead remove personal information, we will respond within a reasonable timeframe.

Users in the European Union only:

Under EU Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and the Council; the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), you have a number of rights when it comes to your personal information. Further information and advice about your rights can be obtained from the data protection regulator in your country of residence within the EU. You can exercise any of these rights by contacting us through the details in the contact us section below.

  • The right to be informed. You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent and easily understandable information about how we use your information and your rights. This is why we’re providing you with the information in this Policy.
  • The right of access. You have the right to obtain access to your information (if we’re processing it), and certain other information (similar to that provided in this Privacy Policy). This is so you’re aware and can check that we’re using your information in accordance with data protection law. You can do this by writing us on the email address below.
  • The right to rectification. You are entitled to have your information corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete. You can request that we rectify any errors in personal information that we hold by writing us on the email address below.
  • The right to erasure. This is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ and, in simple terms, enables you to request the deletion or removal of your information where there is no compelling reason for us to keep using it. This is not a general right to erasure; there are exceptions.
  • The right to restrict processing. You have rights to ‘block’ or suppress further use of your information. When processing is restricted, we can still store your information, but may not use it further. We keep lists of people who have asked for further use of their information to be ‘blocked’ to make sure the restriction is respected in future.
  • The right to data portability. You have rights to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services. This is not a general right however and there are exceptions.
  • The right to object to processing. You have the right to object to certain types of processing, including processing for direct marketing (i.e. receiving emails from us notifying you about other services we provide which we think may be of interest to you or being contacted with varying potential opportunities). You may change your preferences regarding email communications by visiting one of our preference centers listed below.
  • The right to lodge a complaint. You have the right to lodge a complaint about the way we handle or process your personal data with your national data protection regulator.
  • The right to withdraw consent. If you have given your consent to anything we do with your personal data (i.e we rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal information), you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although if you do so, it does not mean that anything we have done with your personal data with your consent up to that point is unlawful). You can withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal information at any time.

We usually act on requests and provide information free of charge, but may charge a reasonable fee to cover our administrative costs of providing the information for baseless or excessive/repeated requests, or further copies of the same information. Alternatively, we may be entitled to refuse to act on the request.

Please consider your request responsibly before submitting it. We will respond as soon as we can. Generally, this will be within one month from when we receive your request but, if the request is going to take longer to deal with, we’ll come back to you and let you know.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Your Green Homestead reserves the right to revise, modify, or update this Privacy Policy at any time. We will notify you about material changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your Your Green Homestead account or by placing a prominent notice on our site.

Contact Us

If you have a privacy concern regarding Your Green Homestead, or this Privacy Policy, and if you cannot satisfactorily resolve it through the discussion in the forum YGH Governance, you should submit a support request in the Contact Us form, or in an email at info@yourgreenhomestead.com, or by mail at:

Attention: Legal – Privacy

Your Green Homestead

P.O. Box 11

Brentwood, Tennessee 37024 USA

If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact our U.S.-based third-party dispute resolution provider at this link.  Alternatively, you may contact your local data protection authority to raise any concerns or complaints.