Privacy Policy

The Martin County Orchid Society is a Florida nonprofit educational and membership organization serving growers, collectors, volunteers and visitors across Martin County and Florida's Treasure Coast.

This website is used to share society information, publish the orchid care library, promote meetings and programs, provide directions, and help visitors contact the society.

When you complete a website form, the society may collect the information you choose to provide. Depending on the form, that can include your name, email address, phone number, city, orchid experience, areas of interest, vendor company information, inquiry category, and any message or notes you submit.

The current public website accepts membership inquiries, general contact inquiries, donation inquiries, vendor inquiries, restoration inquiries, and gallery submission inquiries. The current gallery form does not accept image uploads, and the site does not offer account registration or online payment checkout.

The website may also generate technical information needed to operate normally, such as IP address, browser or device information, requested page, referrer, date, time, and error or routing information.

Information submitted through the website is used to respond to membership questions, meeting and program inquiries, volunteer and restoration requests, donation inquiries, vendor questions, accessibility requests, and gallery-related follow-up.

The society may also use information to operate the website, review submissions, reduce spam, troubleshoot technical issues, and protect the site from misuse.

The Martin County Orchid Society does not sell personal information.

Information may be shared only as needed to operate the website, respond to your request, deliver form notifications, maintain hosting infrastructure, or comply with law. In practice, that can include the website host, Google services used for map display or form-notification email delivery, and designated society contacts who handle inquiries.

If you contact the society through this website, the society may reply by email about your inquiry, requested information, membership questions, donation questions, volunteer opportunities, or society updates connected to your request.

The current site does not publish a standalone newsletter signup form. If you no longer want non-essential follow-up messages, you can ask the society to update your contact preferences or stop future outreach.

In a fresh browser audit of the live website, no first-party cookies were set by the Martin County Orchid Society pages on the homepage or contact page.

The current site does not appear to use first-party analytics, advertising, preference, account, or shopping-cart cookies. The site code includes optional support for Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, and Meta Pixel, but those identifiers were not populated on the audited live pages, and the live HTML did not load those tracking tags.

Because the contact page embeds Google Maps, Google may collect information or use its own cookies or similar technologies when the map loads or when you interact with Google content.

The current live website uses Heroku for hosting, Google Fonts for typography, Google Maps for the contact-page map and directions links, and a Gmail-based SMTP workflow for website form notifications.

The site also links to third-party destinations such as Facebook and the American Orchid Society. Their privacy practices apply when you visit them.

Form submissions are currently written to website submission logs and also routed by email to the society's designated form recipients.

The current implementation does not publish an automatic deletion schedule on the site itself, so inquiry records may be kept for as long as reasonably needed to respond, maintain society records, protect the website, or document operations.

The site uses HTTPS, security headers, same-origin form posting, server-side validation, and anti-spam measures such as hidden honeypot fields and timing checks on the public inquiry forms.

No website or internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure, and visitors should avoid sending sensitive information through general website forms unless it is necessary.

This website is intended for a general audience and is not designed to knowingly collect personal information online from children under 13 without appropriate permission.

If you believe a child has provided personal information through the website, please contact the society so the information can be reviewed and, when appropriate, deleted.

You can ask the society to correct contact information, update a prior inquiry, remove non-essential follow-up communications, or review whether a submitted record can be deleted.

Because some information may also appear in administrative email records, server logs, or operational files, deletion may not always be immediate or complete where retention is reasonably necessary.

The Martin County Orchid Society may update this Privacy Policy when the website changes, such as when new forms, payment tools, analytics, newsletter features, or integrations are added.

The updated version will be posted on this page with a revised last-updated date.

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy or a prior website submission, you may contact the society by email or mail.

Email: mcorchidsociety@yahoo.com

Mail:
P.O. Box 3211
Stuart, FL 34997