Privacy Policy

Purpose and contact

Turfgrass.com is a website serving since January, 2001, as a forum for questions and answers on turfgrass. Open public discussion is tempered with organization, accessibility, rigor, and common sense. Turfgrass.com is owned by Phil Busey Agronomy Consulting Inc. which provides Turfgrass.com as a public service. More history is in the About page.

During more than 20 years that I’ve managed online turfgrass discussion forums, the internet has become a wild and sometimes dangerous place. This is how I will do everything I can do to keep you safe and make sure your personal data does not get outside of Turfgrass.com except as you decide.

Besides your browsing the website, which entails transfer of personal data, you share even more personal data if you register as a user, which allows you to post messages and comments on the website, and if you subscribe to the electronic Turfgrass Management newsletter. User registration and newsletter subscription are integral to the purpose of Turfgrass.com

If you have any questions, concerns, or problems with the website including personal privacy issues, please write to me, Phil Busey, at

ph**@ph*******.com

Personal data we collect and why

Website Turfgrass.com

Your subscription to the Turfgrass Management newsletter is separate from your membership as a user on the website to post messages and to comment on posts. You can be a subscriber and not be a member user, and vice versa. To post on the website you need to register as a user. If you register as a user, you will be placed automatically on this website’s WordPress users mailing list, which is used rarely for administrative issues.

Turfgrass Management newsletter

If you voluntarily register through the Turfgrass.com website to receive the opt-in Turfgrass Management newsletter, or ask to be registered by your direct personal request to me, your first name and email address are added to a bulk email contact list called the Turfgrass Management newsletter. The newsletter is currently managed on the website by the MailPoet plugin. The first name that you provide is only used as a salutation in the newsletter and does not need to be your real first name.

If you wish to be removed from the list, there is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email that you receive from Turfgrass.com, that will remove you as a subscriber from that list. Each month, I permanently remove any unsubscribed users, which information is thereby destroyed. If you have any difficulty unsubscribing or have questions, contact me, Phil Busey, at

ph**@ph*******.com

Posts and comments on the website

In addition to subscription to the Turfgrass Management newsletter you can register as a user to create posts on the website or comment on posts.

You need to submit your email address to us so you can recover your password. To protect your privacy, you need to take three steps.

1. Choose and enter a “Username” (which will be your login name) that is not the same as your email address. For privacy, your “Username” should not be your real name and should not say anything about you personally. (Your “Username” is not case sensitive.)
2. Enter a strong password not in the dictionary, ideally with at least letters and numbers. It is case sensitive.
3. After registering, login and edit your profile to tighten security. Your “Username” (your login name) is initially displayed in posts and comments. To reduce the ability of hackers to break in, display a name different than your “Username.”You fix this by going to the upper right corner of the task bar and clicking the little “Gravatar” image that looks like a person’s silhouette and click “Edit my profile.” When your profile appears, look underneath “Editing ‘Base’ Profile Group” where it says “Name (required)” Enter the name you want everyone to see. Again, this should not be your real name and should not say anything about you personally.

Initially once you have confirmed your user registration you will be given the role of Contributor so you can draft posts and submit them for review. Once your post on the subject of turfgrass is approved, it will show up to the world on the website, and you will soon be promoted to the role of Author. Thereafter you will be able to publish, edit, and delete your posts on your own. If you have any difficulty, contact me, Phil Busey, at

ph**@ph*******.com

When you post or leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection and prevention. If you post personal information in posts or comments, that information will be viewed by the world.

While every reasonable effort is made to screen the website and to prevent intrusion of spammers, hackers, and others who have no apparent interest in turfgrass, you should remain skeptical and cautious about what you read, and not carelessly click outside links that could be harmful.

If you choose to use the outside Gravatar service, an anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) is provided to Gravatar to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/ After approval of your post or comment, your profile picture, if you submit one, is visible to the public in the context of your post or 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.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on Turfgrass.com website 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 have an account and you log in to this site, 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 username will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish a post, 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 or published. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Posts on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves similarly as though you had visited the other website directly and should be considered cautiously as we have no control over it.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. That includes the use of social media which is not currently linked from Turfgrass.com website, but might be so linked in the future.

Analytics

Turfgrass.com uses Google Analytics to track and report website traffic as a basis for improving performance. When you visit the Turfgrass.com website, your IP address is tracked which may reveal your geographic location. Most modern browsers allow website users to reject the use of cookies and other tracking methods.

Your personal data

Data retention

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are intended to be retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

If you register on the Turfgrass.com website, either to subscribe to the Turfgrass Management newsletter or to add posts and comments, we also store the personal information you provided in your user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal user information at any time (except they cannot change their username, and the subscription is separate). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site or have left posts or 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, which you will receive within 30 days. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you, in which case we will “anonymize,” basically, erase, your data within 30 days.

However, if you unsubscribe to the Turfgrass Management newsletter, we consider that a consent for us to delete that information and it likely will no longer exist.

This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How we protect your data

The Turfgrass.com web site protects your data by the use of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to establish an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. Additional software is used on the website and is regularly updated for automatic spam detection and removal, and to protect against hacking and data breach. Today attempts at website intrusion are abundant and aggressive.

Data breach procedures

If the Turfgrass.com website should be hacked and/or if we learn that your personal data may have been compromised, we will contact you to the extent that we are able to do so.