Drought Smart Plants Privacy Policy

I recognize that your privacy is important. This document outlines the types of personal information I receive and collect when you use Drought Smart Plants, as well as some of the steps I take to safeguard information. I hope this will help you make an informed decision about sharing personal information with me.

Drought Smart Plants strives to maintain the highest standards of decency, fairness and integrity in all my operations. Likewise, I am dedicated to protecting my customers', consumers' and online visitors' privacy on my website.

Personal Information

Drought Smart Plants collects personally identifiable information from the visitors to my website only on a voluntary basis. Personal information collected on a voluntary basis may include name, postal address, email address, company name and telephone number.

This information is collected if you request information from me, participate in a contest or sweepstakes, and sign up to join my email list or request some other service or information from me. The information collected is internally reviewed, used to improve the content of my website, notify my visitors of updates, and respond to visitor inquiries.

Once information is reviewed, it is discarded or stored in my files. If I make material changes in the collection of personally identifiable information I will inform you by placing a notice on my site. Personal information received from any visitor will be used only for internal purposes and will not be sold or provided to third parties.

About Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that Drought Smart Plants stores on your computer, which your browser provides to Drought Smart Plants each time you return to the site. We use cookies to help us identify and track visitors, their use of our website, and their website access preferences.

Use of Cookies and Web Beacons

I may use cookies to help you personalize your online experience. Cookies are identifiers that are transferred to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser to enable my systems to recognize your browser. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize the sites pages, or register with any of my site's services, a cookie enables Drought Smart Plants to recall your specific information on subsequent visits.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying your Web browser; however, if you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the site.

A web beacon is a transparent image file used to monitor your journey around a single website or collection of sites. They are also referred to as web bugs and are commonly used by sites that hire third-party services to monitor traffic. They may be used in association with cookies to understand how visitors interact with the pages and content on the pages of a web site.

I may serve third-party advertisements that use cookies and web beacons in the course of ads being served on my web site to ascertain how many times you've seen an advertisement. No personally identifiable information you give me is provided to them for cookie or web beacon use, so they cannot personally identify you with that information on my web site.

Some third-party advertisements may be provided by Google, which uses the DoubleClick cookie to serve ads. This cookie enables Google to serve ads to users based on their visits to sites on the Web. You may opt out of the use of the DoubleClick cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Browsers can be set to accept or reject cookies or notify you when a cookie is being sent. Privacy software can be used to override web beacons. Taking either of these actions shouldn't cause a problem with my site, should you so choose.

Google Analytics Cookies

Drought Smart Plants uses Google Analytics to analyze the use of this website. Google Analytics collects demographic and interest data, and generates statistical and other information about website use, by means of cookies. These cookies are kept on your computer. We share this information with Google, which will store and use this information on its servers. Google's privacy policy is available at this link.

Drought Smart Plants uses information from Google Analytics to track the number of visits to the website, browsers and operating systems. No personally identifiable information is obtained from these cookies. We use the information that Google Analytics generates relating to our website to create reports about the use of the site. These reports allow us to update the site and improve your usage of it.

If you do not wish your data to be collected via Google Analytics, you can install its opt-out browser extension or add-on.

Advertising Cookies

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads on our website. These companies use cookies and web beacons in their ads to ascertain how many times you've seen an advertisement. We share this information with these companies, but do not provide them with any personally identifiable information for cookie or web beacon use, so they cannot personally identify you with that information from our website.

You may opt out of personalized ads for over 125 different ad networks. Click here to do that.

Affiliate Products and Services

I receive an affiliate commission for some of the products or services sold on Drought Smart Plants. By clicking on a product or service link, you consent to that platforms use of cookies as outlined on Amazon here.

Refusing Cookies

You can set your browser to accept or refuse all cookies automatically, or notify you when a cookie is being requested. Taking this action should not cause a problem with the continued use of our site. Consult the Help section of your browser for guidance on how to refuse all cookies or to notify you when a cookie is requested.

If you choose to refuse Drought Smart Plant's cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the site.

Personally Identifiable Information

Drought Smart Plants may collect and use your personal information for the following purposes:

To run and operate our site.

To display content on the site correctly.

To improve customer service.

To help us respond to your customer service requests and support needs more efficiently.

To personalize your user experience.

To understand how our users as a group use the services and resources provided on our site.

To improve our site.To improve our products and services.

To run a promotion, contest, survey or other site feature.

To send information to you that you agreed to receive about topics we think will be of interest to you.

To send periodic emails, which may include electronic newsletters and/or autoresponder series of emails.

To respond to your enquiries, questions, and/or other requests.

Drought Smart Plants may collect personally identifiable information from you in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to, when you visit our site, register on the site, or fill out a form, and in connection with other activities, services, features or resources we make available on our site.

If you complete a form, we will require your name and your email address, and will ask for information relevant to the purpose of the form.

If you submit content to us, we will ask for your name and email address. Photos you include with your submission, or details in your submission, may personally identify you.

If you request to be notified about comments on any content you submit to us, or request to be notified when others submit content, we will require your first name and your email address.

This site lets you share content with your friends and followers on various social media platforms. Below are links to the privacy policies of most of the social media commonly used;

https://www.reddit.com/help/privacypolicy/
https://www.tumblr.com/privacy/en
https://policy.pinterest.com/en/privacy-policy
https://policies.google.com/privacy
https://twitter.com/en/privacy
https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies/

Drought Smart Plants also uses Facebook commenting. Facebook stores all of your comments and may show them on your timeline, depending on your Facebook settings.

You can always refuse to supply personally identifiable information and visit our site anonymously. However, it may prevent you from engaging in certain site-related activities.

If we make material changes in the collection of personally identifiable information, we will inform you by placing a notice on our site. We will use personal information received from you for internal purposes only and will not sell it or provide it to third parties.

We also collect each visitor's IP address, which helps us combat spam and fraud. We do not use IP addresses for any other purpose.

Drought Smart Plants contains links to other websites that may be of interest to you. However, once you have used them to leave our site, we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information you provide while visiting such sites. These sites are not governed by this privacy statement. Always exercise caution by reviewing the privacy statement of the website in question before continuing to use it.

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

This website is directed to adults; it is not directed to children under the age of 13. We operate our site in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and will not knowingly collect or use personal information from anyone under 13 years of age.

Non-personally Identifiable Information

We may collect non-personally identifiable information about you whenever you interact with our site. Non-personally identifiable information may include the browser name, the type of computer and technical information about your method of connecting to our site, such as the operating system and the Internet service provider you used, and other similar information.

In some cases, I may collect information about you that is not personally identifiable. I use this information, which does not identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users' movements around the site and to gather demographic information about my user base as a whole. The information collected is used solely for internal review and not shared with other organizations for commercial purposes.

Release of Information

If Drought Smart Plants is sold, the information I have obtained from you through your voluntary participation in my site may transfer to the new owner as a part of the sale in order that the service being provided to you may continue. In that event, you will receive notice through the website of that change in control and practices, and I will make reasonable efforts to ensure that the purchaser honors any opt-out requests you might make of me.

Data Storage

Personally identifiable information and non-personally identifiable information collected by this site  is stored on our host's servers. That host is SiteSell Inc., located at 1000 Saint-Jean Boulevard, Suite 702, Pointe-Claire, QC H9R 5P1 Canada.

Updates and Effective Date

Drought Smart Plants reserves the right to make changes in this policy. If there is a material change in my privacy practices, I will indicate on my site that my privacy practices have changed and provide a link to the new privacy policy. I encourage you to periodically review this policy so that you will know what information I collect and how I use it.

Drought Smart Plants is a participant in the AddThis.com program, which provides online tools that leverage data to help publishers understand their audiences and drive traffic to their Sites. Your data may be transferred on a global basis.

Addthis.com will transfer this data to countries (including the United States) where data protection laws may differ from those in the originating country.

Transfers of personal information to countries outside the European Economic Area will be subject to the requirements of the European Union Standard Contractual Clauses.

If you do not wish your data to be collected by AddThis.com, you may opt out by visiting optout.aboutads.info  or the NAI opt out program.

You may have noticed over the past year that I've made some changes to the ads on Drought-smart-plants.com. Specifically, you've probably noticed that there are quite a few more ads than I've had in the past.

After hearing positive reports about a company called Mediavine, I've decided to trial their ads on my site. So far, I'm extremely happy with them.

Of course, whether on television or online, nobody loves ads, but ads are a tradeoff. Ads are what allow me to keep all of the information on my site free. To create a site with no ads, I'd need to charge people a monthly fee for access to premium (i.e. the best and most helpful) content.

For a lot of reasons, I don't want to go to that business model. I want to continue to put all of my very best information on the site for anyone to read for free.

So, while you will see more ads on my site, please know that those ads free me up to concentrate on providing the best content I can write for everyone who visits my site. They mean that you can be assured when you read an article on my site, you are getting my very best work, and I'm not holding back my most helpful ideas for "premium" customers.

I want all of my readers to be treated like premium customers, and Mediavine ads help me to do that."

Mediavine aggregates the ads to show on this website.  Here are links to the advertising group;

The Website uses Mediavine to manage all third-party advertising on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website. The cookie may collect information relating to your use of the Website, information about your device such as the device’s IP address and browser type, demographic data and, if you arrived at the Website via a link from a third-party site, the URL of the linking page.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The "help" feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site.

The Website may collect IP addresses and location information to serve personalized ads and pass it to Mediavine. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp. You may also visit http://optout.aboutads.info/#/ and http://optout.networkadvertising.org/# to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

Mediavine partners with the following data processors:

1. Pubmatic. You may find Pubmatic’s privacy policy through this link. The data collected on the Website may be transferred to Pubmatic and its demand partners for interest-based advertising. Statistical information and other non-cookie technologies (such as eTags and web or browser cache) may be used by third parties on this Website. Browser settings that block cookies may have no effect on these technologies, but you may clear your cache to delete such trackers. Data collected from a particular browser or device may be used with another computer or device that is linked to the browser or device on which such data was collected.
2. Criteo. You may find Criteo’s privacy policy through this link. The data collected on the Website may be transferred to Criteo and its demand partners for interest-based advertising. Criteo may collect, access, and use non-identifying data to improve the Criteo Technology and other Criteo products, programs, and/or services. This non-identifying data may include on-site user behavior and user/page content data, URLs, statistics, or internal search queries. The non-identifying data are collected through the ad call and stored with a Criteo cookie for a maximum period of 13 months.
3. Pulsepoint. You may find Pulsepoint’s privacy policy through this link.
4. LiveRamp. You may find LiveRamp’s privacy policy through this link. When you use the Website, we share information that we may collect from you, such as your email (in hashed, de-identified form), IP address or information about your browser or operating system, with LiveRamp Inc, and its group companies (‘LiveRamp’). LiveRamp may use a cookie on your browser and match your shared information to their on- and offline marketing databases and those of its advertising partners to create a link between your browser and information in those other databases. This link may be shared by our partners globally for the purpose of enabling interest-based content or advertising throughout your online experience (e.g. cross device, web, email, in-app, etc.) by third parties unaffiliated with our website. These third parties may in turn link further demographic or interest-based information to your browser. To opt out of LiveRamp’s targeted advertising, please go here: https://liveramp.com/opt_out/
5. RhythmOne. You may view RhythmOne’s privacy policy through this link. RhythmOne uses cookies and similar tracking technologies (such as mobile device identifiers and digital fingerprinting) to provide its services. RhythmOne may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please visit the following webpage: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.
6. District M. You may find District M’s privacy policy through this link.
7. YieldMo. You may find YieldMo’s privacy policy through this link. If you want to opt out of receiving interest based ads from Yieldmo or exercise your right under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) to opt-out of the sale of your personal information, you may do so through this link.
8. The Rubicon Project. You may find Rubicon’s privacy policy through this link. If you want to opt out of receiving interest based ads from Rubicon or exercise your right under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) to opt-out of the sale of your personal information, you may do so through this link. You may also utilize the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out page, the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page.
9. Amazon Publisher Services. You may find Amazon Publisher Services’ privacy policy through this link.
10. AppNexus. You may find the AppNexus privacy policy through this link.
11. OpenX. You may find OpenX’s privacy policy through this link.
12. Verizon Media formerly known as Oath. You may find Verizon Media’s privacy policy through this link. You may also utilize the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out page, the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page to opt-out of the use of cookies for interest-based advertising.
13. TripleLift. You may find TripleLift’s privacy policy through this link. To opt out of receiving interest-based advertising (including retargeting) from TripleLift’s services through the use of cookies in your current browser and for more information on what it means to opt-out, please go to www.triplelift.com/consumer-opt-out.
14. Index Exchange. You may find Index Exchange’s privacy policy through this link. You may also utilize the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out page, the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page to opt-out of the use of cookies for interest-based advertising.
15. Sovrn. You may find Sovrn’s privacy policy through this link.
16. GumGum. You may find GumGum’s privacy policy through this link. GumGum may (i) use place and use cookies on end users’ browsers or use web beacons to collect information about end users who visit such Publisher Websites and (ii) link such collected end user information to other end user information provided by third parties in order to deliver targeted Advertisements to such end users.
17. Digital Remedy. You may find Digital Remedy’s privacy policy through this link.
18. MediaGrid. You may find MediaGrid’s privacy policy through this link. MediaGrid may collect and store information about end-user interactions with this website through cookies, advertising IDS, pixels and server-to-server connections. MediaGrid was receive the following information: the page an End-User has requested and the referring/exit pages; Timestamp information (i.e., the date and time the End-User has visited the page); IP address; mobile device identifier; device model; device operating system; browser type; carrier; gender; age; geolocation (including GPS coordinates); clickstream data; cookie information; first-party identifiers'; and hashed email addresses; demographic and inferred interest information; and post-conversion data (from both online and offline behaviour). Some of this data is gathered from this website and others is gathered from advertisers. MediaGrid uses this data to provide its services. You may also utilize the Network Advertising Initiative’s opt-out page, the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out page to opt-out of the use of cookies for interest-based advertising or review their privacy policy for more information.
19. RevContent - You may find RevContent’s privacy policy through this link. RevContent may collect information about your browser or device, including browser type, IP Address, device type, user agent string, and operating system. RevContent also collects information about the websites you visit through their services, such as date and time of access and specific pages accessed and the content and ads you click on. You may opt-out of any personalization track by opting-out of RevContent’s data collection.
20. Centro, Inc. - You may find Centro’s privacy policy through this link. You may find opt-out information for Centro’s services through the privacy policy link.
21. 33Across, Inc. - You may find 33Across’s privacy policy through this link. To opt-out of personalized advertising, please visit https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1.
22. Conversant. LLC - You may find Conversant’s privacy policy through this link. Conversant uses information that does not directly identify you, such as information about your browser type, time and date of visit, your browsing or transaction activity, the subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over, and a unique identifier (such as a cookie string, or a unique advertising identifier provided by your mobile device) during your visits to this and other websites and apps in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. Conversant may use technologies such as cookies and other tracking technologies to collect this information. To learn more about interest-based advertising, or to opt-out, you can visit www.youronlinechoices.eu or https://www.networkadvertising.org/.

UPDATED ON 04/18/2022

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.0)

The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The "help" feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at https://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.

The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:

• IP Address
• Operating System type
• Operating System version
• Device Type
• Language of the website
• Web browser type
• Email (in hashed form)

Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor’s referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.

If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit Opt Out - NAI: Network Advertising Initiative. You may also visit http://optout.aboutads.info/#/ and http://optout.networkadvertising.org/# to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at YourAdChoices.com | AppChoices to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please click here.

How You Can Correct or Remove Information

We provide this privacy policy as a statement to you of our commitment to protect your personally identifiable information. If you have submitted personally identifiable information through our website and would like to update that information or have it deleted from our records, click on this link.

You can also request to edit, download or delete any of your information from the servers by clicking on this link.

Updates and Effective Date

Drought Smart Plants reserves the right to make changes in this policy. If there is a material change in our cookie and privacy practices, we will indicate on our site that those practices have changed and provide a link to the updated privacy policy. We encourage you to periodically review this policy so that you will know what information we collect and how we use it.

Agreeing to Terms

If you do not agree to Drought Smart Plant's privacy policy as posted here on this website, please do not consent to the setting of cookies and the collection and storage of your personally identifiable information.

Your explicit consent indicates acceptance of this privacy policy in its entirety.

Last updated: May 29 2018

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