1. What We Collect
We collect only the information necessary to provide you with personalized gardening notifications:
| Data Type | What It Is | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Email Address | Your email for receiving gardening alerts and notifications | Yes |
| ZIP Code | Your 5-digit US postal code, used to determine your growing location | Yes |
| Garden Selections | The themed gardens or individual crops you choose to grow | Yes |
Important: ZIP Code as Location Data
Your ZIP code is considered location data under privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. We use your ZIP code solely to determine your USDA Plant Hardiness Zone and local frost dates. We do not track your precise location, and your ZIP code is not shared with advertisers or data brokers.
2. Why We Collect It
Each piece of information we collect serves a specific purpose:
- Email Address: To send you timely planting reminders, frost alerts, and seasonal gardening guidance. We also use it to send service-related communications (like password resets if you create an account).
- ZIP Code: To look up your USDA Plant Hardiness Zone and typical frost dates for your area. This allows us to calculate the optimal planting windows for your specific location.
- Garden Selections: To customize your notifications so you only receive alerts about the crops you're actually growing.
3. How We Use Your Data
Your data is used exclusively to provide our gardening notification service:
- Sending email notifications about planting windows, frost warnings, and harvest times
- Calculating location-specific growing schedules based on your hardiness zone
- Personalizing content to match your selected gardens and crops
- Improving our service based on aggregate, anonymized usage patterns
We Will Never:
- Sell your personal information to third parties
- Share your email with advertisers or marketing companies
- Use your data for purposes unrelated to gardening notifications
- Track your browsing activity across other websites
4. Third-Party Services
We use a small number of trusted third-party services to operate Family Gardening Alerts. Each service has been chosen for its reliability and commitment to data protection:
Resend
Email Delivery
We use Resend to send email notifications. Resend processes your email address to deliver messages on our behalf. They do not use your email for their own marketing.
Resend Privacy PolicyNOAA Weather Service
Frost Date Information
We query NOAA's public weather data APIs to obtain frost date information for your area. Only your ZIP code (not your email) is used in these requests. NOAA is a US government agency.
NOAA Privacy Policyphzmapi.org
USDA Hardiness Zone Lookup
We use the Plant Hardiness Zone Map API to determine your growing zone based on your ZIP code. This free service maintained by Oregon State University Extension helps us customize your planting schedule.
About phzmapi.orgCloudflare
Hosting and Security
Our website is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, and we use Cloudflare Workers for backend processing. Cloudflare provides security, performance, and reliability for our service.
Cloudflare Privacy Policy6. Data Retention
We retain your data only as long as necessary to provide our service:
- Active Subscribers: Your data is kept for the duration of your subscription. As long as you want to receive gardening alerts, we keep your email, ZIP code, and garden selections.
- Unsubscribed Users: When you unsubscribe, we delete your email and garden selections within 30 days. We may retain anonymized ZIP code data for aggregate analytics.
- Deletion Requests: If you request complete deletion of your data, we will remove all your information from our systems within 30 days.
- Inactive Accounts: If you have not opened any of our emails in 18 months, we may remove you from our mailing list to maintain list hygiene.
7. Your Rights
Under GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations, you have specific rights regarding your personal data:
Right to Access
You can request a copy of all personal data we hold about you. We will provide this information in a portable, machine-readable format within 30 days.
Right to Correction
If any of your information is inaccurate (wrong email, moved to a new ZIP code), you can request corrections at any time.
Right to Deletion
You can request that we delete all your personal data. We will comply within 30 days, except where we are required to retain data for legal purposes.
Right to Unsubscribe
Every email we send includes an unsubscribe link. You can stop receiving notifications at any time with one click.
Right to Data Portability
You can request your data in a standard format (JSON or CSV) so you can take it to another service if you choose.
Right to Object
You can object to certain uses of your data. Contact us and we will address your concerns promptly.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the information in the Contact Us section below. We will respond within 30 days.
8. Contact Us
If you have questions about this privacy policy, want to exercise your data rights, or have concerns about how we handle your information, please contact us:
Email: privacy@familygardeningalerts.com
Subject Line: Please include "Privacy Request" in your subject line for faster processing.
We take all privacy inquiries seriously and will respond within 30 days. For California residents, this response period is in accordance with CCPA requirements. For EU residents, this complies with GDPR response timelines.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. When we make material changes, we will notify you by email and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.
Your continued use of Family Gardening Alerts after any changes indicates your acceptance of the updated policy.