Effective date: 31 October 2026
1.1. This Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) describes how personal information is collected, used, disclosed, retained and protected in connection with the website, web application and associated services known as Field Tested, including any server functions operated on its behalf (collectively, the “Service”).
1.2. In this Policy: “Operator,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to the person holding the role of Lead Admin of the Service, who determines the purposes and means of processing; “Admin” means a Member to whom the Lead Admin has granted administrative permissions; “Member” means a natural person who has created an account by means of an invitation; “Guest” means any person who uses the Service without an account; “Vendor” means any business, organization or individual listed in the Service; “Public Directory” means the portion of the Service accessible to Guests; “Personal Information” means information that identifies, relates to or could reasonably be linked with an identified or identifiable natural person; and “you” means any Guest or Member.
1.3. By accessing or using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Policy. Members additionally confirm their agreement to this Policy and to the Community Guidelines upon account creation and upon any material revision under Section 15.
2.1. The Service is operated by its Lead Admin, located in Puerto Rico.
2.2. All inquiries, requests and complaints concerning this Policy or the processing of Personal Information, including requests under Section 11, may be directed to: [CONTACT EMAIL].
3.1. Information provided by Members. Upon account creation and thereafter: (a) email address; (b) password, which is transmitted to and processed exclusively by the authentication provider identified in Section 8 and is not accessible to the Operator; (c) display name; (d) municipality of residence; (e) optionally, a profile photograph and the name of an associated farm or organization; and (f) the invitation code used to create the account, from which the identity of the inviting Member is recorded.
3.2. Content submitted by Members. (a) Vendor listings, including name, address, telephone number, email address, website, social media identifiers, hours of operation, geographic coordinates, category and products sold; (b) reviews, comprising service ratings, answers to practice questions, a permaculture rating selected by the Member, a written comment, and the Member’s election as to whether that comment may be displayed publicly; (c) observations recorded about a Vendor; (d) proposed edits to listings; (e) reports concerning listings, reviews or Members; and (f) feedback and appeals addressed to the Admins.
3.3. Information recorded automatically in respect of Members. (a) A permanent record of each creation, modification and deletion performed within the Service, including the acting Member, the time, and the prior and subsequent values (the “Change Log”); (b) the dates on which the Member signed in; (c) rate-limiting counters and timestamps used to restrict the frequency of submissions; and (d) records of administrative notices already acknowledged by an Admin.
3.4. Information provided by Guests. The Operator does not require Guests to identify themselves and does not maintain records of Guest browsing. Where a Guest submits a message through the Service’s message form, the Operator collects the content of that message and any contact information the Guest elects to provide.
3.5. Information collected by third parties. The providers identified in Section 8 may collect technical information, including Internet Protocol (IP) address, device and browser characteristics, and the resources requested, when your browser communicates with them. Such collection is governed by those providers’ respective privacy policies.
3.6. Information not collected. The Operator does not use analytics services, advertising networks, tracking pixels, fingerprinting techniques or cross-site tracking; does not collect precise geolocation (location features operate within the browser and are not transmitted to or stored by the Operator); and does not knowingly collect any special category of Personal Information.
4.1. Personal Information is processed solely for the following purposes: (a) to authenticate Members and secure accounts; (b) to operate, maintain and display the directory of Vendors and associated reviews to Members; (c) to compile and display the Public Directory in accordance with Section 5; (d) to attribute contributions to the Members who made them; (e) to enable Admins to review proposed edits, reports, feedback and appeals and to enforce the Community Guidelines; (f) to detect, investigate and prevent misuse, fraud, unauthorized access and abuse, including through the Change Log, sign-in records and rate limits; (g) to notify Admins of activity requiring attention in accordance with Section 7; (h) to respond to inquiries and requests; and (i) to comply with applicable law.
4.2. The Operator does not use Personal Information for advertising, profiling, marketing communications, or automated decision-making producing legal or similarly significant effects.
5.1. The Public Directory displays only those Vendors that satisfy rating thresholds determined by the Lead Admin and that belong to categories designated as visible to Guests.
5.2. For each such Vendor, the Public Directory may display: (a) the Vendor’s name, category, municipality, contact details, hours and map location; (b) the arithmetic averages of Members’ service and permaculture ratings and the number of reviews; (c) descriptive badges derived from Members’ answers to practice questions; and (d) the text of those comments whose authors have elected to share them publicly.
5.3. Ratings submitted by a Member are always included in the averages described in Section 5.2(b). No rating, badge or comment displayed in the Public Directory is attributed to any named Member. Member names, photographs, municipalities, unshared comments, and the association between any Member and any review are not disclosed to Guests.
5.4. The Public Directory further displays the name, title and photograph of the person designated by the Lead Admin to greet visitors, and any telephone number the Lead Admin elects to publish for contact via WhatsApp.
6.1. To all Members: each Member’s display name, municipality, photograph and organization; the identity of the Member who invited each Member; the Vendors each Member added; and all reviews, together with the name of their author.
6.2. Additionally to Admins: Members’ sign-in dates; reports; feedback and appeals; proposed edits; and the complete Change Log.
6.3. Additionally to the Lead Admin: Members’ email addresses and the register of banned email addresses. The Lead Admin may modify or delete any record except the Change Log.
6.4. Members’ email addresses are held in a separate record readable only by the Member concerned and by the Lead Admin, and are never displayed to other Members or Admins, posted to the notification channel described in Section 7, or disclosed in the Public Directory.
6.5. Members should treat all profile information as visible to every Member, irrespective of how it is presented on screen.
7.1. To permit prompt moderation, the Service transmits notices to a private group on the Telegram messaging service whose participants are limited to Admins. Such notices may contain: (a) for reviews, the reviewing Member’s display name, the Vendor, the service rating and the permaculture rating; (b) for new listings, proposed edits and reports, the Member’s display name and the subject matter; (c) for feedback and appeals, the Member’s display name and the text submitted; (d) for Guest messages, the text submitted and any contact information provided; and (e) for new Members, the display name, municipality and inviting Member.
7.2. Such notices are stored by Telegram in accordance with its privacy policy and remain accessible to participating Admins.
8.1. Processors. The Operator engages the following providers, which process Personal Information on the Operator’s behalf: (a) Google LLC, through Firebase, for data storage and authentication (policy); (b) Cloudflare, Inc., for hosting the Service and executing server functions that compile the Public Directory, relay Guest messages and transmit administrative notifications, in the course of which it processes the IP address of every visitor (policy); and (c) Telegram, for the notification channel described in Section 7 (policy).
8.2. Resources loaded directly by your browser. The Service causes your browser to request resources directly from: (a) Google Fonts, for typefaces; (b) Google Maps Platform, including Places, when a Member searches for an address; and (c) OpenStreetMap and Esri, for map and satellite imagery (Google; OpenStreetMap; Esri). These parties receive the technical information described in Section 3.5 but receive no records from the Service’s database.
8.3. WhatsApp. Selecting a link to WhatsApp transfers you to a service operated by WhatsApp LLC, which is not controlled by the Operator and whose privacy policy governs any communication made through it.
8.4. No sale or sharing. The Operator does not sell, rent, license or trade Personal Information, and does not share Personal Information with any third party for that party’s own purposes.
8.5. Legal disclosure. The Operator may disclose Personal Information where required by law, subpoena, court order or other legal process, or where reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of any person; and, in the event the Service is transferred to a successor operator, to that successor, subject to this Policy.
9.1. The Service uses your browser’s local storage and similar technologies, and not advertising or tracking cookies, to retain: (a) language and display preferences; (b) whether introductory screens have been shown; (c) for Guests, a copy of the Public Directory to accelerate loading; and (d) for Members, the authentication session maintained by the authentication provider and a copy of data previously loaded, to accelerate loading and permit use on unreliable connections.
9.2. Such information remains on your device, is not transmitted to the Operator except as part of the ordinary operation of the Service, and may be removed at any time by signing out and clearing this site’s data in your browser.
9.3. Because the Service does not track users across sites, it does not respond differently to Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signals.
10.1. Vendor listings and reviews are retained for the duration of the Service’s operation, subject to Section 11.
10.2. The Change Log is retained permanently and cannot be altered or deleted by any user, including the Lead Admin, in order to preserve its integrity as an audit record.
10.3. Email addresses entered in the register of banned addresses are retained for so long as the ban remains in effect.
10.4. Sign-in records, rate-limiting data, feedback, reports and Guest messages are retained for so long as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in Section 4, and all other Personal Information until deleted under Section 11 or no longer required.
10.5. Copies held by the providers listed in Section 8, including backups and notification messages, are retained in accordance with their respective policies.
11.1. Access and correction. Members may view and correct their profile information at any time through Edit Profile, and may request a copy of the Personal Information held about them by contacting the Operator.
11.2. Deletion of reviews. Members may delete any review they authored at any time through Your Reviews.
11.3. Account deletion. Members may delete their account through Profile, Delete my account. Upon deletion: (a) the Member’s display name, municipality and photograph are erased and the sign-in credential is deleted; (b) reviews authored by the Member are retained unless deleted beforehand, and will be removed upon request thereafter; (c) Vendor listings added by the Member are retained, as they constitute information about businesses and not personal content of the Member; (d) entries in the Change Log are retained, including the Member’s name as it appeared at the time; and (e) the Member’s email address may persist in the private record described in Section 6.4 and will be deleted upon request.
11.4. Public display of comments. A Member may change at any time whether a given comment is displayed publicly by editing the review.
11.5. Vendors. Any person representing a listed Vendor may request correction or removal of the listing by contacting the Operator. The Operator may require reasonable evidence of the requester’s authority to act for the Vendor before acting on such a request.
11.6. Other rights. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have additional rights, including rights to object to or restrict processing, to data portability, or to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. Requests may be made to the Operator, who will respond within a reasonable period and in any event within the period required by applicable law. The Operator will not discriminate against any person for exercising such rights.
12.1. A Member removed for violation of the Community Guidelines may have their access revoked, their content removed, and their email address entered in the register of banned addresses to prevent re-registration. Such email address is visible only to the Lead Admin and is not disclosed to the Admin effecting the removal.
13.1. Data is encrypted in transit. Access to each category of record is restricted by database security rules that are subject to automated testing; administrative actions are recorded in the Change Log; and sensitive operations involving email addresses are performed by server functions without disclosure to Admins.
13.2. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and the Operator cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of unauthorized access to Personal Information, the Operator will notify affected Members without undue delay and as required by applicable law.
14.1. The Service is not directed to children. Membership is limited to persons aged eighteen (18) years or older. The Operator does not knowingly collect Personal Information from any person under thirteen (13) years of age and will delete any such information upon becoming aware of its collection.
14.2. Personal Information is stored and processed in the United States and in other countries in which the providers listed in Section 8 operate. By using the Service from outside the United States, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to and processed in those countries, whose data protection laws may differ from those of your jurisdiction.
15.1. The Operator may amend this Policy from time to time. The effective date above will be updated upon any amendment. Where an amendment materially affects the processing of Members’ Personal Information, Members will be required to review and accept the amended Policy upon their next sign-in, and continued use of the Service following such acceptance constitutes agreement to the amended Policy.
16.1. This Policy shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and, where applicable, the federal laws of the United States, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.
Community Guidelines · Privacy Policy · How ratings work · Field Tested