Privacy policy
Updated November 5, 2026
World Platycerium Society (WPS) operates this plant registry and membership website. For privacy questions, access or correction requests, or account deletion, contact contribute@worldplatycerium.com.
Information used for sign-in and membership
When you sign in with Google, WPS receives your provider account identifier, email address, and the name and profile-picture information supplied by that provider. Our authentication service also processes authentication tokens, session information, and sign-in timestamps. WPS does not receive your Google password. We request basic identity and email access, rather than access to your contacts, messages, photos library, or social posts.
If you sign up or sign in by email, we use your email address to send a one-time sign-in link and verify that you control that address. You do not need to create a password.
When reply emails are enabled, we use your verified sign-in email to notify you when another member replies to your post or question. You can turn off all reply emails in Notification preferences; in-app notifications and sign-in or verification emails are controlled separately. Reply emails link to the conversation without copying its text or photos.
We store your chosen public display name, illustrated avatar choice, membership status, community-rules acceptance and version, and account timestamps. We use this information to sign you in, maintain your account, remember your preferences, enforce community rules, and protect the website against misuse.
Public and private information
| Information | Visibility |
|---|---|
| Display name and avatar | Public with your contributions and, where available, your grower profile. |
| Bio and website or social links | Public where grower profiles are available. |
| Sign-in email and authentication records | Not public; used to operate and secure your account. |
| Collection, wishlist and plant photo histories | Private by default. |
| Shared plant photos, notes and labels | Public when you choose to share them. |
| Location and growing setup | Private unless you enable their separate public-profile options. |
| Community posts and replies | Visible to visitors where the conversation is public. |
Your chosen display name and illustrated avatar or uploaded profile photo identify you publicly. Where grower profiles are available, your optional bio and up to three website or social links are public. Your sign-in email, provider identifiers, and private authentication records are not shown in your public profile. Provider profile pictures are not used as your public WPS avatar. Community posts and replies are separate from reviewed plant records. Research-contributor accounts and published plant records are managed separately from ordinary membership.
Your collection, wishlist, and individual plant photo histories are private by default. Where sharing is available, you can explicitly publish selected plant photos and their notes on your grower profile. Your plant label is also public when shared. Earlier private updates stay private, and future uploads have a separate sharing choice. Making a plant private hides its shared page, photos and conversation from public browsing. People may already have saved copies of previously public content. Photo histories store your photos, photo dates, optional notes, and plant labels. Deleting your account removes these lists, histories, shared plant pages and profile photos even if you choose to keep ordinary public contributions.
You can optionally save a broad location and growing setup in Edit profile. Location and growing setup stay private unless you turn on their separate “Show on my public profile” options. They are not included with public posts or replies. You can edit or clear these details anytime, and deleting your account removes them with your profile.
Public profiles, shared plants, and public community contributions may be indexed by search engines or copied by other people. Making content private or deleting it from WPS does not remove copies held by others or immediately clear search-engine caches.
Contact forms and research submissions
You do not need an account to send a correction, source, or feedback. We collect the name, email address, message, and any plant or page reference and supporting sources you provide. These submissions are emailed to WPS for review and follow-up. We also temporarily use your IP address to limit repeated form submissions and protect against spam.
Submitting the form does not automatically publish your message or email address. Information and sources you submit may inform reviewed public plant records. Photographs and other credited research contributions are handled under their separate publication permissions. Contact us if you have questions about how a submission will be used or credited.
Reports and moderation
If you report community content, we store your member identifier, the reported post or reply, your selected reason, and any details you provide. Reports are not public; access is restricted to WPS administrators. We also keep moderation records, including actions taken, the administrator responsible, and relevant reasons or notes, to review reports, enforce community rules, and protect members.
Service providers and sharing
WPS uses service providers to host the website, manage accounts, store information and photos, deliver sign-in links, reply notifications and contact-form messages, and measure website usage. These providers process information needed to perform those functions. Information may be processed outside your country. If you use Google sign-in, Google also processes your sign-in activity under its own privacy policy.
WPS uses Google account information to provide and secure membership. We do not sell that account information or use it for targeted advertising. We may disclose information when required by applicable law or to investigate abuse and protect the service.
Cookies, analytics, and technical information
WPS uses cookies to maintain sign-in sessions, briefly remember sign-in-link request status, verify account-deletion requests, and resume a collection or wishlist action after sign-in. Browser session storage also remembers whether you dismissed the sign-in email confirmation. Hosting and security services process technical information such as IP addresses, browser information, and requests to the website.
Analytics help us understand page visits and improve WPS. We use a website analytics service that may use cookies and collect page URLs, referring pages, visit times, IP addresses, and device or browser information.
We also use a separate traffic-measurement service that uses request-derived identifiers rather than analytics cookies. Its visitor identifiers are discarded after 24 hours. Its analytics data can include visited URLs, referring pages, visit times, approximate location, and device or browser information, which we use for traffic statistics.
You can manage cookies and tracking through your browser settings; blocking sign-in cookies may prevent your account from working.
Where Trending is available, WPS counts plant-record visits to help readers discover plants. We temporarily process your IP address and browser information to generate a temporary identifier that changes each UTC day. We do not store those raw details in the view tables, set a tracking cookie for this feature, or link views to your membership. Repeat visits to the same plant count at most once per UTC day; people sharing a connection and browser type may be counted together. Daily identifiers are removed by the next successful hourly cleanup after the day ends, and plant-level daily totals are kept for 30 UTC calendar days. The Trending counter honors browser Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals; this statement does not describe the behavior of the separate analytics services above.
Retention and your choices
Account information is retained while your account exists and is needed to operate the service. You can change your details in Edit profile, manage Notification preferences, or delete your account. These account pages require sign-in. Contact us for access or correction requests, or if you cannot sign in. We may verify account ownership before acting. After you verify your sign-in email and confirm deletion, the WPS authentication account and community profile are removed.
Photos selected for removal become inaccessible through WPS when the deletion is completed. Removal of the underlying image files can take longer: failed or unfinished storage-removal jobs are queued for automatic retry. Photos you choose to retain as ordinary public contributions remain available under the deletion choice below.
Contact correspondence may remain in WPS’s email records for follow-up and research review. Sources supporting published plant records may remain with the research archive. Reports and moderation records are used to handle reports and document enforcement; account deletion removes reports you submitted and associated moderation records through the deletion process. These records do not all have the same retention period. Operational logs and backups follow the applicable service-provider settings and retention cycles rather than the live account-deletion process. Contact us about retained information; we may need to retain some information for legal obligations or security investigations.
For community contributions, choose either to retain posts, replies, and photos under “Deleted member,” or remove your content too. Other members’ replies are preserved with a placeholder where needed. Notifications and preferences are deleted in both cases. Keeping contributions may leave personal information you included in them visible. Deleting membership does not automatically remove independently published, credited botanical records or contributions made under separate permissions. Contact us about those records. Account settings explain both deletion choices and require a fresh sign-in check followed by your final confirmation. Removing WPS from your Google connected apps does not by itself delete your WPS account.
Changes and contact
We will update this page when our practices change. Material changes to the use of Google account information will be disclosed before that new use, with renewed consent where required. Contact contribute@worldplatycerium.com with any privacy concern.