I. Website Privacy BY USING OR ACCESSING OUR WEBSITE OR BY PROVIDING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO US ON OR THROUGH THIS WEBSITE, YOU CONSENT TO THE COLLECTION, USE AND DISCLOSURE OF THAT INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY.

General The Shinrin Yoku Association (referred to herein as “SYA,” “we” or “us”) respects the privacy of those who visit our website, shinrinyokuassociation.org (the “Website”). This Privacy Policy describes the information, including Personal Information about you that we collect through the Website, and how that information is used, maintained and, in some cases, shared. In order to fully understand your rights we encourage you to review this Privacy Policy.

“Personal Information” is any information that enables us to identify you, directly or indirectly, such as your email address, name, shipping and billing address, telephone number, company name, credit card information, any form of identification number or one or more factors specific to your physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity.

By using or accessing the Website, you agree to this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, do not use or access the Website. We may, from time to time, revise or update this Privacy Policy. If we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post notice of the modifications on shinrinyokuassociation.org. Please check the “Last Updated” legend at the top of this page to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Changes will become effective immediately. If you disagree with any of the terms of this Privacy Policy in its current form, or in the future, in any of its modified forms, your sole remedy is to discontinue your use of the Website.

For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the “GDPR”), the data controller is Shinrin Yoku Association.

Please email personal data access requests to info@shinrin-yoku-association.com

What Information We Collect About You and How We Use It

Information You Provide to Us You can browse our Website without providing any personal information to us. SYA gathers and retains personal information about you when you voluntarily submit it to us and automatically collects statistical information about visitors’ use of the Website. Information that you submit may be linked with statistical information about your access to and use of the Website.

Inquiries and Forms If you choose to complete and submit a form or otherwise provide information through our Website when you make an inquiry, including but not limited to the “Contact Us” page, by phone or email, we may collect and retain the Personal Information you provide, including your name, postal or email address, contact information and any other data you submit.

Social Networking Activities The Website includes the ability for you and other users to link to social networking websites. As a result, we receive information about you when you choose to post or otherwise share information about our Website on these social networking websites. We may also receive Personal Information about you from your social networking account depending on your privacy setting for that account; this may include name, profile picture, age range, gender, language, country and other public information. You can control this by adjusting your privacy setting on your social network account.

Account Creation Before you can utilize some portions of the Website, we will require that you create an account and provide us with your first name, last name, email address, phone number, date of birth, and create a password. You may also need to verify your account post creation by email verification. Shinrin Yoku Guides and Instructors may also create accounts on the Website and submit additional information including name, registry name, address and payment billing information. Some information may be posted on the Shinrin Yoku Association Registry at the election of the registrant.

Financial Transactions When you engage in any financial transaction through the Website, you will be asked to provide certain of your financial information, such as your debit card, credit card or PayPal account and billing or shipping address.

Surveys, Contests and Other Promotions If you choose to participate in a survey, contest or other promotion on our Website SYA may request personally identifiable information from you such as your name, contact information, age, demographic information, and other information you submit in connection with the survey, contest or other promotion. Participation is completely voluntary and you therefore can choose whether to disclose personally identifiable information.

Applications SYA may permit you to submit applications for membership, working groups, or other opportunities through our Website. This process may be operated by an authorized service provider. Information collected through an online application may include name, address, telephone and fax numbers, email address, education history, employment history, or other information (“Application Information”).

Interactive Forums SYA may host online communities, message boards, chat rooms, blogs, and other interactive forums or services (each, a “Forum”), where users may post content, comment, and otherwise communicate with others. If you choose to participate in a Forum, you may have the opportunity to submit demographic information, such as your social links, bio, languages, professional associations, areas of expertise, teaching specialties, and profile photo.

Use and Retention of Information You Provide We may use the information we collect from you for our legitimate operational and development interests, for example:

to respond to your requests or inquiries,
to process transactions you have requested,
to manage or facilitate the operation and security of the Website,
to enhance your experience with SYA, 
to communicate with you about membership,
applications, transactions or registration,
and about products, services,
events and other opportunities related to shinrin yoku or SYA,
to identify you or authenticate your identity, to communicate with you regarding your account with us, to monitor and improve the use and satisfaction of Website users,
to display advertisements relevant to your interests,
to notify contest winners and award prizes,
to conduct research and analysis and to expand our services and outreach

We use your Personal Information according to the terms of the Privacy Policy in effect at the time of our use.

We will process your Personal Information where (1) you have provided your consent which can be withdrawn at any time, (2) where the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party (for example, we will share your Personal Information with other members with whom you have entered into a transaction), (3) where we are required by law, (4) where processing is required to protect your vital interests or those of another person, or (5) where the processing is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate commercial interests, except where such interest are overridden by your rights and interests.

We will only keep financial transaction information as long as necessary to complete the transaction or series of recurring transactions authorized by you. We may keep all other information indefinitely. When users of the Website wish to contact a registered user they may do so using information that the registered user has agreed to post on the SYA Registry information can be limited by visiting the Account Management pages. We may facilitate the transmission of email messages from site visitors who use the “email me” button on the Registry so that the registrant’s email address is kept private. We retain the communications using this feature.

Automatically Collected Information

URLs and IP Addresses

Like many other websites, we collect information about users’ utilization and navigation of the Website. This information helps us to design the Website to better suit our users’ needs. Information collected from Website visitors includes: domain name used to access the internet, browser used, pages visited, referring site URLs and Internet Protocol (“IP”) address. We use this information as provided in this Privacy Policy, including, for example, to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer the Website, to help identify you, to gather broad demographic information and to provide relevant advertising to you. We track the keywords that are entered into our search engine and the terms selected to browse and filter information in order to measure interest in specific topics, and we may monitor which terms a particular user enters. We may also record information about individual behavior or use of the Website.

Cookies

Like most websites, we may employ cookies on certain pages of the Website. Cookies make using the Website easier by, among other things, saving your preferences for you. We may also use cookies to deliver content tailored to your interests. Our cookies may enable us to relate your use of the Website to personally identifying information that you previously submitted. The information that we collect with cookies allows us to improve our membership benefits and information, to statistically analyze usage of the Website, and to improve and customize our content and other offerings. We may link cookies to other information about you that we have collected. However, we only disclose information collected with cookies to third parties on an aggregated basis without the use of any information that personally identifies you.

The types of cookies we may use on our Website include:

Session cookies: These temporary cookies expire and are automatically erased whenever you close your browser window. We may use session cookies to grant you access to content and to enable actions you must be logged in to do.

Persistent cookies: These usually have an expiration date in the distant future and remain in your browser until they expire or you manually delete them. We may use persistent cookies to better understand your use patterns so we can improve the Website. For example, we may use a persistent cookie to associate you with your user account or to remember that your choices on the Website, but this only works when cookies on our site are enabled.

Third party cookies: We may permit limited third parties to place cookies through the Website to provide us with better insights into the use of the Site or user demographics or to provide relevant advertising to you. These third parties may collect information about a user’s online activities over time and across different websites when he or she uses our website. For example, we may utilize Google Analytics to analyze usage patterns of the Website. Google Analytics generates a cookie to capture information about your use of the Website which Google uses to compile reports on website activity for us and to provide other related services. Google may use all or a portion of your IP address to identify their cookie, but this will not be associated with any other data held by Google. To learn more about the privacy policy of Google Analytics, click here. To block the Google Analytics cookie, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. We may also permit third party service providers to place cookies through our Website, as indicated above, to perform analytic or marketing functions where you are notified of them and you have consented to the usage. We do not control the use of such third party cookies or the resulting information and we are not responsible for any actions or policies of such third parties.

The specific cookies that may be used on shinrin-yoku-association.com are:

The specific cookies that may be used on yastandards.com are:

Your use of our Website will be deemed to be your consent to the placement of cookies on your computer or other devices. If you prefer not to receive cookies through our Website, you can set your browser to either reject all cookies, to allow only “trusted” websites to set them, or to accept only those cookies from those sites you are currently on. Unless you have adjusted the setting of your browser so that it will refuse cookies, our system may issue cookies when you log on to our Website. If your browser is set to reject cookies, or if your browser notifies you that you are about to receive a cookie and you reject it, then your use of the Website may not be as efficient as it would be if the cookie were enabled, and some parts of the Website may not work at all.

We do not use technology that recognizes a “do-not-track” signal from your web browser, because we do not track users other than for aggregate statistical purposes.

How Personal Information May Be Shared

We will not share, rent, sell or otherwise disclose any of the Personal Information that we collect about you through the Website except as permitted by law or as described in this Privacy Policy.

The Shinrin Yoku Association (SYA) may share information that we collect about you with each other and with our affiliates. We may disclose information that we collect about you to our third-party contractors and payment processors who perform services for us in connection with the Website, or to complete or confirm a transaction or series of transactions that you conduct with us. We may also disclose information to service providers or suppliers if the disclosure will enable that party to perform business, professional or technical support for us, including, for example, processing of application information, marketing partners, analytics services and research services who provide sufficient guarantees of security of your information; these providers are permitted to use the information in order to provide the services to us but are contractually not permitted to use the information for their own unrelated purposes. We may disclose information that we collect about you to verified Shinrin Yoku Guides and Instructors or others whom SYA recognizes as providing relevant continuing education courses; these providers are permitted to use the information in order to provide the courses offered but are not permitted to use the information for their own unrelated purposes. 

As part of SYA’s Affinity and Sponsorship Program, we may provide your information to our partners and sponsors, so as to provide you with access to benefits and to allow them to communicate important information about them. We may also provide such information to other select third parties approved by SYA as offering products or services relevant and useful to you. We may disclose information about you as part of a merger, acquisition or other sale or transfer of the assets or business of SYA. We may be legally obligated to disclose information about you to the government or to third parties under certain circumstances, such as in connection with illegal activity on the Website, or to respond to a subpoena, court order or other legal process. We reserve the right to release information that we collect to law enforcement or other government officials, as we, in our sole and absolute discretion, deem necessary or appropriate. We may share aggregated or anonymous information that does not identify you with third parties. For example, we may disclose the number of visitors to the Website or the number of people who have downloaded a particular document.

Publicly Displayed Information The Shinrin Yoku Association has an online directory accessible to the public. If you are a certified guide or instructor, the directory allows interested parties – including potential clients and employers – to find you. However, you choose how much or how little information you want displayed, as described below.

Registered Shinrin Yoku Guides and Instructors SYA collects personal information about Registered Shinrin Yoku Guides and Instructors during and after the registration process. Guides and Instructors control whether they appear publicly in the directory by managing the online profile in their personal account. For directions about how to manage online accounts, view our Website, or email info@shinrin-yoku-association.com

Registered Shinrin Yoku Schools SYA collects personal information about Registered Shinrin Yoku Schools and their trainees during the registration process and after. Some of that information is automatically included in the online directory for each school, specifically: name of school and school locations, city, state and zip code of school locations, designation, school teachers, and types of courses. Schools may post additional information on their public profile by making selections in online account settings.

Shinrin Yoku Continuing Education Providers SYA verifies certain providers of continuing education courses for credential holders to complete as part of their requirements to maintain the guide or instructor designation. Courses may be offered by Experienced Registered Shinrin Yoku Guides  or Instructors or by individuals who have relevant knowledge and a desire to provide a course that meets our standards in one or more verified educational categories. Information about Shinrin Yoku Association Continuing Education Providers may be found on the Website including, for example, their names, affiliations and other information they choose to share. For directions on how to include information please email info@shinrin-yoku- association.org. Information provided by Shinrin Yoku Association Continuing Education Providers will be used and disclosed as provided in this Privacy Policy.

Opting Out of Communications If you do not want the Shinrin Yoku Association to share your information with any of its approved partners, sponsors, or other relevant third parties, please contact us at the email listed below, and state your request along with your first and last name, email and postal address and phone number. We will make every effort to process all such requests within 30 days.

If you no longer want to receive promotional emails from the Shinrin Yoku Association on a going-forward basis, you may opt out of receiving emails by clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of those email you receive or, if you have an online account, you may log in to your account and make changes to your communication preferences. If you are having difficulty unsubscribing using the above methods, please contact us directly at the email listed below. Please allow ample time for us to process your request. However, please note that even if you opt out from receiving promotional emails, we will continue to send you service-related communications and may need to keep information we have collected about you for record-keeping, research and other purposes.

Security To help protect the privacy of data you transmit through the Website, where Personal Information is requested, we use technology designed to encrypt the information that you input before it is sent to us. In addition, we take reasonable administrative, technical and physical steps to protect the user data we collect against unauthorized access. However, you should keep in mind that the Website is run on software, hardware and networks, any component of which may, from time to time, require maintenance or experience problems or breaches of security beyond our control. Please also be aware that despite our best intentions and the guidelines outlined in this Privacy Policy, no data transmission over the Internet or encryption method can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

As a registered user of the Website, you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your user name and password. Please keep this information confidential.

Links to Other Websites We do not endorse and are not responsible for the information practices or privacy policies of websites operated by others that may be linked to our Website, including the websites of our program partners and sponsors. If you decide to access a third party’s website that may be linked to this Website, you should consult that website’s privacy policy. This Privacy Policy governs only information that we directly collect, and not websites, services or applications that do not link to this Privacy Policy or that are maintained or controlled by other companies or organizations, including third party websites linked to from the Website. The inclusion of a link or reference on the Website does not imply endorsement of the linked website by us.

Children’s Privacy This Website is not intended for children under the age of 13. If you are under 13 years of age, please do not use or access this Website at any time or in any manner. By using this Website, you affirm that you are over the age of 13. The Shinrin Yoku Association does not seek through this Website to gather personal information from or about persons under the age of 13.