Privacy Policy
Effective: September 1, 2025
We highly value personal privacy. While we would prefer not to collect any information regarding persons who use this website, that would make it difficult to accomplish our objectives of providing you with information regarding the cacao and chocolate industries. Therefore we will collect and use information, but only as necessary and in accordance with this policy.
We will never rent or sell your personal information to anyone, nor give any other person your information except as described below under Information Sharing.
If there is any change to our privacy policy it will be published here before going into effect, and changed policies will apply only to information collected after the change has been published.
Information we collect and how we use it
- When you apply for membership or sign up to receive information through the mail list, the information you provide will be collected and used to communicate with you. The information may include your name, address, phone number, email address, business name, website URL, and other data.
- Those who pay online for their membership may have information on the credit card or debit card or banking information, depending on the method of payment, collected by the service used to process the payment. Please refer to the website of the payment processor for its privacy policy.
- We encourage members to share their business websites and, with the members' permission, we may post links or other descriptive information submitted by the member for the purpose of publicity and advertising.
- When you fill out an online form or survey we will collect the information you submit, and will use it for the purpose for which it was submitted.
- If you inform us that you wish to receive a newsletter or periodic notices regarding meetings and special events, we will collect and use your identifying information to send you newsletters and notices. All members are added to the email list, but may opt out later. If you decide that you prefer no longer to receive those newsletters and notices you may contact us as described below and we will remove you from the list of persons to receive those notices.
- Cookies are needed to complete some of our purposes including operation of an online forum. The use of cookies is standard on the Internet. The cookie itself does not identify you nor your email address and is not tied to personally identifiable information. Most browsers automatically accept cookies; however, you can usually change your browser to block cookies or notify you whenever you are sent a cookie. This gives you the chance to decide whether or not to accept the cookie. If you choose not to accept cookies it may interfere with your use of some features on this site.
- We may use other services including Google Analytics to help us to understand and better serve visitors to the site. Reports from these services may contain information including the source of visitors to our site, the general geographic location of the visitor, what pages the visitor views, what type of browser the visitor uses, what search terms led visitors to our site, and similar information. Your IP address may be collected by servers or appended to communications with us; while that does not directly disclose your identity, all internet users should be aware that they inevitably leave tracks that might identify them. Google Analytics may collect device info, pages viewed, and approximate location. You can opt out via your browser’s “Do Not Track”/Global Privacy Control settings or by using Google’s opt-out tools. We do not use analytics for cross-context behavioral advertising.
- Cookies: We use only the cookies necessary to operate forms, membership, and basic site functions.
- When you send email or other communication, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests, and improve our services.
- This website is not directed to children under age 13, and we
do not knowingly collect nor maintain information on any person
under age 13.
Choices for personal information
- You may decline to submit personal information, in which case we may not be able to provide services or communicate with you or extend membership to you.
Information sharing
We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
We may share your personal information with other companies or individuals outside of East Hawaii Cacao Association in the following limited circumstances:
- You give your consent.
- We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (c) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of any person. In the event we feel compelled under this provision to disclose your personal information we will notify you as soon as lawfully and practically possible; if possible, we will notify you prior to the disclosure of the information so that you might take steps to protect your interests if you so desire.
- We use internal software to
manage our email lists. We may from time to time use Google Forms or a
similar site to survey users or conduct online voting by
members. We may disclose your personal information to those
sites and their privacy policies will control how they may use
the information.
- International visitors: We operate in the U.S.; if you visit from outside the U.S., your data may be processed here.
Information security
- We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where we store personal data.
- We restrict access to personal information to those persons who need to the information to manage memberships and respond to contacts.
- We use HTTPS/TLS across our website and administrative tools. While no system is perfectly secure, we apply role-based access controls, strong authentication, least-privilege, and regular patching. Payment pages are handled by our PCI-compliant processor; we never store card numbers. Whenever a payment is made online you will be directed to a site operated by the payment processor which should be encrypted to protect your data. Confirm the site is secure before transmitting your financial information.
- Data Retention. Membership, routine contact and transaction records are kept for as long as needed to operate the Association and to meet legal, tax, and accounting requirements. We delete or de-identify data when no longer needed.
Contacting Us
You may opt out of receiving newsletters or notices, and you may request correction or deletion of your personal information. To make a request, contact us through the form on our contact page. We will verify your request and respond within a reasonable time.
