J. L. HUDSON, SEEDSMAN, BOX 337, LA HONDA, CALIFORNIA 94020-0337 USA

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Privacy Policy

I feel very strongly about personal privacy, and am alarmed by the continuing erosion of personal privacy by computers and the internet. The internet and information society is turning into a 'panopticon' of greater intrusion and danger to personal freedom than could ever have been imagined. Orwell is spinning in his grave.

I encourage everyone to visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation www.eff.org for good information on protecting your digital privacy.

Also, see our links at Digital Privacy for links to encryption programs and other digital privacy tools.

This is a cookie-free website - we do not track you.

Your contacts with us are, in most cases, held in strict confidence (see exceptions below).

All of our records (except e-mail) are maintained in a physically-isolated computer with no internet or network connection—hackers and viruses cannot obtain access to it.

We do not sell, rent, or give away our mailing list.

We do not spam, and we do not sell, rent, or give away your e-mail address.

We do not give anyone access to our records of your communications with us, with the following exceptions:

1) In response to a court order (never happened yet, but figure I'd better cover it).

2) When you make a statement to us about a third party, we reserve the right to pass that statement along to them. For example, if you tell us that someone has good/bad quality seeds/plants/service, we may pass that along to them. When people do a good job, they deserve to know that they are appreciated - if they do a bad job and have a dissatisfied customer making statements about them to third parties, they deserve to know about it and to be given the chance to correct the problem.

3) When responding to your public statements about us or your interactions with us (for example, on Dave's Garden Web). Recently we have been very disappointed by several persons who made untrue statements about us or our service in internet forums. We welcome legitimate complaints - they help us find and fix problems! But persons who make untrue complaints about us in a public forum will have all details of their interactions with us (e-mails, scans of orders, etc.) published in the forum if we feel it is necessary to document the situation. We will also publish your full name and address, and e-mail address. Our reputation is important to us. We reserve the right to set the facts straight. If you have a complaint, bring it to us first! If your public complaint is about an actual, real mistake we make, we will publicly apologize, correct the error, and publicly thank you for bringing the problem to our attention - we always "own up" to any real errors on our part.

4) Clients who have defrauded us, bounced checks, or who are extremely problematic may be 'blacklisted' by us, and we will provide their name and address, and the nature of the problems we have had with them, and will distribute this to our associates in the seed and plant business, so that they can be warned against accepting orders from them.

All persons using e-mail or the internet to communicate, should be aware that their communications are being monitored by governments, law enforcement agencies, hackers, and other persons with criminal intent. The internet is a fishbowl, e-mails are like postcards, and you should have no expectation of privacy on the internet - get used to it. For secure, private communication, use the U.S. Postal Service.

We reserve the right to change this policy at any time.