Privacy Policy

PestEd (“PestEd,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting the personal information of Florida pest control professionals who use our continuing education services. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, with whom we share it, and the choices you have.

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following categories of personal information:

• Identity and contact information: full legal name, mailing address, email address, phone number, and date of birth.
• Professional information: FDACS license number, license category (GHP, L&O, Termite/WDO, Fumigation, Technician), license expiration date, and employer information where provided.
• Course activity: enrollment records, lesson reading time, quiz answers and scores, completion timestamps, and certificate records.
• Payment information: billing name, billing address, the last four digits of the payment card, and transaction history. Full credit card numbers are never stored on PestEd servers — payments are tokenized and processed by Stripe, Inc.
• Technical information: IP address, browser type, device type, operating system, referring URL, pages viewed, and approximate location derived from IP address.
• Communications: records of email, support ticket, and AI Tutor chat interactions.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To provide and operate the Services, including course delivery and certificate generation.
• To populate the FDACS-13325 attendance form and other regulatory documents required for license renewal.
• To process payments and prevent fraud.
• To send transactional emails (enrollment confirmations, certificate delivery, password reset, account notices).
• To respond to your support inquiries.
• To improve our courses, platform, and AI Tutor.
• To comply with applicable law, including Florida Statute Chapter 482 and Florida Administrative Code Rule 5E-14 recordkeeping requirements.
• To enforce our Terms of Service and protect against fraud and abuse.

3. Service Providers and Third Parties

We share personal information with the following categories of service providers, each of which is contractually bound to use that information only to provide services to PestEd:

• Stripe, Inc. — payment processing (PCI-DSS Level 1 certified).
• Resend, Inc. — transactional email delivery.
• Vercel, Inc. — application hosting and content delivery.
• Anthropic, PBC — AI Tutor language model. Conversation content may be processed by Anthropic to generate responses but is not used to train Anthropic's models under our enterprise terms.
• Postgres database provider — encrypted storage of user records, course progress, and completion records.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties for advertising or marketing purposes.

4. Regulatory Disclosures

As a registered Florida continuing education provider, we may be required to submit course completion records, identity verification, and other information to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) in accordance with Chapter 482 and Rule 5E-14. We may also disclose information in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including subpoenas, court orders, or regulatory inquiries.

5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use first-party cookies and similar technologies to maintain your session, remember your preferences, track your progress through a course, and analyze platform usage. You can configure your browser to refuse cookies, but doing so may impair your ability to use certain features (including lesson progress tracking).

6. Data Retention

We retain course completion records (including FDACS-13325 forms, quiz attempts, and certificates) for a minimum of four (4) years following the date of completion, as required by Florida Administrative Code Rule 5E-14. Other personal information is retained for as long as your account remains active and for a reasonable period thereafter to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

7. Your Rights

Subject to applicable law, including the Florida Digital Bill of Rights and the Florida Information Protection Act (FIPA), you have the right to:

• Request access to the personal information we hold about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Request deletion of your personal information, subject to our legal recordkeeping obligations.
• Object to or restrict certain processing activities.
• Withdraw any consent you have previously provided.

To exercise any of these rights, email support@pesteducation.org. We will respond within 30 days. Note that we cannot delete records we are legally required to retain under Rule 5E-14.

8. Children's Privacy

The Services are intended for adult, licensed pest control professionals. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 years of age. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will promptly delete it.

9. Data Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect personal information, including encryption in transit (TLS), encryption at rest for sensitive fields, access controls, and audit logging. However, no system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. Data Breach Notification

In the event of a security incident affecting your personal information, we will notify you and the appropriate Florida authorities in accordance with the Florida Information Protection Act (FIPA), §501.171, Florida Statutes.

11. International Users

PestEd is operated from the United States and the Services are intended for Florida residents. If you access the Services from outside the United States, you consent to the transfer of your information to the United States, which may have data protection laws different from those of your jurisdiction.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated by email or by a prominent notice on the Services, and the “Effective” date at the top of this page will be updated.

13. Contact

Privacy-related inquiries may be directed to support@pesteducation.org. General support inquiries may be directed to support@pesteducation.org.