Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts, Moses Michael Hays Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons (A.F. & A.M.), meets at the Masonic Building, 460 Newtonville Avenue, Newtonville. This Privacy Policy explains what information mosesmichaelhays.com (the “Site”) receives from visitors, how the Lodge uses and safeguards it, and what choices remain yours. Its authority ends at the Site’s boundary: the member portal and every other destination reached through our links follow their own privacy practices, outside the Lodge’s control. Throughout this Policy, “the Lodge,” “we,” and “our” denote Moses Michael Hays Lodge acting through its elected and appointed officers.

2. Our Commitments in Brief

The Lodge gathers only what visitors choose to send us and what the Site’s operation requires. At no time do we sell, rent, or trade personal information, and no advertising appears here. The Lodge sets no cookies for tracking or marketing and follows no one across other websites, although the Google features detailed in section 5 may place cookies of their own. Where a visitor asks us to correct or erase what we hold, we will comply, subject only to the limits described below.

3. Information You Provide

The Contact page carries a form, the only instrument through which the Site invites personal information. It requests your name, email address, mobile telephone number, and ZIP code, the methods by which you permit us to reach you, and the nature of your inquiry in your own words. With these particulars, the appropriate officer can answer you through the channels you have authorized and with the context your question demands. Please refrain from including sensitive matters, such as financial or medical details, which the Lodge neither needs nor requests.

4. Information Received Automatically

Cloudflare, Inc., which hosts and delivers the Site, necessarily processes technical data accompanying each request: your Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser and device type, the pages you open, the referring page, and the time of your visit. It handles these records under its own privacy policy to serve content and defend the Site against abuse, and it may set a strictly necessary security cookie to distinguish people from automated traffic; the Lodge makes no use of this information to identify anyone. Because the Site conducts no cross-site tracking, browser privacy signals such as Global Privacy Control (GPC) require no further action on our part.

5. Embedded Google Services

Two features of the Site appear through Google: the calendar on the Schedule page and the form on the Contact page. When either loads, your browser connects directly to Google, which receives your IP address and related technical data and may place its own cookies, all under Google’s Privacy Policy rather than ours. Submissions made through the form pass to the Lodge’s Google account and remain there for the officers the Lodge designates. Should you prefer not to share information with Google, you may write to the Lodge by post at the address given in section 13.

6. How We Use Information

We use what you submit to answer your inquiry, to reach you only by the means you have approved, and, where you express interest in membership, to acquaint you with the Lodge and explain the path to petition. We enroll no one in mailing lists, solicit no donations, and send no promotional messages without first obtaining explicit consent. Nor do we combine submissions with information drawn from other sources to build profiles of visitors.

7. How We Share Information

Your submission reaches those responsible for answering it: ordinarily the Secretary, together with any other officer whose duties the inquiry concerns. Outside the Lodge, disclosure occurs in four circumstances only: to the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts, with your consent or where the membership procedure you have entered requires it; to the service providers that operate the Site on our behalf, namely Cloudflare and Google, solely for those functions; to comply with law, subpoena, or other legal process, or to protect the safety of any person; and, should the Lodge merge with another lodge, to the surviving or resulting lodge, under commitments no less protective than these. The Lodge exchanges personal information for no payment or benefit of any kind, and no advertiser or data broker receives it from us.

8. Names and Photographs We Publish

As a matter of fraternal custom, the Site presents the Lodge’s sitting officers by station, the register of its Past Masters, and, in The Regius Monthly, photographs of members and guests at our functions, captioned with the names of those depicted. We draw this material from Lodge records or from the individuals concerned. Anyone named or pictured may ask, through the Contact page, that we correct an entry or withdraw an image, and we will honor reasonable requests promptly. Because the Site admits search engines and other automated crawlers, including those that collect content for artificial intelligence (AI) systems, anything we remove may persist for a time in outside caches and public archives beyond our reach.

9. Retention and Security

We keep form submissions, and any correspondence arising from them, for no longer than twelve months after the inquiry concludes, and then delete them from the Lodge’s account. When an inquirer proceeds to petition, however, the relevant materials pass into the Lodge’s membership files and follow the retention practices of the Lodge and the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts. Every page reaches you over an encrypted connection, and the Site enforces strict security headers while running no server-side code or database that an intruder could exploit. Within Google, only designated officers may open the Lodge’s account. No system is invulnerable, and we cannot guarantee absolute security; should a breach expose personal information, we will inform those affected without undue delay.

10. Your Choices and Requests

You may ask the Lodge to show you the information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it, and you may withdraw at any time the permission you gave us to contact you. Direct such requests through the Contact page or by post to the address in section 13; before acting, we may require confirmation of your identity, solely to shield your records from anyone else. We will answer within a reasonable time and explain any instance in which we cannot comply, such as deletion of material the law obliges us to keep. These choices extend to every visitor regardless of residence, and we will consider in good faith any further right that a home state or country confers. If you visit from abroad, our service providers will store and process your submission in the United States and possibly elsewhere, under standards that may differ from those of your own jurisdiction.

11. Children

The Site addresses adult readers and is not directed to children under 13, whose information we do not knowingly collect. Only those of lawful age may join the Lodge. If we learn that a child has sent us personal information, we will erase it at once, and a parent or guardian may ask us to do so through the Contact page.

12. Links to Other Websites

The Site links to destinations the Lodge does not operate, among them the member portal and the Lodge’s LinkedIn page. Each answers to its operator’s own privacy policy, which we encourage you to read, and the Lodge bears no responsibility for the content or conduct of those sites. Our links offer convenience and imply no endorsement of what lies beyond them.

13. Changes and Contact

We may revise this Policy as the Site evolves or the law requires, posting each version here with a new effective date. Where an amendment materially alters our treatment of information you have already provided, it will govern only submissions received afterward, unless you consent otherwise. Send questions, concerns, and requests about this Policy through the Contact page or by post to: