Privacy Policy

Information you give us

• Newsletter signup: your email address, and optionally your ZIP code or state so we can tailor future content.
• Contact form: your name, email address, and message.
• Tick reports: state, county (optional), tick species, how it was found, observation date, and optional free-text notes. We do not collect exact GPS coordinates or your name.

Information collected automatically

• Anti-abuse identifiers: when you submit a tick report we store a hashed IP address and a hashed session identifier (generated once and kept in your browser's local storage) to detect duplicates and spam. We do not store your raw IP.
• Standard server logs from our hosting provider (request time, URL, user-agent, IP) kept short-term for security and debugging.
• Analytics: Google Analytics 4 (page views, referrer, approximate location, device type). Google anonymizes IP addresses by default in GA4.

• Operate, maintain, and improve the Site.
• Send the newsletter and any resources you requested.
• Respond to questions, feedback, and removal requests.
• Display aggregated, county-level tick sighting trends.
• Prevent spam, abuse, and security incidents.
• Comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with third parties for their marketing. We do not run advertising on the Site and we do not use advertising cookies.

We use a small number of vendors to operate the Site:

• Lovable Cloud — hosting, database, and edge functions.
• Google Analytics 4 — anonymized traffic analytics.

These providers process data on our behalf under their own security and privacy terms. See our Cookie & Tracking Notice for details.

The Site uses a very small number of cookies and browser-storage items. See the Cookie & Tracking Notice for the full list and opt-out instructions.

• Tick reports are retained indefinitely in aggregate for trend analysis. Individual reports can be removed on request.
• Contact messages and newsletter subscriptions are retained until you ask us to delete them or until they are no longer needed.
• Server logs are retained for a short period for security and debugging.

The Site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, and you may unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time. To make a request, use our contact form. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We will honor verifiable requests to the extent required by law.

Do Not Sell or Share (CCPA)

We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA.

We use reasonable administrative and technical measures to protect the limited information we hold, including row-level access controls in our database. No system is perfectly secure — you provide information at your own risk.

The Site is operated from the United States. If you access it from outside the U.S., your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S., which may have different data-protection laws than your country.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected in the effective date at the top of this page.

For privacy questions or requests, use our contact form.