Privacy Policy

Why We Take Privacy Seriously

RiseUpToHIV is a site about HIV. In the United States, HIV status is protected health information under HIPAA when it lives inside a clinic, hospital, or insurance company — but the moment it moves outside those walls it loses that protection. A visit to an HIV website, a click on a PrEP page, or an email asking about testing is not covered by HIPAA and can be logged, retained, or subpoenaed like any other web activity.

We know that. So we built RiseUpToHIV to collect as little information about you as possible, to name every tool that does collect anything, and to be honest about what we cannot see and what we can. If you are anxious about someone finding out you looked at this site, keep reading — this page tells you exactly what a determined observer could and could not learn from your visit.

What We Do Not Collect

RiseUpToHIV does not require you to create an account, log in, register, or give us your name, email, phone number, address, HIV status, medications, insurance information, or any other personal detail to read anything on the site. Every page — the deep dives, the Florida Locator, the guides, the FAQ — is fully accessible without identifying yourself.

We do not run advertising. We do not use Facebook Pixel, Google Ads, LinkedIn Insight, TikTok Pixel, or any other advertising tracker. We do not sell, rent, or share visitor data with any third party. We do not build user profiles. We do not tag you across other websites. We do not use fingerprinting techniques to identify you when you return.

If you are worried about a specific data broker, employer, family member, or immigration authority learning what you read here, no part of RiseUpToHIV’s own systems is designed to help them.

What Is Collected, and by Whom

A handful of services process limited technical information when you load a page on this site. We name each one so you can make an informed choice.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Every page on RiseUpToHIV loads Google Analytics 4 (property ID G-03QMLW2K5R). GA4 records aggregate site traffic — page views, session duration, general geographic region (usually city or state, not street address), browser, device type, and the referring website that sent you here. GA4 uses a truncated IP address and does not link visits to a specific person by default. We use it to understand which pages are useful so we can improve them. We do not enable Google Signals, remarketing audiences, ad personalization, or any Google Ads integration on this property. If you would rather not be measured at all, you can install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on or use a browser extension like uBlock Origin.

Netlify. RiseUpToHIV is hosted on Netlify, which serves every page and handles our forms. Netlify logs standard web-server data — IP address, request time, page requested, browser user-agent — and holds those logs for a limited period for security, abuse-prevention, and traffic-analysis purposes. When you submit any form on the site (contact, pledge, Voices Rising story submission), Netlify Forms receives the fields you filled in and stores them in our Netlify dashboard so we can read and reply to them. This happens for every website that uses Netlify and is not specific to us. Their privacy policy covers what they collect and how long they keep it.

Google Fonts, jsDelivr, and YouTube embeds. The site loads its typefaces from Google Fonts and a small number of JavaScript libraries from the jsDelivr content delivery network; both services see the standard web request — your IP address, the file requested, your user-agent — when your browser fetches those assets. A few pages embed YouTube videos; those videos are only loaded if you play them, and YouTube’s own tracking applies once you do. If you would rather not load those embeds, most content-blocking browser extensions will suppress them without breaking the rest of the page.

Google Translate. If you click the ES (Spanish) or HT (Haitian Creole) toggle in the header, the page content is sent to Google Translate for translation. Google’s systems see the URL and the page text at that moment. If you would rather translate offline, most modern browsers include a built-in translator that works locally on your device without sending the page to Google.

That is the complete list. Nothing else on the site — not the Florida Locator, not the deep dives, not the FAQ, not the Share Facts downloads — runs any additional tracker.

Cookies

RiseUpToHIV itself does not set marketing or advertising cookies. The services above may set functional cookies: Google Analytics uses a small identifier to distinguish new versus returning visitors so page-view counts are not inflated; Netlify may set a security cookie used to detect bots and abuse; Google Translate uses a session cookie only if you use it; a YouTube embed sets cookies only if you press play. You can clear cookies at any time in your browser settings and the site will still work.

If You Email Us

If you write to us through the contact form or by email, we receive whatever you send — your name if you provide it, your email address, and the content of your message. We use that information only to reply. We do not add you to a mailing list, we do not share your address with any organization, and we do not use your message to build any kind of profile. When a conversation is complete, older emails are retained only as long as needed to answer any follow-up.

Because RiseUpToHIV is not a healthcare provider, no email you send us is protected by HIPAA. Please do not email medical details, test results, or anything you would want kept confidential — call a provider, or your Ryan White case manager if you have one, instead. See the Disclaimer for the full framing.

If You Share a Story

Voices Rising is our community storytelling space. When you submit a story through the Voices Rising form, we receive the information you choose to share — your name or pseudonym, an optional email if you want us to be able to reach you, and the content of your story. Submissions go through Netlify Forms into our dashboard, where a human reviews them before anything is published.

Nothing is published until you say yes. If we would like to publish your story, we reply first, confirm what will and will not appear, and honor any request to use a pseudonym, remove identifying details, or withdraw at any time — including after publication. If we decide not to publish, we keep the submission only long enough to respond to you and then delete it.

Do not include information in a story that you would not want to be public. Even with a pseudonym, a story that names a specific city, employer, clinic, or family member can identify you to people who know you. If you are unsure, write to us first at info@riseuptohiv.com and we will help you think it through.

Accounts and Login (Planned)

RiseUpToHIV does not have accounts today. We are planning to add an optional login later so readers can save resources, subscribe to updates, or submit stories more easily. When that launches, authentication will be handled by Supabase, which will store the email address you register with, a securely hashed password, and a session token so you can stay signed in on your own device.

Login will always be optional. Every page on this site — every deep dive, the Florida Locator, the guides, the FAQ, Voices Rising — will remain fully accessible without creating an account. When login goes live, this policy will be updated with the specifics of what is stored, for how long, and how to delete your account.

How We Use AI

We use AI tools — primarily Perplexity, Claude (Anthropic), and ChatGPT (OpenAI) — to research, cross-reference sources, and draft written content for the site. These tools are used at the desk, before publication. No visitor data from RiseUpToHIV is ever sent to any AI service. The site does not have any AI chat feature, no in-page assistant, and no integration that would pass what you read or search for on this site to any AI provider. When you visit RiseUpToHIV, the AI companies named above receive nothing.

See the Disclaimer for the full editorial workflow, including the tie-breaker rule when the tools disagree on a fact.

External Links

RiseUpToHIV links to hundreds of external sites — the CDC, HIV.gov, HRSA, UNAIDS, KFF, community organizations, service providers, news sources. Once you click through, you are on their site, subject to their privacy practices, not ours. When it matters — for instance, if a linked provider might log your visit — we say so in context. As a general rule, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of any site you visit if you are concerned about being tracked.

Children

RiseUpToHIV is written for a general adult audience. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has sent us information through the contact form, please let us know and we will delete it.

Your Rights and Choices

Because we collect so little, most privacy rights are not applicable here — we do not have a database of your data to correct, delete, or export. If you have emailed us and want that message deleted from our records, or you want us to confirm what we do or do not have on file for you, write to us and we will handle it.

If you are in California, the EU/UK, or another jurisdiction with a specific data-privacy law (CCPA/CPRA, GDPR, UK GDPR, or similar), those laws apply to your interaction with us to the extent required. You have the right to know, correct, delete, and object to processing of your data. The practical scope of these rights for RiseUpToHIV is narrow because we intentionally do not collect much, but you can exercise them anytime by contacting us.

A Note on Surveillance and Threats

For most readers, RiseUpToHIV is a low-risk site to visit — but readers in criminalized or surveilled situations should know their limits. A determined observer with legal access — a government agency with a subpoena, a state authority in a state with HIV criminalization laws, an employer or family member with access to your device or network — can potentially learn things that the site itself does not collect: your IP address from Netlify’s server logs or your Internet provider, your browsing history from the device or router you use, and the fact that you visited a health-related site. If any of that is a concern for you, tools like the Tor Browser, a trustworthy VPN, or a device that is not shared with anyone else can raise the bar significantly. The Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains plain-English guides on how to browse more privately.

This is not legal advice and it is not a promise of anonymity — it is just what we would want a friend to know.

Do-Not-Track

Some browsers send a “Do Not Track” (DNT) signal. There is no legal or industry consensus on how a site should respond to DNT, and Google Analytics does not honor it automatically. Because we do not run advertising or cross-site tracking to begin with, DNT does not meaningfully change what happens on our end. If you want to opt out of GA4 entirely, use the Google opt-out add-on linked in the section above.

Changes to This Policy

We update this page whenever we change a tool, a vendor, or the way information is handled. The date at the bottom is the last time this policy was reviewed end-to-end, not just typo-fixed.

Contact

If you have questions about this privacy policy, want to exercise a data right, or want us to delete an email you sent us, please contact info@riseuptohiv.com.