Privacy policy

Public Health Trace is built to require as little of your personal information as possible. This page explains exactly what is and isn't collected.

Browsing the site

You can search, browse, and read every recall, outbreak, disease, and food page on Public Health Trace without creating an account or providing any personal information. Public Health Trace does not log any visit, search, or page view against you individually. See Analytics and Advertising below for the two exceptions: Google Analytics and Google AdSense, both third parties, each set their own cookies and collect their own data independent of anything Public Health Trace itself stores.

Email alerts

If you subscribe to email alerts, Public Health Trace only stores the email address you provide, your alert preferences, and delivery history. No health information, location, or demographic data is collected. You can unsubscribe from any alert email with one click, with no login required.

Contact form

If you use our contact form, we store the name, email address, and message you submit solely to respond to your inquiry. We don't add contact-form submissions to any mailing list.

Cookies

Public Health Trace itself sets a single security cookie (an antiforgery token) used to protect forms like alert subscription and contact from cross-site request forgery. It contains no tracking or identifying information beyond what's needed to validate that a form submission came from this site. Google AdSense (see Advertising below) sets its own, separate cookies that Public Health Trace does not control.

Analytics

Public Health Trace uses Google Analytics to measure aggregate site usage -- which pages are visited, how often, and in what general sequence -- so we can understand what's useful and fix what isn't. Google Analytics does not receive your name, email address, or anything you type into search or the contact form. It does receive your IP address, device and browser information, and the pages you view, and -- like any Google service -- Google acts as an independent third party with its own privacy policy governing how it handles that data.

If you're visiting from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, whether Google Analytics' cookies are set and data is collected depends on the choice you make through the privacy and consent tool Google displays on this site -- analytics is off by default until you choose to allow it. You can change that choice at any time by clearing this site's cookies in your browser or by adjusting your browser's cookie settings, which will prompt the consent tool to ask again on your next visit. Outside that region, where this consent tool does not apply, ordinary site usage is measured by default. You can also use Google's Analytics opt-out browser add-on to opt out of Google Analytics on every site that uses it, including this one. Data Google Analytics collects is retained according to the retention period configured for this site's Google Analytics property, after which it is automatically deleted.

Advertising

Public Health Trace uses Google AdSense to serve advertising. Google may use cookies and similar technologies to serve ads, including personalized ads based on your prior visits to this or other websites. See our advertising disclosure for how ads are labeled, links to Google's own policies, and how to opt out of personalized advertising.

Data sharing

Public Health Trace does not sell or share your email address or contact-form submissions with third parties. Alert emails are sent directly by Public Health Trace's own email delivery infrastructure.

Questions

If you have a question about this policy, contact us.