Privacy Policy

The short version: we don't sell your data and we collect as little as we can ourselves. The exception, and we want it in the first paragraph rather than buried: this site carries Google AdSense advertising on most pages, Google's ad tag sets cookies, and Google may use them to personalise what you are shown. That is real third-party tracking, it is set out in full under “Advertising” below, and you can switch personalisation off. Everything we do is smaller than that: if you never create an account you can use this entire site without giving us any personal information at all. We ask for an email address in exactly two places, both opt-in: saving your plan across devices, and following a facility for inspection alerts. Our own analytics is cookieless, described in full under “Analytics & logs” below.

Browsing the site

You can read every facility page, tool, guide, and directory on Eldercare Lens without signing in, without a lead form, and without handing over a phone number. There is no 'talk to an advisor' wall. We do not sell, rent, or share browsing data, and we embed no social-network trackers or share buttons. We do embed third-party advertising — Google AdSense — on most pages; what it collects and how to opt out of personalised ads is under “Advertising” below. It does not run everywhere: there is no advertising in the My Plan planner — the page you fill in with a parent's money — or on the for-professionals, data and reports pages.

The optional account

The only personal information we ever ask you for is an email address, and only if you choose to create a free account — either to save your plan across devices, or to follow a facility and be emailed when its inspection record changes. Beyond that address, the only things we hold are the ones you enter yourself: your saved plan, and the list of facilities you follow. Deleting your account removes all of it. We use passwordless sign-in: you enter your email, we send a one-time link, and clicking it signs you in. That means:

• Your email is used solely as your login key and to send you that sign-in link. We never sell it, never share it, and never send marketing email.
• We store no passwords — there are none to store or leak.
• The sign-in email is sent through our email provider (Resend) purely to deliver the link.

What an account stores

If you build a plan while signed in, we store the plan you created (the figures and choices you entered in the My Plan workspace) linked to your account, so it follows you across devices. We keep it on Cloudflare's D1 database, encrypted at rest. You can start over at any time from the My Plan page, which clears your saved plan, and you can ask us to delete your account and all associated data by emailing us (see Contact).

Following a facility (inspection alerts)

If you press Follow for inspection alerts on a facility page, we store one row — your account and that facility's CMS number, with the date you followed it — so we know where to send the alert. Nothing else about your browsing is recorded, and following is the only thing on this site that records which facility you looked at.

• When our scheduled job notices that a followed home's public record has changed, we send you an alert email (again through Resend). That is the only unsolicited mail we ever send, and only for homes you explicitly followed.
• Unfollowing removes the row. Deleting your account removes all of them.
• We never sell or share your follow list, and no facility is told that anyone is following it.

Cookies

Ours: a single essential cookie, set after you sign in, to keep you logged in. It is not used for advertising or cross-site tracking, and if you never sign in we set none of our own. Google's: on any page that carries advertising, Google's ad tag sets its own cookies, whether or not you have an account here — that is advertising and measurement, it is described under “Advertising” below, and the opt-outs there are the way to turn the personalised part of it off. Your plan, before you have an account, is stored only in your own browser (localStorage) and never leaves your device.

Analytics & logs

Our host (Cloudflare) processes standard, aggregate request logs to serve and protect the site.

We also keep our own aggregate count of page requests: for each day we store how many times each section of the site was requested, the visitor country our host reports, and the referring website — and nothing else. There is no cookie, no script, and no record of individual visitors: a row says “the guides section was requested 40 times today from the US via Google”, never who. We never store the specific facility page you looked at, your IP address, or anything that could identify you. It exists so we can see which parts of the site are worth improving.

We also run Cloudflare Web Analytics, which loads a small script (static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.min.js) on every page and reports the page you viewed, the referring page, and coarse device and country information. We want to be straight about this because it is a third-party script: it is Cloudflare's privacy-first product — it sets no cookie, does not fingerprint you, does not track you across other sites, and gives us only aggregate counts. We use it to see which pages are worth improving. It is not advertising analytics and nothing it collects is sold or shared. If you block it, the site works exactly the same.

We also count page views ourselves, first-party, with a few lines of JavaScript that send one message per page: which page, which site referred you, and whether it is the first page of this browsing session. That is the whole payload. It sets no cookie, stores no identifier, and is written into a daily total — there is no row anywhere that represents you. We added it because counting on the server could not tell a person apart from an automated crawler pretending to be one, and we would rather have a small true number than a large flattering one. Blocking it changes nothing about how the site works.

The only other personal data we hold is what the sections above describe: your email if you made an account, your saved plan, and your follow list.

Advertising

This site carries advertising from Google AdSense, and we want to be blunt about what that means, because it is the one part of this site that does not follow our usual collect-almost-nothing rule.

Google and its advertising partners use cookies and similar technology to serve ads, including ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. Google may build an advertising profile of you. That data goes to Google, not to us — we never see who you are, and we receive only aggregate earnings figures — but it is real tracking by a third party and calling it anything else would be dishonest.

You can turn personalised advertising off at Google My Ad Center, or opt out of third-party vendor cookies at aboutads.info. The site works the same either way, and blocking ads changes nothing you can access.

What advertising does not change: no advertiser can pay to alter a rating, an inspection record, a ranking or a recommendation anywhere on this site. We take no money from any facility, operator or referral service, and there is no lead form here. Ads are sold by Google against the page, and they have no contact with the data.

Children

This site is intended for adults planning later-life care and is not directed to children under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes we'll update this page. Questions? Contact us.