Privacy Policy

This policy covers the website at prolifehc.com: what it collects, why, who else sees it, and how to ask us to stop. It applies to visitors, to people who fill in a form, and to people who apply for a job with us.

Section 1This is not our HIPAA notice

Two different documents are easy to confuse, so this comes first.

• This policy is about the website: form entries, cookies, analytics, advertising.
• Our Notice of Privacy Practices is about protected health information under HIPAA: the records we keep once someone becomes a client. That is a separate document with separate rules, and it controls wherever the two overlap.

Practical consequence: do not put medical details into a website form. Our forms deliberately do not ask for them, and ordinary web forms and email are not encrypted end to end. We take those details on the phone.

If you do type something about health into the optional message box, we treat it with the same care as the rest of your enquiry and we do not pass it to advertising services. But the safer course is not to send it.

The caregiver forum is different again: anything you post there is public. Posting on the forum does not by itself make what you write part of a care record, and our handling of patient information remains subject to our legal duties. See Section 15.

Section 2What we collect

When you fill in a form

• Your name and phone number.
• A ZIP code, where the form asks for one, so we can tell you whether we cover the area.
• How you expect to pay, if you choose to say.
• Anything you type into the optional message box.

Recorded automatically with a form

Alongside the form we record the page you submitted from, the time, your IP address, and which version of the consent wording you were shown. This is not marketing data. It exists so that if anyone later asks whether you agreed to be contacted, we can show exactly what you saw and when, instead of asking you to take our word for it.

Collected as you browse

• Standard server records: IP address, browser and device type, pages visited, referring page, time of visit.
• Approximate location derived from your IP address. We do not collect precise device location.
• Analytics and advertising identifiers set by the services listed in Section 6.
• Behavioural signals used to tell people from bots: mouse movement, scrolling, whether keys were pressed. Our anti-spam service uses these and nothing else. Without them the forms fill with junk within days.

When you contact us

What you write to us by email or through the chat widget, and our replies. We keep these the way any business keeps its correspondence.

If you join the caregiver forum, Section 15 explains what we collect there.

Section 3Where we get it

• From you directly: forms, email, phone calls, job applications.
• Automatically: through the cookies and technologies in Section 6.
• From third parties: job boards and recruiting portals when you apply through them; the background check and credentialing services New York requires us to use before an aide may work in someone's home; and health plans and government programs when we help arrange coverage on your behalf.

Section 4Why we collect it

• To call you back about the care you asked about. This is the main reason.
• To prove consent for calls and text messages, as described above.
• To keep the site working and to block spam.
• To understand which pages help people and which do not, and to measure advertising.
• For legal and safety reasons: complying with the law, responding to a regulator, investigating fraud or misuse of the site.
• If the business changes hands. In a merger, an acquisition or a similar transaction, information may transfer with the business. Where the law requires notice first, you will get it.

We may also use information that has been aggregated or stripped of anything identifying you (visitor counts, popular pages) without the restrictions in this policy, because it no longer describes any individual.

Section 5If you apply for a job

Applying to work with us involves more information than enquiring about care, so it gets its own section.

What we collect: your contact details, work history, education, certifications and licence numbers, availability, right to work in the United States, and anything else in your application or resume. Where required for the role, we also process the results of the criminal history record check and other screening New York requires before an aide may enter a client's home.

What we use it for: assessing your application, verifying what you told us, arranging interviews, running the required checks, confirming you may legally be employed, and contacting you. We may keep your application on file for future openings; if you would rather we did not, say so and we will remove it.

Texts about shifts. If you tick the box on the application form, a coordinator may text or call you about shifts and open positions. These come from a person at a work number, not from an automated dialling system or a bulk messaging platform. How often we text depends on the cases we have, and your carrier's standard message and data rates apply. Ticking the box is optional, it is never a condition of applying or of being hired, and replying STOP ends the texts.

Section 6Cookies and tracking

This site uses cookies and similar technologies. Some are necessary; others are for analytics and advertising. Here is what actually runs, named plainly:

• Google Analytics, through Google Tag Manager. How many people visit, which pages they read, where they came from. Cookies beginning with _ga.
• Meta Pixel and the Meta Conversions API. Used to measure advertising on Facebook and Instagram and to show ads to people who visited the site. Cookie _fbp. Part of this runs on our server rather than in your browser, which means some of it still works even if you block scripts.
• A server-side tag container. Data from the site passes through a container we operate before going to the services above.
• Anti-spam. Cookies and browser storage used to distinguish people from automated form submissions.
• Fonts and libraries loaded from Google Fonts and a content delivery network. Loading a file from them reveals your IP address to those providers.

Forum pages are different. On the caregiver forum we use Google Analytics, login cookies, short-lived cookies for Google sign-in and Cloudflare Turnstile on sign-up and login forms. Advertising pixels, including the Meta tools above, are not used on forum pages. Details are in Section 15.

Section 7Advertising, and what counts as a sale

Interest-based advertising means being shown ads based on what you looked at, across different sites and over time. The Meta tools described above do this: someone who reads our page about care after surgery may later see our advertisement on Facebook or Instagram.

Nobody pays us for your information. We do not sell contact details, and we do not trade them. But several state privacy laws define a "sale" or a "share" broadly enough to cover what happens when an advertising cookie passes an identifier, your IP address or your browsing to an advertising network, even though no money changes hands. Under those definitions, our use of advertising tools may count as a sale or a share, and we would rather say so than rely on a narrow reading of the word.

You can stop it. Any of these work, and none of them affect your care:

• Turn on a Global Privacy Control signal. Some browsers and extensions broadcast an opt-out preference automatically. We honour it. You need to switch it on in each browser you use.
• Block or delete cookies in your browser settings, or use an extension that blocks advertising and analytics scripts.
• Use the industry opt-out pages: Network Advertising Initiative and Digital Advertising Alliance.
• Change settings at the source: Google Ad Settings and Meta Ad Preferences.
• Or just write to us at Team@ProLifeHC.com and ask us to opt you out. We will do it.

Opting out of interest-based advertising does not mean you stop seeing ads. It means the ads stop being chosen based on your browsing.

Section 8Who else sees it

• Our staff: the coordinator who calls you back and, where relevant, the nurse reviewing the case.
• Service providers who run the site for us: hosting, email delivery, analytics, advertising measurement, anti-spam. They act on our instructions.
• Advertising services, as described in Section 7.
• Health plans and government programs where you ask us to help arrange care through Medicaid, a managed long-term care plan or CDPAP, and only what is needed for that.
• Screening providers for job applicants, as described in Section 5.
• When the law requires it: a court order, a lawful request from a regulator, or an investigation by the Department of Health.
• If the business changes hands, as described in Section 4.
• Everyone, for forum posts. Questions and answers on the caregiver forum are public. Google also learns that you signed in if you choose Google sign-in, and Cloudflare checks forum sign-up and login forms for bots (Section 15).

Section 9How long we keep it

Where an enquiry actually sits. When you send a form, it arrives as an email to our coordinators and is also written into the website's own database, on the same server that runs the site, reachable only through the site's password protected administration area. Only the staff who handle enquiries can open it. Enquiries that do not turn into care are deleted from that database after 24 months. If you ask us to delete yours sooner, we do, unless the law requires us to keep it.

Enquiries that do not turn into care are kept while we might reasonably still be talking to you, and then are no longer used to contact you. Records connected to care are kept for as long as New York requires home care agencies to keep them, which is longer, and those are governed by our Notice of Privacy Practices rather than this policy. Job applications are kept while the role is open and, unless you ask otherwise, for a period afterwards in case something suitable comes up. Analytics data is kept according to the retention settings of the services in Section 6.

Forum information has its own retention periods, listed in Section 15.

Section 10Your rights and how to use them

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• See what we hold about you, and get a copy.
• Have it deleted, unless the law requires us to keep it.
• Correct anything that is wrong.
• Opt out of targeted advertising and of any sale or share as described in Section 7.
• Withdraw consent you gave earlier, including consent to calls and texts.
• Object to or limit how we use your information in certain cases.
• Complain to a regulator. We would rather you came to us first so we can fix it, but you do not have to.

No algorithm decides whether you get care or a job; people do. The only automated decision on this site is whether a forum post is published straight away or held for a moderator, and you can always ask a person to review it (Section 15).

How to ask: write to Team@ProLifeHC.com or call (718) 232-2777. Someone may act on your behalf if you authorise them in writing.

We will need to be reasonably sure who you are before handing over or deleting anything, which may mean asking you a question or two. We answer within the time the law allows and will tell you if we need longer and why. There is no charge, unless a request is repetitive or excessive, and in that case we will tell you before doing anything. If we turn a request down we will say why, and tell you how to challenge that decision.

Using these rights never counts against you. Your care, your application and the price you are quoted do not change because you asked.

If you need help with any of this in a language other than English, we will arrange an interpreter at no cost. See our Notice of Availability of Language Assistance.

Section 11Security

The site is served over an encrypted connection, and access to enquiries is limited to the staff who need it. No website is perfectly secure, and no one can promise otherwise. That is the reason for the rule in Section 1: medical details belong on the phone, not in a web form.

Section 12Other websites and social media

We link to outside resources: the Department of Health licence listing, Medicaid and health plan pages, Google reviews. We do not control them and we are not responsible for what they collect. Their own privacy policies apply once you leave this site.

The same goes for our pages on social platforms. Anything you post there is governed by that platform's rules, not by this policy.

Section 13Children

This site is written for adults arranging care, usually for a parent or a spouse. We do not knowingly collect information from children, and we do not sell or share the information of anyone we know to be under sixteen. If you believe a child has sent us information, tell us and we will remove it.

The caregiver forum is only for adults: members confirm they are 18 or older when they join.

Section 14Changes and contact

If we change this policy, the date at the top changes with it. Changes apply from the day they are posted. Where the law requires us to notify you of a material change, we will.

This site is hosted in the United States and intended for people here. If you visit from elsewhere, your information is handled in the United States, where privacy rules may differ from those at home.

Section 15The Caregiver Forum

The Forum at prolifehc.com/questions/ lets adults share questions and experiences about caregiving. Forum posts are public. Your screen name (or the label "Anonymous caregiver" if you choose it), the text of your posts, the date and the topics may be visible to anyone and may be indexed, cached, quoted or reproduced by search engines and other third parties. An anonymous label does not hide your identity from our authorized administrators, and it does not guarantee that readers cannot identify you from what you write.

Information we collect

• Your screen name and email address, and your password stored only as a salted, one-way hash. If you sign in with Google, we request only the "openid" and "email" scopes and receive your Google account identifier, your email address and whether Google has verified it. We do not receive your name, photo or contacts, and we do not store Google access tokens.
• Your confirmation that you are 18 or older, your acceptance of the Forum Terms and Rules, and your consents described below, each with the date, time, version of the wording and IP address.
• Your posts and edits, "Helpful" votes, reports you make, and the moderation history of your posts.
• Your notification settings, including when you turned the weekly email on or off.
• Security information: login time, IP address and browser information used to prevent abuse (for example, limits on failed logins).
• When you choose a new password, we check it against a public list of passwords exposed in data breaches (the "Have I Been Pwned" service). Only the first five characters of a SHA-1 hash of the password leave our server; the password itself never does.

Do not post confidential information

Do not publish your own or anyone else's contact information, details that could identify a patient or care recipient, medical records, photographs, or confidential information you learned through work or caregiving. We automatically screen posts for phone numbers, email addresses and street addresses and do not publish posts that contain them, but no automated screening catches everything. If you choose to post health-related information, remember that the published text may reveal sensitive information about you or your family.

Complaints about ProLife care, and reports of abuse or neglect

Concerns about care provided by ProLife Home Care, and posts describing possible abuse, neglect or exploitation of an older or disabled adult, are not published. They are held privately and sent to our Director of Patient Services and privacy officer, Anna Klyauzova, RN, who may contact you. We show you, and email you, our office phone number, and for possible abuse also 911 and New York City Adult Protective Services. We may handle these reports under our complaint procedures and any legal reporting duties.

Private request to a care coordinator

If a post contains contact details, the Forum offers a private form to ask a care coordinator to contact you. That form sends: your name, phone number, email address and ZIP code if you enter them; the page you were on; a note that the request came from the Forum with your screen name; the version of the consent wording you were shown; your IP address; and the date and time. It does not send the text of your post. The request is stored in our website's enquiry records and emailed to our coordinators, and is handled under Sections 2, 4 and 9 of this Policy. Private requests are never displayed on the Forum.

Moderation

We use automated rules to identify spam, links, contact details and rule violations. A post may be held for review. If an automated check holds your post, we email you the reason and a link to ask a person to review it. Moderation decisions are not used to decide anything about care, employment or pricing.

Emails

We send account and security messages (email confirmation, password reset, password-changed notices) and notices about your own posts (held for review, published). Notices when someone answers your question can be turned off in your account. The weekly forum email is off by default; we send it only if you separately turn it on. It contains forum content only, with no advertising of our services, and every issue has a one-click unsubscribe link that works without logging in. Registering on the Forum is not consent to marketing.

Cookies and similar technologies on Forum pages

• WordPress login cookies that keep you signed in.
• Short-lived cookies used only while you sign in with Google (they expire within 10 and 30 minutes).
• Cloudflare Turnstile on sign-up and login forms, which processes your IP address, browser (user-agent), TLS connection fingerprint and the site address to tell people from bots, acting on our behalf.
• Google Analytics measures visits to Forum pages, which includes the page address (for example, the title of a question you read). We do not use advertising pixels, including the Meta Pixel, on Forum pages, and we do not use Forum posts or Forum page visits for targeted advertising.

How long we keep Forum information

• Your account, posts, consents and settings: until you delete your account or ask us to (see below).
• Accounts whose email address was never confirmed: deleted automatically after 7 days.
• Posts held for review and never approved: deleted automatically 30 days after the last change.
• Held complaints about care and abuse reports (after they are emailed to our team): deleted from the Forum automatically after 30 days.
• Posts moved to the trash: deleted automatically after 30 days.
• Record that an account was deleted (date, what was deleted, who asked; no email address, only a one-way fingerprint): 12 months.
• Abuse-prevention limits tied to an IP address: 15 minutes to 24 hours.
• Website backups: up to 7 days.
• Web server logs: up to 30 days.
• Forum notification emails in our business mailboxes: up to 12 months.
• Private coordinator requests: as stated in Section 9 for enquiries.

Deleting your account and posts

You can delete your account at any time from your account page. You must choose one of two options; neither is pre-selected: delete your account and all your posts, or delete your account and keep your posts on the Forum signed "Former member". Your email address, password and login details are deleted in both cases. You can also ask us at any time, including after your account is gone, to delete all or some of your posts: write to Team@ProLifeHC.com or call (718) 232-2777; we may ask a question to confirm the request is yours. We remove deleted content from public display and our active systems promptly; copies may remain in backups for the period above and cannot be removed from search engines or third parties that already copied them. "Former member" replaces your name but does not guarantee that you cannot be recognized from your own words. You can get a copy of your Forum data by asking us.

Health information and your consent

When you join, we explain that posts are public and may contain health information, and we ask for two separate consents: to our collecting health information you choose to post, and to our sharing the text of your posts with a moderation provider for automatic review. We record the date, time, wording version and IP address of each. You can withdraw consent by deleting your account and posts or by asking us. We do not sell Forum health information and do not use it for targeted advertising.

Staff access and security

Only authorized personnel can access non-public account and moderation records, for operating the Forum, safety and legal compliance. Logins and forms are rate-limited. We will make any legally required breach notifications. No system is perfectly secure.

Who can use the Forum; contact

The Forum is only for people aged 18 and over; we close accounts we learn belong to minors. Our privacy officer is Anna Klyauzova, RN, Director of Patient Services: anna@prolifehc.com. For privacy requests you may also contact Team@ProLifeHC.com or call (718) 232-2777. We may ask reasonable questions to verify a request.