BreatheCheck collects very little. Most of it is what you type into a signup box. If you sign up for an air quality alert, that’s an email address and a city. Reading city pages, the map, or the AQI scale collects nothing beyond standard web analytics. This page covers both, plus geolocation, plus California’s rules, in one place.
What the alert list stores, and why
Signing up for an alert stores your email address and the city (or cities) you asked to track. Nothing else. That pairing exists for one reason. It sends you a message when your chosen city crosses the AQI threshold you picked: 60, 100, 110, or a number you set yourself. That list is never sold, rented, or shared. Nobody is added to a second list they didn’t ask for. Every alert email carries a one-click unsubscribe link. Clicking it removes your address immediately. Not “within a few billing cycles.”
CAN-SPAM requires every commercial email to carry a real physical postal address. BreatheCheck doesn’t have one published yet. That’s a build gap ahead of the alert list’s public launch, not a hidden one. It’s tracked the same way a data error would be: on the public, dated log, once it’s resolved.
Geolocation: the map and “find my area”
The live map and the “find my area” resolver on the homepage use your browser’s own location API. With your permission, it routes you to the nearest tracked city page. That coordinate is used once, to pick a page. It is not stored against your email, and it’s not written into any history we keep. If you decline location access, both features fall back to letting you pick a city manually. Nothing is inferred from your IP address as a substitute.
Cookies and analytics
BreatheCheck runs standard, aggregate web analytics. It shows which pages get read, and which sources of traffic bring people here. That data is not tied to a name or an email address, and it isn’t sold. If you signed up for alerts, your email is stored separately from analytics. It lives in a system built for that one purpose, and it’s never merged into a marketing profile.
California: CCPA/CPRA
If you’re a California resident, CCPA/CPRA gives you specific rights. They cover both categories above: the analytics BreatheCheck collects automatically, and the email/city pairing you provide for alerts.
The right to know what’s collected is answered on this page directly. It’s an email and a city for alert signups, and aggregate analytics for everyone else. The right to delete works the same way in practice. Unsubscribing removes your alert record outright. There’s no persistent personal record behind the analytics for a deletion request to act on. The right to opt out of sale or sharing doesn’t require a toggle here. BreatheCheck doesn’t sell or share personal information under CCPA/CPRA’s definition of either term. There’s no sale for a toggle to switch off. And the right to non-discrimination holds regardless. Using any of the rights above doesn’t change what the site shows you or how it works.
Third-party links
Data retention
An alert record (your email and chosen city) persists until you unsubscribe or the address bounces repeatedly. There’s no separate “inactive but retained” state. Removal means removal. Aggregate analytics data isn’t tied to an individual visitor in a way that makes per-person deletion a meaningful operation. There’s no personal record behind it to keep or delete.
Children’s privacy
BreatheCheck is not directed at children. The alert signup does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If we learn that a child’s email ended up on the alert list, we’ll remove it. That’s separate from a different rule. The site will not write pediatric medical guidance at all, as the about page sets out. This one is about data collection, not editorial content.
Changes to this policy
If what BreatheCheck collects changes (a new analytics tool, a new signup field), this page gets updated to say so. A meaningful change gets a dated entry on the corrections log, the same way a data error would. We won’t quietly expand what’s collected without updating the page that’s supposed to describe it.
What we don’t have yet
We don’t currently publish a named legal entity or a registered business address. We also don’t have a data-protection contact separate from the corrections log. Those are real gaps, not oversights we’re pretending don’t exist. They’re listed here rather than papered over with a placeholder. Until they’re resolved, use the same public route we use for data errors for any privacy question or request. It’s the one confirmed inbox this site has.
Scope
This policy covers US visitors under CCPA/CPRA and CAN-SPAM. BreatheCheck is built for a US audience, and this page doesn’t claim GDPR compliance it hasn’t built. See about for what the project is more broadly. See the affiliate disclosure for how a product recommendation on a city page gets made and paid for.