Privacy Policy

Information we collect

CareRanks is a content publishing site. We do not require accounts, do not collect personally identifiable information for the core comparison features, and do not sell user data. Standard server access logs (IP address, timestamp, page requested, user-agent) are retained for 30 days for operational and security purposes.

Analytics

We measure site usage with our own first-party analytics, plus Cloudflare Web Analytics. Neither places cookies, stores anything on your device, tracks you across other sites, or requires a cookie banner. For each page view we record the page address, the country and region the request came from, the referring site, and whether the request appears to come from a person's browser or from an automated crawler. Cloudflare Web Analytics is a separate service run by Cloudflare; it reports aggregate statistics such as browser, operating system, and device type, and Cloudflare's own privacy policy applies to it. The rest of this section describes our first-party analytics.

To count unique visitors without cookies, our first-party analytics compute pseudonymous codes using secret salts: one from your network address and your browser's user-agent string that changes every day, one from the same information that changes every calendar month, and a monthly code from the network address alone. Your IP address and the full user-agent string are never stored in these records; we keep only the codes and a short classification of the request (for example, a person's browser or a named search crawler). We do not try to reverse the codes. They change every day or month and are not designed to identify anyone over longer periods.

Analytics events stay in our analytics service for about three months. We also keep these event-level records indefinitely, in private storage, so we can study how the site is used over time. Each record contains its date and time, the page address, the country and region, the referring site, simple interaction measures (such as time on page, scroll depth, and the name of an external site you followed a link to), whether the request appears to come from a person or an automated crawler, and the pseudonymous codes described above. Search terms and other query-string text are never recorded; the only link parameters we keep are the facility identifiers in comparison links. Pseudonymous records are not the same as anonymous records, so we treat them carefully: only CareRanks staff can access them, we use them only to understand and improve the site, and we never combine them with claim-portal account information. We do not use advertising networks and do not sell or share analytics data for advertising.

Hospital data

All hospital information published on CareRanks is sourced from public federal datasets. We do not collect, receive, or process Protected Health Information (PHI). CareRanks is not a HIPAA-covered entity and is not a business associate of any covered entity.

Contact

Questions about this policy: privacy@careranks.com.

Related: Terms of Use · Medical Disclaimer