Effective date: [DATE] · Last updated: [DATE]
Stronger in the Light ("we," "us," or "our") operates this website to collect and share survivor stories, publish data about sexual assault, and connect people with support resources. We are committed to handling every piece of information we receive with care and discretion, recognizing that many visitors come to us in vulnerable circumstances.
This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect, why we collect it, how long we keep it, who we share it with, and what choices you have. Please read it carefully. By using this website you agree to the practices described here.
Geographic scope: This website is currently operated for and directed at residents of the United States. If you are located outside the United States, please be aware that information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States.
| What | Do we collect it? | How long? |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies / browser trackers | No | — |
| Raw IP address | No — one-way hash only | Indefinitely |
| Story / incident submissions | Yes | Indefinitely (or as required by law) |
| Contact messages | Yes | Indefinitely (or as required by law) |
| Article submissions | Yes | Indefinitely (or as required by law) |
| Donation records (name, email, phone, amount, Stripe ref) | Yes — card details handled by Stripe only | Indefinitely (or as required by law) |
| Survey responses | Yes — anonymous, no timestamps | Indefinitely (or as required by law) |
| Analytics (page counts, duration, flow) | Yes — fully anonymous | 90 days or less |
| Payment card details | No — processed by payment provider | — |
We operate six data collection systems on this website. Each one collects only what is necessary for its purpose.
When you send us a message through the contact form, we collect your name, email address, the topic you selected, and the body of your message. We use this to respond to your inquiry and to maintain a record of communications.
We also store a one-way cryptographic hash of the IP address the request was sent from (see Section 4 for details). We do not store your raw IP address.
When you submit a news article or press reference, we collect the article URL (required), the headline or title (required), the publication or author name (optional), an optional short excerpt, and an optional location (state, county, and/or town). Submissions are held for moderation before appearing on the site. An IP hash is also stored.
When you make a donation, your payment is processed entirely by Stripe. We do not receive or store your payment card number, bank account details, or other financial credentials. We store your name, email address, phone number (optional), donation amount, and the Stripe transaction reference generated upon payment. An IP hash is stored at the time of submission.
Please review Stripe's privacy policy before donating, as their practices govern how your payment data is handled.
When you submit a personal story, we collect the story text you provide and an optional title, along with any optional metadata you choose to include: state (required for map placement), county (optional), town or city (optional), your age bracket at the time of the abuse (optional, multi-select), the abuser's gender (optional), and whether sex trafficking was involved (optional). Stories are held for moderation before being published. An IP hash is stored.
PII Detection (optional): Before you submit, you may choose to run an optional personal information check on your story text. If you use this feature, the text of your story is sent to a third-party artificial intelligence service for analysis. That service will scan the text for potentially identifying information (such as names, phone numbers, or addresses) and return suggested edits. We do not store the results of this scan beyond your session, and the AI provider does not retain your story text after processing. However, by using this feature you acknowledge that your story text is temporarily transmitted to a third-party system outside our direct control. Use of this feature is entirely optional.
When you report an incident, we collect an approximate location — state (required), county (optional), and town or city (optional) — never a precise address. Optional fields include your age bracket at the time of the incident, the abuser's gender, and whether sex trafficking was involved. When locations are plotted on our map, a random offset is applied so no pin appears at a precise geographic point. An IP hash is stored.
Our anonymous survey collects only your responses to the questions you choose to answer. The survey covers five topic areas: details about the abuse (approximate location, age when it began, type of abuse, whether it was ongoing or involved sex trafficking); information about the abuser (gender, relationship to you, approximate age, religion, race); information about yourself (gender, race); whether and how you disclosed the abuse (who you told, whether you felt believed); and whether it was reported to authorities and what followed (police, CPS, prosecution, sentencing). All questions are optional — you may skip any you prefer not to answer.
We deliberately do not record submission timestamps, IP addresses, or any device identifiers alongside survey responses. Individual responses cannot be linked back to you, your device, or the time you submitted. Survey data is stored and used only in aggregate for the statistics shown on our Statistics page.
For most submission forms (all except the survivor survey), we record a one-way cryptographic hash of your IP address using the SHA-512 algorithm. This hash is used solely to detect and prevent abuse, spam, and coordinated manipulation of our data. Because SHA-512 is a one-way function, the hash cannot be reversed to recover your original IP address, and it cannot identify you personally. We never log or store your raw IP address on our servers in connection with a form submission.
Note that your IP address may still appear in standard web server access logs maintained by our hosting provider (see Section 8) for routine operational purposes.
We operate a minimal, in-house analytics system. We record anonymous page view counts, approximate time-on-page, and aggregate page-flow patterns (for example, which page a visitor came from and went to next). No personally identifiable information is collected as part of analytics, and individual sessions are not tracked across visits.
All analytics data is retained for 90 days or less and then permanently deleted. We do not use any third-party analytics services (such as Google Analytics) that would share your browsing behavior with outside parties.
We do not set cookies on your device. We do not use browser fingerprinting, pixel tracking, local storage identifiers, or any other client-side tracking mechanism. You can use this website without being tracked across visits or across other websites.
We work with a small number of third parties to operate this website. Where we share information with them, we do so only to the extent necessary.
This website and all data stored on it are hosted on servers operated by Hostinger. Hostinger may have access to server infrastructure, logs, and stored data as necessary to provide hosting services. Hostinger's own privacy practices govern data processed on their infrastructure.
Donations are processed by a third-party payment provider such as Stripe or PayPal. When you donate, you are submitting your payment details directly to that provider's secure systems. We do not receive your card or bank information. The relevant provider's privacy policy applies to that transaction.
We may use services from providers such as Cloudflare, Google, or similar platforms to protect this website against attacks, denial-of-service attempts, and other malicious traffic. These services may process your IP address and request metadata as part of delivering and securing the site. Their use is governed by their respective privacy policies.
If you choose to use the optional personal information check in the Share Your Story form, your story text is sent to a third-party AI provider for analysis. This transmission is encrypted in transit. The AI provider does not retain your content after the check completes. See Section 3d for full details.
The search feature on our story map uses the Google Maps Places API to look up cities, zip codes, and other locations you type. When you use the search bar, the text you type is sent to Google's servers to return location suggestions. This is governed by Google's Privacy Policy. The map itself renders using self-hosted tile data and does not contact Google.
When you submit a story, incident report, article reference, or any other content to this website, you grant Stronger in the Light a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual license to use, reproduce, display, distribute, adapt, and publish that content in connection with the mission of this website and organization. This license allows us to publish your story on the site, include it in aggregated reports, and use it in educational or advocacy materials.
You retain ownership of your original content. This license does not give us the right to sell your content to third parties for commercial purposes unrelated to our mission, and it does not prevent you from using the same content elsewhere.
If you would like to request removal of specific content you submitted, please contact us. We will honor removal requests where doing so does not conflict with our legal obligations or the integrity of our published record.
We may delete data sooner than the periods above at our discretion, or retain it longer if required by law, legal proceedings, or a legitimate operational need we are required to document.
We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect the information we hold:
No method of electronic storage or transmission is completely secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.
This website is not directed at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under the age of 13 has submitted personal information to us, please contact us so we can investigate and take appropriate action.
Depending on your state of residence, you may have rights regarding personal information we hold about you, including the right to access it, correct it, or request its deletion. Because most submissions to this site are either anonymous (survey) or minimally identified (story, incident), we may be unable to locate a specific record associated with you without additional information you provide.
To exercise any rights or ask about your data, please contact us through the contact form.
We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. If changes are material, we will make a reasonable effort to notify users. Continued use of the website after a policy update constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.
Questions, concerns, or requests about this Privacy Policy can be sent to us through our contact page.
This policy covers the Stronger in the Light website only. It does not cover third-party websites linked from our pages, or any future forum, which will have its own separate terms and privacy notice.