Privacy policy

Information we collect

You can read most of Cancer Explained without giving us any personal information — we do not require an account. Depending on how you use the site, we may collect:

• Email address — if you subscribe to our newsletter or updates.
• Contact form submissions — the message and contact details you choose to send us.
• Donation information — details needed to process a gift, such as the amount and any dedication. Payment card details are handled by our payment provider, not by us (see below).
• Analytics — general information about how pages are used, so we can improve our educational content. We name the two tools we use, and what each one stores, in the Analytics section below.
• Cookies — we set no cookies of our own. Google Analytics sets one (see below), and you can decline it. Some tools remember your work using your browser’s local storage on your own device, which is not a cookie and is never sent to us.
• Chat or assistant messages — if you use a chat or “ask” feature, the questions you type, so the feature can respond. Please do not include sensitive personal or medical details.

Donations and payments

Donation payments are processed by third-party payment providers. When you make a gift, your payment card information is collected and handled directly by that provider under its own privacy and security practices — National Cancer Information Foundation does not store your full card details.

How we use information

We use the limited information we collect to respond to you, send updates you asked for, process and acknowledge donations, keep the site secure, and improve our educational content. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your information for third-party advertising — including through Google Analytics, which we have configured so that no data flows to Google’s advertising products.

Analytics

We want to know which pages actually help people, so we can write more of what works. We use two tools, and they are different from each other in a way worth explaining.

Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views without cookies. It does not fingerprint your device, does not track you across other websites, and collects no personal data. It runs for everyone and there is nothing to opt into or out of, because there is nothing stored on your device.

Google Analytics 4 is a Google product. It stores a cookie (_ga) on your device to tell a returning visitor from a new one, and it sends information about the pages you view — page address, referring page, approximate location from your IP address, and general device and browser type — to Google, who processes it on our behalf under their own privacy terms. Google discards the full IP address on collection and does not store it. We have configured the property so that nothing is shared with Google’s advertising products — no ad personalization, no remarketing, no audience building. We do not upload your email address or any other identifier to it, and no one on our side can use it to see what any individual person read.

Your choice. If you are in the EU, the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, we ask before that Google Analytics cookie is set, and nothing is stored until you say yes. Elsewhere it is on by default. Either way you can change your mind at any time using the Cookie preferences link at the bottom of every page — declining takes effect immediately and nothing on the site stops working.

Neither tool receives anything you type into the site’s interactive tools, and neither receives health information. What you select in the Cancer Diagnosis Navigator, the symptom checker, and the other tools stays in your browser, as described below.

Interactive tools and your selections

Our educational tools are built to keep your choices on your own device. When you use the Cancer Diagnosis Navigator, the symptom checker, or the screening checklist, your selections stay in your browser only. They are not stored on our servers, not saved to your account (there is no account), and not sent anywhere. Closing the tab clears them.

A few tools, such as doctor visit prep and saved progress on My Journey, remember your work between visits using your browser’s local storage on your device. That information stays in your browser; you can clear it any time through your browser settings. We deliberately do not collect health-related selections from these tools.

The Ask feature is the one exception where text you type is sent to our server so it can find relevant educational content and respond. Please do not enter personal or medical details there. We ask you not to include information that could identify you.

A note on health information

Please do not submit sensitive personal medical information unless a form specifically requests it. This site cannot give individualized medical advice, and general contact forms and chat features are not a secure place to share health details.

Links to other sites

We link to the National Cancer Institute and other trusted government, academic, and nonprofit resources. Those sites have their own privacy policies, which we don’t control.

Children

This site is intended for a general adult audience seeking educational information and is not directed at children.

Accessing, updating, or deleting your information

You can ask us to access, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you (such as your newsletter email). Email us at [email protected] and we’ll help.

Changes

If this policy changes, we’ll update this page. Continued use of the site means you accept the current version.