Privacy

Short version: we ask for the least we need to plan one afternoon, we do not sell anything or take referral fees, and we do not give your details to other organizations for their own purposes. Service providers process information on our instructions, as described below.

What we never ask for

Not on this website, not on the registration form, and not at the event: your Social Security number, your VA claim number, your disability rating, a diagnosis, medical records, or your service number. We have no secure system for any of it and no business holding it. If anyone asks you for those in the name of VETEFITS, it is not us.

What we do collect

If you register for the event we ask for your name and an email address, and roughly how many people are coming. Optionally: a phone number, a ZIP code, which topics you would like to ask about, and anything we should know to make the day work for you — a wheelchair, a hearing loop, a quieter room. That last field is for access needs, not medical history, and it says so.

If you subscribe to email updates — the box that appears on some pages, or the one on the registration form — we ask for an email address and, if you want to give it, a first name. The first name is optional and leaving it blank changes nothing except how the emails greet you.

Explicit email consent from registration, contact, and email signup is recorded here and synchronized to our contact and email provider as described below.

Why

Your email is how we reach you if anything about the day changes. The headcount helps us plan the room. The ZIP code tells us how far people travel. The topics tell us who to have in the room.

Email and text-message consent

Email updates and text messages are two different permissions, and each has its own unticked box. Leaving both unticked still registers you. We do not bundle them, and we do not pre-tick them. We do not give your details to other organizations for their own purposes. Our hosting and contact/email service providers process information on our instructions.

The subscription box that appears on some pages is the same email permission, asked somewhere else. It is unticked too, and ticking it is the only thing that puts you on the mailing list. Separately from all of this: if you have registered for the event, we will email you if the day itself changes — that is us doing what you signed up for, not marketing, and it happens whether or not you ever wanted updates.

Text messaging is deliberately separate because it is treated differently in law, and because plenty of people want the email and not the texts.

If you tick the text-message box, the messages come from VETEFITS and are about this event and related veterans resources. Message frequency varies, and message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to opt out, or HELP for help. Consent is not required to register for the event, and you can register without giving us a phone number at all.

Who is responsible for your information

VETEFITS is a program name and a website. It is not a separate legal entity, and it is not a charity in its own right. The event is hosted by Earth Saving Solutions, in partnership with Summit & Shore Alliance. The organization responsible for the registration information collected here — the one that holds it and decides what happens to it — is Summit and Shore Alliance, a Colorado nonprofit corporation. If you want to know what is held about you, or want it removed, ask through the contact page and it reaches them.

Where it goes

We have copied website form submissions, including the answers and consent choices you provide, into a Google Sheets spreadsheet used for event planning and responding to inquiries, and Google processes that copy as our spreadsheet service provider. That copying is paused: a submission you make now is not being added to it. This copy does not add you to a mailing list. Requests to correct or remove your information also apply to this spreadsheet copy.

VETEFITS event organizers can see your registration, including your name, email, phone and your answer to “Anything we should know to make the day work for you?”, on a password-protected organizer page, and can download it as a spreadsheet.

Registration and contact submissions are stored in this website’s own database. Your name, email address, which form you used and your email opt-in choice are also processed in GoHighLevel, our contact and email service provider, acting on our instructions. GoHighLevel is provided through Earth Saving Solutions, which handles this information on Summit and Shore Alliance’s behalf and doesn’t use it to market its own services. We do not send your message, your access needs, your benefit interests, your phone number or your other form answers there.

The subscription box on this website works the same way, and asks for less: your address, a first name if you gave one, and a label recording that the request came from this website. If GoHighLevel already knew your address, we do not change the name it has. The date and time you agreed, and the exact words you agreed to, are kept here rather than there.

The after-event survey asks optional questions about the day: how it went, what you used, and a few more depending on whether you came as a veteran, a service member, a family member, a vendor, a volunteer or a partner. You can answer without giving your name or email, and we do not keep your IP address or browser details with your answers. Your answers stay on this website: we do not send them to GoHighLevel or to any other service, and event organizers can read them and download them as a spreadsheet. Answers on a paper survey are typed into the same place. Two separate, unticked boxes at the end let you ask for a one-time follow-up email about your answers, or for VETEFITS updates; only if you tick one do we ask for your email address. Only the updates box is a request to join the mailing list: it is the same permission as the subscription box above and is handled the same way, so your address and a first name if you gave one are saved as a subscription and go to GoHighLevel, and none of your answers go with them. We do not keep an IP address with that subscription either.

There is no way to send you an email without a system that sends emails, and that is all this one is: a tool we use to send our own. We do not sell, swap or share your details with anyone, and nothing about subscribing puts you on anybody else’s list. Confirmation emails simply acknowledge your submission; marketing emails are sent only if you ticked the separate optional box. If any of this ever changes, this page changes first.

Marketing emails include an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing sticks. You can also reply to a submission receipt to ask us to stop updates. If you have unsubscribed before, subscribing again through this website does not quietly switch you back on — a person checks first.

Submission details and first-visit attribution

When you submit a registration, contact message, or email signup, we record the submission time, form and page used, consent selections, and a visitor IP address when our trusted network connection makes it available. IP information helps us investigate abuse and understand a submission. We do not keep a browser user-agent string in these form records. Authorized VETEFITS administrators receive your submission and these details by email; customer receipts do not contain this internal information.

We also record limited source information: the referring website domain and campaign labels from links, such as a campaign name or source. First-party browser storage remembers your first visit for up to 30 days so that a later form submission can retain its original source. If you arrive through a campaign link, the browser also remembers the campaign link you arrived from (its source, medium and campaign name, and the page you landed on), the first one and the most recent one, for up to 90 days. That holds no personal data, uses no cookies and is sent to us only with a form you submit. We also record the source on the submission page. This attribution is browser-provided context, not proof of identity. It is stored with the submission in WordPress and internal notification emails, not copied to GoHighLevel or our analytics tools. These records follow the retention and removal process below; email copies are handled as part of that process.

You can turn off first-visit attribution below. Global Privacy Control also turns it off. With it off, the browser’s saved first visit and campaign links are removed; only submission-page context is used. Your choice does not prevent you from using any form or change records you already submitted.

Turn off first-visit attribution

How long we keep it

We keep registration and related records for as long as is reasonably necessary — to run the event and the program, to keep our own records straight, and for operational, legal or other legitimate reasons. If you asked us to stay in touch, the details needed to do that are kept until you opt out or until they are no longer needed. There is no fixed deletion date, and we are not promising to hold anything forever: a record is kept while it has a reason to exist, and not after. You can ask to be removed at any time — see below.

Getting removed

Reply to any email we send and ask. That is the whole process. You can also ask through the contact page.

The ordinary technical things

The site runs on WordPress and sits behind a content delivery network, which means our host and that network see standard server request logs. We do not run advertising trackers or sell data to anyone.

We use two measurement tools, and it is worth being plain about what each one does. Google Analytics counts visits: which pages people read, which pages they arrive on and leave from, whether they came from a search or a link, and the approximate location Google works out from the network you are on. Microsoft Clarity records how pages are used — mouse movement, clicks, scrolling — and can replay a visit as a session recording.

We use them for one reason: to find the places where this site is hard to use, on a site built for people who may be reading it on a phone, with a screen reader, or with tired eyes. We have configured Google Analytics so that it is not sent what you type into our forms: when you finish registering, it is told that a registration happened and on which page, never who registered, and never your name, email address or phone number. Microsoft Clarity records page interaction for usability analysis, and what its recordings retain is governed by Microsoft’s own privacy policy and masking controls rather than by us. Both tools set cookies, and both are run by companies outside VETEFITS.

Both of these run when you use the site. There is no cookie banner and nothing to click first — we judged that a dialog in front of someone trying to read about their benefits was the worse trade. That is a description of how this site behaves, not a statement about what any particular law requires. We do not run advertising or remarketing features on either tool: Google Signals, User-ID and Google’s automatic collection of user-provided data are all switched off, and Google is set to discard the event-level records behind this property after 14 months. Aggregate totals in Google’s own standard reports are kept for longer than that, and how long is Google’s decision rather than ours.

If you would rather not be measured: most browsers have a tracker-blocking setting, and browser extensions and privacy-focused browsers block both of these tools. Google publishes a Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, and Microsoft’s own privacy controls cover Clarity. Blocking either one changes nothing about the site, the registration form, or anything you have already sent us.