How we collect, use, and protect your information — written in plain language, with the details you need if you want them.
This Privacy Policy explains how Happyness Ventures, LLC, an Illinois limited liability company (“we,” “us,” or “SwimmersItch.com”), collects, uses, shares, and protects personal information in connection with the website at swimmersitch.com and related services (collectively, the “Site”). It also describes the choices and rights you have regarding your information.
By using the Site, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy and in our Terms of Use. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site.
| Feature | What you provide |
|---|---|
| Lake alert subscriptions | Email address, the lake you want alerts for, and an acceptance timestamp. We also generate a confirmation/unsubscribe token associated with your subscription. |
| Case reports | Your name, email address, the lake, latitude/longitude of the reported incident, date of occurrence, severity level, optional description, optional indication of whether you required a doctor visit, and up to five optional photographs. |
| Contact form | Your name, email, and the contents of your message. |
Like most websites, we and our service providers automatically collect certain technical information when you use the Site, including your IP address, device type and operating system, browser type and language, referring/exit pages, pages viewed, and the date and time of your visits. Some of this data is collected via cookies and similar technologies — see Section 7.
If you click “Use My Location” on the report page, your browser will ask you to grant access to your device's geolocation. If you allow it, we receive the latitude and longitude your device reports. You can also type or drag a pin to select a location manually. We do not track your location in the background.
We may receive limited information from our service providers — for example, delivery, open, or bounce metrics from our email vendor, or abuse/CAPTCHA signals from Google reCAPTCHA. We do not buy personal information from data brokers.
We use the information we collect to:
When you submit a case report, the content of that report — including the lake, approximate location, date, severity, description, and any photographs — is displayed publicly on the Site and may be indexed by search engines.
Please do not submit photographs that contain faces, identifiable tattoos, license plates, documents, other bystanders, or any subject matter you are not comfortable making public. By uploading a photograph, you warrant that you own it or have permission to use it, and you grant us the license described in Section 5 of our Terms of Use.
You can request that a case report you submitted be removed by emailing privacy@swimmersitch.com. We will make commercially reasonable efforts to take the content down, but removal may not extend to cached, backup, or third-party copies already distributed.
We do not sell your personal information. We share information only as follows:
The Site relies on several third-party services. Each has its own privacy practices, which we encourage you to review:
The Site uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies to make the Site function properly (for example, to remember that you have dismissed a banner) and, depending on our analytics setup, to measure aggregate traffic. We do not use cookies for advertising or cross-site tracking.
You can control cookies through your browser settings and, where applicable, through “Do Not Track” signals. Because there is no industry-agreed standard for DNT signals, the Site does not currently respond to them, but we limit tracking to what is necessary regardless of DNT state.
We may use privacy-respecting analytics tools (such as Plausible) to understand how visitors use the Site in aggregate — for example, which pages are most read. If we use a tool that relies on cookies or fingerprinting, we will update this Policy to reflect that.
We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes described in this Policy or as required by law. In general:
We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information against loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. These include TLS encryption in transit, access controls on our databases, and reliance on reputable service providers. However, no system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee the absolute security of any information you transmit to the Site.
The Site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have collected personal information from a child under 13, please contact us at privacy@swimmersitch.com and we will take steps to delete it.
You can:
To exercise any of these rights, email us at privacy@swimmersitch.com. We will respond within a reasonable time. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.
If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the CPRA, gives you additional rights, including the right to know what personal information we collect, to delete it, to correct it, and to opt out of any “sale” or “sharing” of personal information as those terms are defined by California law. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under California law. Categories of personal information we collect are described in Section 2. To exercise your California rights, contact us at privacy@swimmersitch.com.
If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, you may have additional rights under the GDPR or UK GDPR, including rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection. Our lawful bases for processing are (a) your consent (for alert subscriptions and optional submissions), (b) our legitimate interest in operating and securing the Site, and (c) compliance with legal obligations. You may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. To exercise your rights, contact us at privacy@swimmersitch.com.
The Site is operated from the United States and our service providers are located in the United States and other countries. If you access the Site from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States and other jurisdictions that may have different data-protection laws than your country.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the “Last Updated” date above and, if the changes are material, we will provide a more prominent notice. Your continued use of the Site after the update means you accept the revised Policy.
Questions, requests, or complaints about this Privacy Policy can be directed to:
Happyness Ventures, LLC
Attn: SwimmersItch.com — Privacy
Email: privacy@swimmersitch.com
Or use our contact form.