Privacy

We don't set tracking cookies, don't ask for consent because there's nothing to consent to, and never collect personal information. Aggregate traffic is measured with a cookieless analytics service so we can tell which pages are useful.

OutbreakIndex uses two privacy-preserving services from our hosting provider Vercel:

• Vercel Web Analytics — Counts page visits and referrers. No cookies, no localStorage, no cross-site tracking. Visitor IDs are a hash of your IP address, user agent, and a daily-rotating salt; the raw IP is discarded immediately and the hash resets every 24 hours.
• Vercel Speed Insights — Anonymous page-load performance metrics. Also cookieless. Used to find slow pages.

The fields recorded for each pageview are the page path, the referring URL, the country derived from your IP, an anonymised device and browser string, and the daily visitor hash described above.

• No tracking cookies and no advertising identifiers.
• No accounts, no logins, no email addresses.
• No precise location, no device fingerprinting.
• No third-party analytics — no Google Analytics, no Meta Pixel, no session recording.
• No selling or sharing of data — we don't run ads.

Aggregate traffic numbers tell us which pages people actually use and which articles cite us. Under the EU GDPR our legal basis is legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)). Because no personal data is stored, no cookie banner is required under the ePrivacy Directive.

Vercel Inc. processes the analytics data on our behalf as a data processor. Their handling is described in the Vercel Privacy Policy and the Vercel Analytics privacy documentation. Vercel processes data in the United States and the European Union; transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses.

The counter and map widgets that OutbreakIndex offers for embedding in other sites do not load analytics or any other tracking. Readers of an article that embeds one of our widgets are not measured by us.

The case data shown on this site is aggregated from public sources — WHO, CDC, ECDC, PAHO, ProMED, and others. When you click through to one of those sources, that site's own privacy policy applies.

Under the GDPR (and equivalent laws such as the UK GDPR and California's CCPA) you have the right to access, correct, or delete personal data we hold about you. Because we store no identifier that can be linked back to you, there is no personal record for us to retrieve or delete. For questions, email us at the address below.

If we ever start collecting more — or add a service that uses cookies — this page will be updated and the "Last updated" date at the top will change.

Reach us at contact@outbreakindex.com with any privacy-related question.