What This Website Knows About You.
Short answer: almost nothing. Here is the long answer, in plain English, with nothing left out.
The people behind this page.
This website belongs to Watchmen of The Streets, a homeless outreach of Habit Missions Ministry, Inc., a 501(c)(3) Christian nonprofit incorporated in North Carolina. When this page says “we,” it means the ministry.
The website itself was built and is maintained by Landslide Studios, a web design studio working for the ministry. Landslide Studios set up the hosting and the visitor analytics described below on the ministry’s behalf, and can see the same analytics reports the ministry can see. Landslide Studios does not sell, rent, or share any of it.
You can reach us any time at habitmissions@gmail.com, or by mail at Habit Missions Ministry, Inc., P.O. Box 1580, Cornelius, NC 28031.
Your card details never touch this website.
Every giving button on this site — the tear-off coupon on the front page, the amounts on the giving page, and the monthly patron tiers — is an ordinary web form that hands you off to PayPal. When you press it, PayPal opens in a new tab and you finish giving there, on PayPal’s own website.
The only things this site sends to PayPal at that moment are the amount you chose, a short description of the gift, the currency (USD), and the ministry’s own PayPal address so the money lands in the right account. Nothing about you is sent, because this site never asked you for anything.
Your card number, bank details, billing address and PayPal login are typed on PayPal’s systems. They do not pass through this website, are never seen by this website, and are never stored by this website. What PayPal does with them is governed by PayPal’s own privacy policy, which you can read on paypal.com. If you have a question about a payment itself, PayPal — not this website — is who holds the answer.
No PayPal software runs on this website. There is no PayPal button widget, no PayPal checkout script, and no PayPal tracking code on any page you visit here.
What the ministry receives back.
After a gift, PayPal sends the ministry a receipt in its PayPal account. That receipt normally shows the donor’s name, the email address on their PayPal account, the amount, and the date. PayPal decides what goes on that receipt, not us. The ministry uses it to thank you, to answer questions about your gift, and to keep the giving records a 501(c)(3) is required to keep.
The giving page also lists ways to give that have nothing to do with this website at all — a check in the mail, or an email to arrange a stock transfer or a fundraiser. In those cases the ministry simply receives whatever that method shows it: the name and return address on your check, or the contents of your email.
What the forms ask, and where it goes today.
There are three forms on this site, and this is every field each one asks for:
- The newsletter sign-up (front page and Get Involved) — your email address.
- The volunteer sign-up (Get Involved) — your name, your email address, your phone number if you choose to give one, and which times you are available.
- The letter to the editor (Contact) — your name, your email address, where you heard about us, and your message.
As this site is built today, none of those forms send anything anywhere. When you press the button, the page thanks you and nothing else happens: what you typed stays in your browser, is not emailed to us, is not saved to any database, is not added to any mailing list, and is gone when you close the tab. We would rather tell you that plainly than let you assume otherwise.
If you want to actually reach the Watchmen, email habitmissions@gmail.com or write to the P.O. Box above. If these forms are ever connected to a real inbox or a mailing list, this page will be updated to say so before that change goes live.
This site sets no cookies.
We have checked this in a browser: loading any page of this site writes no cookies to your device. That is why you have never seen a cookie banner here — there is nothing to ask you to agree to. We do not use advertising cookies, retargeting pixels, or cross-site trackers of any kind.
Two small things do happen inside your own browser, and both stay there:
- The page-turn animation. When you tap “NEXT PAGE,” the site keeps a copy of the page you are leaving in your browser’s session storage for a few seconds, so the next page can appear to fall on top of it like a sheet of newsprint. The next page reads it, deletes it immediately, and it is never sent anywhere. It also disappears the moment you close the tab.
- The “Daily Dispatch” box. The small giving reminder that slides up on the front page can be dismissed with the ×. Nothing is stored when you do — we do not remember that you closed it, which is why it reappears if you reload the page.
We count visits. We do not follow you.
Every page of this site runs Vercel Web Analytics, a visitor counter provided by Vercel, the company that hosts the site. It records that a page was viewed, which page it was, roughly where the visit came from (a link, a search, or typed directly), and general information your browser volunteers anyway — device type, browser, and country.
It does not set cookies on your device, it does not know your name, and it does not follow you to other websites. It exists so the ministry can see which stories people actually read, and whether the giving page is working. Vercel states this analytics is cookieless and does not track visitors across sites.
There is no Google Analytics on this site, no Meta or Facebook pixel, and no advertising network of any kind.
The complete list, by name.
- PayPal — handles every online gift, on its own website. See section F2.
- Vercel — hosts this website and provides the analytics above. Like every web host, Vercel’s servers record incoming requests — including your IP address, the time, the page requested and your browser — so the site can be served and kept secure.
- YouTube (Google) — the documentary video on The Watchmen page is a YouTube embed. We use YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com), which is designed not to set YouTube’s usual tracking cookies unless you press play. If you do press play, you are watching on Google’s systems and Google’s privacy policy applies to that.
- Facebook and YouTube links — the icons in the footer and on the Contact page are ordinary links. Nothing is loaded from those companies until you click one and leave this site.
The typefaces this paper is set in come from Google Fonts, but they are downloaded once when the site is built and served from this site’s own address. Your browser does not contact Google to read this page.
That is the whole list. We do not sell, rent, trade or share information about you with anyone, and we never will.
Retention, honestly.
- Form entries — not kept at all, because they are never sent anywhere. See section F3.
- Donation records — kept by the ministry for as long as its accounting and IRS obligations require, and kept by PayPal under PayPal’s own retention rules.
- Analytics and server logs — kept by Vercel for a limited window set by our hosting plan, then discarded. We do not keep a separate copy.
- Browser storage — seconds, and only on your own device. See section F4.
How to ask us anything, including to delete.
Email habitmissions@gmail.com or write to Habit Missions Ministry, Inc., P.O. Box 1580, Cornelius, NC 28031. You can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Tell us the email address or name to look under so we can find you.
Two honest limits. First, some giving records have to be kept for the ministry’s tax and accounting obligations, so those cannot simply be erased on request. Second, information held inside your PayPal account belongs to PayPal — you have to ask PayPal directly to change or remove that.
If you appear in a photograph published on this site and you would rather not, email us and we will take it down. You do not have to explain why.
When this page changes.
If we start collecting something we do not collect today — wiring up the forms, adding a mailing list, adding a new payment method — we will update this page and change the date at the top before the change goes live. This notice covers this website only. It does not cover Facebook, YouTube, PayPal, or anywhere else you go from here.
Questions about any of it: habitmissions@gmail.com.