Privacy Policy

Heart of the Block is a free, community heart-health tool made in Brooklyn. This policy explains what information we handle when you use the site at heartoftheblock.org, and the choices you have. It works alongside our medical disclaimer.

Most of the site works without signing in. The Food Swap Finder, barcode scanner, heart-risk check, ABCs, recipes, directory, and the Numbers Tracker all run right in your browser. When you’re signed out, anything you enter into these tools stays on your own device (in your browser’s local storage) and is never sent to us.

An account lets you save your progress across devices. When you sign up and use it, we store:

• Account basics — your email address, and the optional display name and neighborhood you choose to add.
• Health logs you create — blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar (A1C), and weight readings you enter in the tracker.
• Activity — your daily check-ins and streaks, plan progress, saved scans, and favorite food swaps.
• Leaderboard (only if you opt in) — if you join the block leaderboard, your display name, neighborhood, points, and streak are shown to other signed-in neighbors. Your actual health numbers are never shown — only points and streaks.

We use what you give us only to run the features you’re using: to power your trends and streaks, keep your saved items, sign you in securely, and send account emails like confirmation and password resets. That’s it. We don’t build advertising profiles and we don’t use your health information for any purpose other than showing it back to you.

Account data is stored in our database provider, Supabase, and is protected with row-level security — a rule enforced by the database so that only your own account can read your rows. The site is served over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat your health information as sensitive and limit who and what can reach it.

We keep our list of outside services small, and we only use ones needed to run the site:

• Supabase — secure database and sign-in.
• Vercel — hosting that serves the website.
• Open Food Facts — when you scan a barcode, the product’s code is sent to this open public database to look up that product. No account or health information is sent.

These providers process data on our behalf to deliver the service; they aren’t permitted to use it for their own purposes.

You’re in control of your information:

• See and edit your numbers and profile any time from the tracker and your account.
• Export or delete your account and all its data — email us and we’ll take care of it promptly.
• Leave the leaderboard at any time, which removes your row from it.

We keep your information while your account is active. If you ask us to delete your account, we remove your logs and profile from our database. Backups are rotated on a normal schedule and then cleared.

Heart of the Block is meant for adults managing their heart health. It’s not directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from them.

If we change how we handle your information, we’ll update this page and the “last updated” date above. Meaningful changes will be made clear.

Questions, or want your data exported or deleted? Email privacy@heartoftheblock.org and we’ll help.