Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 1, 2026

1. The short version

Most of the personal information on MeetaNeed is there because someone typed it into a listing and pressed publish. A need, a gift, a job or an event is a public post, and so is the contact information attached to it. Everything else is small: an account if you have one, a message if you send one, and ordinary web traffic records.

2. Who this applies to

This policy covers meetaneed.org. In this policy, "MeetaNeed", "we" and "us" mean this website and the people who run it. It applies whether you are browsing without an account, holding an account, or posting listings.

It does not cover other websites. If you follow a link from a listing to somewhere else, that site has its own rules and we have no control over them.

3. What you publish on purpose

When you create a listing, you choose what goes in it. Depending on the kind of listing, the form may ask for a title, a description, a category, tags, an address, a contact email address, a phone number and photos. Job listings can also carry pay, schedule, skills needed and a start date. Event listings can carry dates and a link.

All of that is published. It is visible to anyone who visits the page, including people who are not signed in, and search engines can find and store it.

You do not have to fill in every field. If you would rather not publish a phone number, leave it out and let people reach you through the site instead.

4. Your account

If you have an account, we hold the username, the display name and the email address on it, along with an encrypted version of your password. We cannot read your password. We can also see the listings, comments and reviews attached to your account.

Your display name appears next to anything you post. Your email address is not published as part of your account, although it will be published if you choose to put it in a listing's contact field.

5. Messages you send through the site

The site has contact forms, including one for reaching us and one for reaching the person behind a listing. When you send a message, it is emailed to the recipient and a copy is also stored on the site. That copy includes whatever you typed and the contact details you gave.

The site also keeps a log of the emails it sends, so that if a message fails to arrive we can find out why. Those logs contain the address the message went to and its contents.

6. Comments and reviews

Comments and reviews are public. They show the display name on your account and, if you use the same email address at Gravatar, the avatar image you set up there. Gravatar is a separate service run by Automattic, and requesting your avatar sends your browser's request to their servers.

7. What is collected automatically

Like every website, MeetaNeed runs on a server, and that server keeps ordinary logs. They record the internet address you connected from, which browser you used, which page you asked for, which page sent you there, and the date and time. These are used for keeping the site running, diagnosing faults and dealing with abuse.

8. Photos carry hidden information

9. Addresses and maps

Listings include an address, and that address is converted into map coordinates so the listing can be shown on a map. Both the address and its position on the map are public.

If you do not want your home pinned on a map, use a nearby cross street, a landmark or a public meeting place instead of your own address. The Terms already recommend meeting in public, and this is the same advice applied to the listing itself.

The maps on this site are drawn using OpenStreetMap. Loading a map means your browser requests map images from their servers.

10. Cookies

Cookies are small files a website stores in your browser. MeetaNeed uses them for a small number of things: keeping you signed in, remembering your name if you leave a comment, and remembering a few display preferences. Google Analytics also sets cookies of its own, described in the next section.

We do not use advertising cookies and we do not run cookies that follow you around other websites for marketing.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. If you block them, you will not be able to stay signed in.

11. Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is being used: how many people visit, which pages they read, and roughly where in the world they are. This is how we learn whether a new section is helping anyone. It is reported to us in totals, not as a list of individuals, and we do not use it to build profiles of people.

Google Analytics is not run for people who are signed in to an account, so once you sign in, your browsing on the site is not being measured by it.

Google processes this data on their own terms, described in Google's privacy policy. If you would rather not be counted anywhere, Google publishes a browser opt-out add-on.

12. Other services your browser talks to

Some parts of a page are loaded from other companies' servers rather than ours. Whenever that happens, your browser has to contact them directly, which means they can see your internet address and which page you were on. We are listing these because most sites do not, and you have a right to know who your browser is talking to.

• Google Fonts, which supplies the typefaces the site is set in.
• Font Awesome, which supplies the small icons.
• Gravatar, which supplies avatar images next to comments.
• OpenStreetMap, which supplies the map images.
• Google Analytics, described above.

Beyond those, the site runs on a hosting company's servers, and a web development contractor maintains it and therefore has administrative access. Both are working on our behalf and neither is permitted to use your information for their own purposes.

13. Who we share information with

Other than the service providers listed above, we do not hand your information to anyone. There are two narrow exceptions.

The first is the law. If we receive a valid legal demand, or if we believe someone is in immediate danger, we may give information to the authorities.

The second is enforcing our own rules. If someone is using MeetaNeed to defraud or harm people, we may share what we have with the people affected or with law enforcement.

14. We do not sell your information

We do not sell, rent, trade or license your personal information to anyone, and we do not share it for advertising. MeetaNeed does not take payments, does not take a commission and does not run ads, so there is no business reason for us to be doing any of that, and we are not.

15. How long we keep things

Listings, comments and reviews stay up until you remove them or we remove them under the Terms. Account records stay until the account is deleted. Server logs and email logs are kept for as long as they are useful for running the site and then cleared out.

We want to be straight with you about this: MeetaNeed is small and new, and we do not yet run an automatic deletion schedule. If you want something gone, the fastest route is to ask, and we will remove it.

16. Your choices

Most of what we hold is under your own control. You can edit or delete your own listings and comments at any time, and you can close your account.

You can also ask us to do any of the following, and we will, regardless of where you live and regardless of whether a law in your state happens to require it:

• Tell you what information we hold about you.
• Give you a copy of it.
• Correct anything that is wrong.
• Delete your account and what is attached to it.

There are limits. We may need to keep a record of something to deal with fraud, to comply with the law, or where deleting it would erase someone else's post along with yours. If we cannot do what you asked, we will tell you why rather than ignore you.

17. Do Not Track signals

Some browsers send a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal. There is still no agreed standard for what a website should do with one, and we do not currently change anything based on it. What that signal is usually meant to prevent, being tracked across websites for advertising and having your information sold, is something MeetaNeed does not do in the first place.

18. Children

MeetaNeed is for adults. The Terms require you to be at least 18 to hold an account or post, and the site is not designed or intended for children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we find out that we have, we will delete the account and what is attached to it.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has given us information, please get in touch and we will take care of it.

19. Security

The whole site is served over an encrypted connection, passwords are stored in scrambled form rather than as text, and access to the administrative side is limited to the few people who maintain the site.

We are not going to promise you that nothing can ever go wrong, because no honest website can promise that. What we can tell you is that the safest thing you can do is the thing described in section 3: only publish what you are comfortable having a stranger read.

20. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the site changes. When we do, we will change the date at the top of this page. If a change is significant, we will make a reasonable effort to say so on the site. Continuing to use MeetaNeed after a change means you accept the updated policy.

21. How to reach us

If you have a question about your information, want a copy of it, want something deleted, or think something on this page is wrong, please get in touch through the contact page. A real person reads those messages.

You may also want to read the Terms and Conditions, which cover how the site is used and where our part ends.