the short version first
Privacy at Hop It Forward
Last updated October 10, 2026
In plain words
- Your story is public. If you add a story, your first name (only if you give one), your city and your story appear on a public map that anyone can see. Please don’t write anything you wouldn’t want strangers to read.
- We don’t sell your information, show you ads, or use tracking or advertising cookies.
- A mailing address is only for mailing your card. It’s never shown on the site, and we delete the street address and postal code 30 days after the card is mailed.
- An email address is only for updates about Hop It Forward. It’s stored encrypted, never shown to anyone, and you can stop at any time.
- An AI checks and translates stories. Before a story is published, Anthropic’s Claude checks it for private details and anything inappropriate, then translates it into the site’s other languages.
- One small cookie remembers your device, so the same phone can’t add two stories to one card, and another remembers your language.
- It’s your information. Write to privacy@crowdtechgroup.com to see it, correct it or have it deleted.
Hop It Forward is a small, non-commercial social experiment run by Crowd Tech Group, Inc.
The details
What we collect, and when
When you add a story: the card’s code, your first name or initials (optional), the city, state or country you received it in, your story, and the date.
When you ask for a card in the mail: your name, your mailing address and how many cards you’d like.
When you follow Hop It Forward: your email address, and whether you’ve confirmed it.
Automatically, to keep things fair and free of spam: a random device ID (in a cookie), your browser’s name and language, the page that sent you here, and a scrambled (one-way hashed) version of your IP address — never the address itself. We also count visits to the card links and the homepage.
What’s public
A story’s first name (or “Someone” if you leave it blank), city, date and words are shown on the public map and on the card’s page, in every language the site offers. Anyone can see them, and someone could copy or screenshot them. Mailing addresses, email addresses and card codes are never shown.
How we use it
Only to run the experiment: to show the stories and the cards’ journeys, to mail cards that are asked for, to send updates to people who follow along, to keep out spam and abuse, and to understand, in total, how the experiment is going. Nothing is used for advertising or sold.
The AI that reads stories
Every story, with its first name, is sent to Anthropic’s Claude before it’s published, to check for private details (like a phone number or a full name) and for anything inappropriate; then it’s translated into the site’s other languages, and the translations are stored. Anthropic processes the story on our behalf and, under its terms, does not use it to train its models. Your city is not part of the check, and no email or mailing address is ever sent to it.
Who else handles it
A few services help run the site. Each one only gets what it needs to do its job:
- Amazon Web Services — hosts the site and its database, in Ohio, USA.
- Cloudflare Turnstile — the quick check that you’re a person, on forms. It looks at signals from your browser.
- Anthropic — checks and translates stories (above).
- Resend — delivers the emails we send, such as the link to confirm you’d like to follow.
- Geoapify and Photon (komoot) — receive the city you type, to find it on the map.
- OpenStreetMap — the map pictures come from its servers, so your browser connects to them when you view a map.
- Buy Me a Coffee — only if you click the coffee link.
We’d only share information beyond this if the law required it.
Cookies and storage
Two cookies, both needed for the site to work: a random device ID that remembers this browser for two years (so a card can’t take two stories from the same device), and your language choice, for one year. Your browser also remembers whether you’ve seen the pilot welcome note. No advertising or analytics cookies.
How long we keep it
- Stories stay on the map for as long as the experiment runs, unless you ask us to remove yours.
- Mailing addresses: the street address and postal code are deleted 30 days after the card is mailed (or the request is cancelled). Your name, city and country stay in the request record.
- Email addresses are kept until you ask to stop following.
- The automatic records (scrambled IP address, device ID, browser) are kept while the experiment runs, so abuse can be looked into.
- Backups of the database are kept for up to 14 days.
Your choices and rights
You can ask to see the information we have about you, to correct it, to delete it, or to stop us using it — including removing your story or your email address. Write to privacy@crowdtechgroup.com; we’ll answer within a month. If you live in the EU or the UK, you also have the right to complain to your data protection authority.
Children
Hop It Forward is meant for adults. If you’re under 16, please ask a parent or guardian before adding a story, asking for a card or following.
Where your information is
The site and its database are in the United States. If you visit from elsewhere — including the EU or the UK — your information is processed there.
If this changes
If we change how we handle information, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.
Questions
Write to privacy@crowdtechgroup.com.