You don't need an account
You can search Mae Helps without creating an account or giving us your name, email address, or phone number.
Your location
To show help near you, Mae Helps needs a starting point. You choose how to give it: let your browser share your location, or type a city, ZIP/postal code, or region.
Your browser asks your permission before sharing your location. Mae Helps rounds it to about 100 meters (roughly 350 feet) and uses it only to find and sort nearby results. We do not save your location to our database or connect it to you.
Your starting point is part of the search page's web address. That means it appears in your browser history, is included if you copy or share a results link, and can appear in our hosting provider's standard request logs, which are kept for a limited time.
If you type a location, that text is sent to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service to look up its coordinates.
Cookies
Mae Helps sets one cookie for visitors: it remembers whether you chose English or Spanish, for up to one year. Site administrators also receive a sign-in cookie when they log in. We do not use advertising, analytics, or tracking cookies.
What we don't do
We do not use analytics or advertising trackers. We do not sell, rent, or share information about you or your searches for advertising. We do not build profiles of what you search for.
Technical information
Like any website, our servers receive your IP address and basic browser information when you visit. Mae Helps uses IP addresses temporarily, in server memory only, to protect the site from abusive traffic, and does not store them in our database. Our hosting provider keeps standard request logs for security and operations for a limited time, under its own policies.
Services we rely on
Mae Helps uses a few outside services to work. Each has its own privacy policy.
Vercel hosts the website. Neon hosts our database, which stores the directory of resources — not your searches or your location.
When you open the map view, your browser loads map images directly from OpenStreetMap's tile servers, which receive your IP address and the area of the map you view. Typed locations are looked up with OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service. The Directions button opens openstreetmap.org with the resource's location and, if you searched from a location, your rounded starting point.
Mae Helps also lists national help lines and websites run by government agencies and nonprofits. Mae Helps does not send them your location or your search. If you call, text, or visit one, that service's own privacy practices apply.
Organization listings
Listings describe organizations and programs, not the people who use Mae Helps. Listing details such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and hours come from public sources and from our own review.
Children
Mae Helps does not ask anyone for personal information in order to search, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Changes to this policy
If what Mae Helps collects, or how it uses information, changes, we will update this page and the date at the top.
Contact
Questions about this page? Email help@maehelps.com.