Privacy Policy – Guide.MD

Last updated: August 6, 2026 Effective date: August 6, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how GigHz LLC, doing business as Guide.md (“Guide.md,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), collects, uses, discloses, and retains personal information through the Guide.md Service.

It covers visitors, people who search the directory, healthcare professionals, practice representatives, account holders, and people who contact us. It does not cover third-party sites or services that have their own privacy policies.

1. Information we collect

Information you provide

We may collect:

Account information, such as name, email address, login credentials, and account settings
Professional profile information, such as credentials, specialty, education, training, affiliations, practice locations, office hours, services, languages, biography, professional links, photographs, and video
Claim and verification information, such as information used to confirm identity and authority to manage a profile
Transaction information, such as plan, billing status, transaction identifiers, and limited payment details provided by our payment processor
Communications, such as support requests, correction requests, feedback, surveys, and dispute information
Search inputs, such as provider name, specialty, location, and any free text entered into a search or AI-assisted feature
AI-writing inputs and outputs, such as prompts, drafts, edits, and publishing choices
User Content described in the Terms

Information from public and third-party sources

We may collect professional information from:

Public government databases, including disclosed NPPES or other CMS data
State licensing and professional-board sources, if used
Practice, hospital, university, and professional websites
Licensed data providers
The healthcare professional, practice, or authorized representative
Other sources listed on our Data Sources and Corrections page

Public-source information is not necessarily current or physician-confirmed. We label unclaimed profiles and provide a correction process.

Information collected automatically

Depending on the page and your choices, we may collect:

IP address and approximate location derived from it
Device, browser, operating-system, and language information
Pages viewed, links selected, referring page, dates, times, and interaction events
Cookie or similar identifiers
Security and diagnostic logs

Do not include advertising pixels in this list unless they are actually retained. The recommended implementation is to remove advertising pixels and prohibit advertising use of health-related searches.

2. Health-related searches

A search for a specialty, condition, symptom, or provider can reveal information about a person’s health interests. Guide.md is not a medical-record system, and users should not enter medical records, patient identifiers, or details that are unnecessary to find a provider.

Recommended policy and required engineering behavior:

Use a health-related query only to return the requested directory results and maintain security.
Do not use it for targeted advertising, retargeting, lookalike audiences, data brokerage, or unrelated user profiling.
Do not disclose it to advertising networks or place it in a URL or referrer.
Retain identifiable query text only for the shortest documented period necessary, recommended no more than 30 days, then delete or irreversibly deidentify it.
Provide any separate consumer-health-data notice, consent, deletion right, or appeal process required by applicable law.

The published policy must describe actual behavior, not an aspiration.

3. How we use information

We may use personal information to:

Provide directory search, profiles, accounts, claims, verification, subscriptions, and support
Display and update professional profiles
Verify identity, authority, and account control
Process payments, credits, renewals, and cancellations
Generate search results and AI-assisted drafts requested by the user
Detect fraud, impersonation, abuse, and security threats
Diagnose errors and improve performance and accessibility
Communicate about an account, transaction, policy change, or support request
Send marketing communications where permitted and honor opt-out choices
Comply with law, enforce agreements, and protect rights and safety
Create aggregate or deidentified information that is not reasonably linkable to a person

Guide.md does not use profile payment status as a statement of clinical quality.

4. Public profiles

Profile information designated as public can be viewed, copied, indexed, quoted, or cached by search engines, AI systems, archives, and other third parties. Removing information from Guide.md may not remove copies from third-party systems.

Unclaimed profile information may come from public or licensed sources. Claiming a profile allows an authorized person to correct or add information, but it does not make every field independently verified.

Do not publish private home addresses, personal contact information, patient information, confidential employer information, or content you do not have the right to publish.

5. How we disclose information

We may disclose personal information:

Publicly, when information is part of a public profile or publication
To hosting, database, authentication, security, customer-support, email, storage, and infrastructure providers
To a payment processor for billing and transaction support
To an identity-verification provider for profile claims
To an AI-service provider when a user requests an AI-assisted search or writing function
To analytics providers approved for the relevant page and data type
To professional advisers, auditors, insurers, and financing parties under appropriate duties
To authorities or other parties when reasonably necessary to comply with law, protect rights and safety, investigate fraud, or enforce agreements
In connection with a merger, financing, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or sale of all or part of the business, subject to applicable law
At your direction or with your consent

Maintain an internal vendor register and a public service-provider list that names material vendors and explains their role.

6. AI providers

When you use an AI-assisted feature, relevant input may be sent to an AI-service provider to produce the requested output. Before publication, Guide.md must decide and disclose:

The provider or provider category
Whether prompts and outputs are retained
The retention period
Whether the provider may use the data to train general models
The regions in which the data is processed
Whether users can delete associated inputs and outputs

Recommended contract position: no training on Guide.md user data, minimal retention, no advertising use, and deletion support. Do not state those promises until the vendor contract and technical configuration support them.

7. Payments and identity verification

Guide.md should not store full payment-card numbers. Payment information is processed by Stripe, whose handling is governed by its privacy policy.

Profile claims may be processed by Stripe Identity. Collect the minimum information necessary. Recommended practice is to store only the verification result and transaction reference, not a raw identity-document image, unless retention is legally required. The final policy must identify who retains raw documents and for how long.

8. Cookies, analytics, and advertising choices

Guide.md may use essential cookies for authentication, security, preferences, and core operation. It may use privacy-appropriate analytics to understand aggregate site performance.

Recommended policy: Guide.md does not sell personal information for money and does not use or disclose health-related search information for targeted advertising. Remove the Meta pixel and similar advertising technology.

If Guide.md uses technology that constitutes “sale,” “sharing,” or targeted advertising under applicable law, it must provide a clear opt-out link, honor legally recognized browser signals where required, and update this Policy and the notice presented at collection.

9. Data retention

We retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, including security, dispute resolution, legal compliance, and enforcement.

Adopt and implement a schedule before publishing specific promises. Recommended defaults:

Replace this table with the implemented schedule.

10. Security

We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee that information will never be accessed, lost, altered, or disclosed improperly.

Only state that data is encrypted in transit or at rest after engineering verifies scope, exceptions, key management, backups, and vendor coverage.

11. Your choices and privacy rights

You may:

Update account and claimed-profile information through supported controls
Unsubscribe from marketing email using the link in the message
Adjust browser-cookie settings, recognizing that essential features may stop working
Submit a profile correction or suppression request at /contact/
Submit a privacy request at /contact/ or privacy@guide.md

Depending on where you live and whether the applicable law covers Guide.md, you may have rights to request access, correction, deletion, portability, or information about collection and disclosure; to opt out of sale, sharing, targeted advertising, or certain profiling; to limit certain uses of sensitive information; to appeal a denied request; and to receive equal service without unlawful discrimination for exercising a right.

We may verify your identity and authority before completing a request. Authorized agents must provide proof of authority where permitted. We will respond within the period required by applicable law.

To appeal a denied request, email privacy@guide.md with “Privacy Appeal” in the subject line and explain the request and decision you are appealing.

12. Professional-profile corrections

A privacy deletion request and a directory correction request are not always the same. Some professional information may remain available because it is public, relates to professional services, or is retained for security or legal reasons. We will explain the decision and the available appeal or dispute process.

13. Children’s privacy

Guide.md is not directed to children under 13, and children under 13 may not create accounts. Provider accounts, profile claims, and purchases are limited to adults. If we learn that we collected personal information from a child in violation of applicable law, we will take appropriate steps to delete it.

14. United States processing

Guide.md is operated from the United States. If you access it from another country, information may be processed in the United States and other places where our service providers operate, subject to applicable safeguards and law.

15. Third-party links

Provider websites, public databases, social platforms, video hosts, and other linked services control their own privacy practices. Review their policies before providing information.

16. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy to reflect product, vendor, legal, or operational changes. We will update the date above and provide additional notice when required. Material changes apply prospectively unless law permits otherwise.

17. Contact

GigHz LLC d/b/a Guide.md Los Angeles, California privacy@guide.md support@guide.md

18. California notice summary, if applicable

During the previous 12 months, Guide.md may have collected the categories described above, including identifiers, professional information, commercial information, internet activity, approximate location, account credentials, submitted media, and inferences needed to provide requested search or writing functions.

The sources, purposes, and recipient categories are described in Sections 1, 3, and 5. The retention criteria are described in Section 9.

Guide.md’s final disclosure must state accurately whether it sold or shared each statutory category and whether it used or disclosed sensitive personal information for purposes that trigger a right to limit. If the current Meta pixel remains, do not state categorically that Guide.md does not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising without a data-flow and legal analysis.

19. Consumer health data addendum, if applicable

If Guide.md collects free-text symptoms, conditions, treatments, or other consumer health data from Washington or other covered residents, publish a separate, conspicuous Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy. It should identify:

The categories of consumer health data collected
The purposes of collection and use
The sources
The categories disclosed or shared
The categories of recipients
How to withdraw consent
How to request access or deletion
How to appeal
The process for authorization before sale, if any

The better product decision is to minimize collection and prohibit advertising use rather than build a business model around sensitive search data.