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Your privacy, plainly
This page says exactly what happens while you read this site — what we see, what our advertisers see, and the one line we don't cross. Plain English, no fine print.
What changed, and when
Until September 2026 this site carried no advertising and no analytics, and said so on every page. That is no longer true. As of September 17, 2026, Lodestone runs display advertising so that it can pay for itself and keep growing. We would rather tell you that plainly than leave a comfortable sentence up after it stopped being accurate — so this page was rewritten before the first ad went live, which is exactly what the old policy promised we would do.
What we collect ourselves
Still nothing that identifies you. There is no sign-up, no login, no account, and no form anywhere on this site that asks for your name, your email, or your phone number. We never ask who you are or who you are looking for. We do use analytics to see which pages get read and which searches come up empty, so we can find the gaps in the data and fill them — that is counted in aggregate, not attached to you. We build no profile of you, and we have nothing about you to sell.
What the ads collect
The ads are served by Google and its advertising partners — not by us. They set their own cookies and use them to choose what to show you and to measure whether it worked. That information goes to them, under their privacy policies; we never receive it, and we never hand them anything about you. You can turn personalized advertising off at Google's My Ad Center, browse in a private window, or block cookies in your browser. The directory, the safety data, and every guide work exactly the same either way — nothing you read here changes based on what you allow.
What happens when you click an affiliate link
Some pages — mainly the Essentials list and the buying sections of our guides — include affiliate links to outside retailers such as Amazon. When you click one, you leave Lodestone and arrive on that retailer's own website. To credit us if you buy something, the retailer places its own cookie in your browser. That cookie is the retailer's, not ours — it is governed by their privacy policy. It costs you nothing extra, and we never see your order, your payment details, or your shipping information. We only ever learn, in anonymous totals, that a sale happened — never who made it. Nothing on this site is gated behind a product link; you never have to click one.
What we will never do
We will never sell or share your contact information — we don't collect it to begin with. We take no "referral fees" or "placement commissions" for steering you toward a facility. That is the business model of most senior-care referral sites, it is the reason this one exists, and it is not for sale here at any price.
Advertising money never touches the safety data. Ads never reorder a list, never appear beside a facility carrying an abuse flag, a Special Focus designation, or a one-star rating, and are always visibly labeled as ads. If any of that ever changes, it changes on this page first, in plain language, before anything else.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, that's ours to fix — write us at [email protected]. See also our advertising & affiliate disclosure for how the site earns money.
This policy applies to visitors in the United States. Last updated September 17, 2026. It replaces the version dated July 6, 2026.