Browsing and signing in

Public pages and event details can be viewed without joining. Protected areas use Firebase Authentication for email/password or Google sign-in. Firebase handles passwords, verification emails, password-reset emails, and Google sign-in. The site verifies proof of a confirmed email, then stores a hashed provider reference, verified email, optional name, and a secure site session linked to your community account. The email is used to recognize the organizer. Passwords and Firebase sign-in tokens are not saved in the site database.

When email and Google sign-in is enabled, Firebase remembers your sign-in in browser storage. A Secure, HttpOnly cookie holds an opaque site session reference; its hash is saved in the database. Site sessions last up to one hour and can renew while you are signed in and using the website. Sign-out deletes the current site session. Disabling an account at the provider may take up to an hour to affect an already-issued site session.

Existing members can explicitly link their original ChatGPT community account to a new sign-in by proving access to both. This keeps the same profile, miles, RSVPs, messages, and badge. We retain the account mapping. For an organizer who proves access to their original account and its linked sign-in, we also retain a role check bound to the configured organizer identity. Original community accounts are not automatically combined by matching emails or names. Account verification and password-reset emails are used for security; event notification services remain disabled.

Your community profile and events

When you join, we save your display name, optional city or area, activity preference, and joining date. We save your RSVPs and, when the organizer checks you in, your event attendance. Participant names and attendance are visible to the organizer, not in public event listings. Military verification is optional and is not required to join or participate.

Your miles and community totals

When you log miles, we save the distance, whether you ran or walked, the activity date, and the time the entry was created. These are self-reported entries, not GPS tracking or a connection to a fitness service. Your private mileage page also calculates weekly and monthly totals from these activity dates. Weeks run Monday through Sunday and are limited to the selected month. Removed entries are hidden from your log and totals and can be restored with Undo; the underlying record remains in the database until removed.

Contributing miles to public community totals is optional and off by default. You can enable it when joining or in My miles. The homepage and its public data feed show combined running and walking totals from members who opt in. Names, individual mileage totals, public profile identifiers, activity dates, account identifiers, email, city, and event attendance are not included in that feed. You can switch your contribution off in My miles; open homepages refresh about every 30 seconds.

The lighthouse membership meter shows the total number of community members. You can keep a private mileage log without adding your miles to the combined totals.

Optional Veteran badge

When online verification is available, you can choose to verify U.S. Veteran or retired military affiliation through ID.me. ID.me handles its verification process and requests your consent to share the result. Lighthouse processes that result to confirm eligible affiliation and retains a verification date and a hashed ID.me account reference linked to your member account. ID.me may return other attributes; Lighthouse does not save those attributes, identity-document copies, access tokens, or refresh tokens.

Your Verified Veteran badge appears within your own account. Public member mileage cards have been removed, so badges, names, and individual miles are not shown on the homepage. Previously saved badge-sharing preferences do not publish a badge there. You can remove your verification link on the Veteran badge page.

Starting verification creates a secure, temporary cookie and a short-lived database record to protect the return from ID.me. It expires after ten minutes and is consumed on return. Expired flow records are cleared when another verification starts. The badge records a verification at a point in time; it is not continuously rechecked. ID.me has its own privacy practices.

Challenges, achievement badges, and member polls

Joining a mileage challenge is optional. We save your challenge membership and joining time. Joining includes your active logged runs and walks dated within the challenge period, including earlier entries in that period. If a challenge closes early, entries dated after the closing day are excluded. The public hub shows only combined mileage and participant counts, without names or individual contributions. This choice is separate from homepage mileage sharing. Leaving removes your challenge membership and its contribution; editing or removing an outing updates challenge totals, including past periods.

Achievement badges are calculated from your current mileage log, membership, and organizer-recorded attendance. They are visible only in your own account and are separate from verified Veteran status.

Poll votes are linked to your account so each member has one vote per poll. You can change or remove your vote before closing. Individual votes are stored in the database but are not exposed to other members or in the organizer interface. The organizer sees aggregate results; members see them after voting or when a poll closes. Votes are retained after closing. Polls guide planning and do not confirm events.

Community feedback

The organizer can publish a real quote with the contributor’s permission. Attribution can be anonymous or use a first name only. Quotes are separate from member profiles and mileage totals. Contact the organizer to ask for a quote to be updated or removed.

Private conversations

Members receive a one-time welcome message from Q in their site inbox when automatic welcomes are enabled. New members receive it on joining; existing members receive it when they next visit their member dashboard or inbox. We retain a recipient marker to prevent duplicates. Replying starts a conversation with the organizer. Welcome messages are part of the site inbox and do not send email or text alerts.

When you send a site message, we save the name you provide, subject, topic, message content, dates, conversation status, and read state, linked to your site account identifier. You and the organizer can read that conversation. Other members cannot see it. Replies stay in the website inbox; check it when you sign in.

Public recaps and visitor counts

The organizer may publish a recap after confirming that a gathering took place. Recaps appear on the public event page and in Past gatherings. Share personal stories or names only with permission; contact the organizer to request an update.

Public pages record daily totals for page views and clicks on Join, Events, and Invite a Friend. These are activity counts, not unique visitors or completed sign-ups. The analytics database stores only a calendar day, a fixed public-page category, a metric name, and a count. It does not save visitor IDs, account details, IP addresses, referrers, query strings, or analytics cookies. Older daily buckets are removed when new counts are recorded, using a rolling 180-day window. The organizer can view totals; they are not public. Known bots and browsers requesting Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control are excluded. Sign-in cookies and Firebase browser storage remain separate security features.

Storage and outside links

Profiles, attendance, mileage entries, sharing preferences, messages, and settings are stored in the site’s hosted database. The application keeps these records until they are changed or removed; it does not automatically expire conversations. External map, Instagram, support-resource, and payment links take you to services with their own privacy practices. Payment information is entered with the payment provider rather than collected by this website.

Your choices and account help

You can edit your display name, city, and activity preference in your member profile, and update your upcoming RSVPs. To request removal of your Lighthouse member profile or conversation records, send the organizer an account and privacy message. This is a manual request the organizer can track and reply to; it does not delete a separate Google or ChatGPT account. Ask for sign-in records to be removed as part of your request if needed.

You can also contact @join.thelighthouse on Instagram if you cannot access your account.