Overview and scope
ApplyFreeDental.com is an independent oral health research and patient assistance information website operated by CivicHealth Oral Care Media LLC. This Privacy Policy describes how we handle information associated with our website, optional contact inquiries, browser-based tools, and any advertising or analytics that may be enabled on our pages.
This policy was originally adopted April 12, 2018 and was last revised during the October 2026 clinical and consumer data review. We publish explanations of dental assistance programs, not a patient portal. We do not provide clinical treatment, insurance enrollment, or patient records management. The rules that apply to a licensed dentist, government program, or third-party charity may differ from the practices described here.
Information we collect and do not request
We aim to collect as little information as reasonably necessary. When you browse a publicly available article, you can read it without creating an account. Our general contact form may ask for your name, email address, optional telephone number, inquiry category and short message so that our team can understand and respond to the request. Our separate Patient and Dentist Connection Desk may use limited contact details, ZIP code, general patient category, coverage type and type of requested assistance for a referral-information inquiry.
Our eligibility matcher, Federal Poverty Guideline income estimator, and referral letter generator run 100% client-side in your browser. Those tools do not upload their inputs to our site database. We do not intentionally request or maintain protected health information (PHI), Social Security numbers, Medicaid or Medicare member IDs, payment card credentials, complete dental records, or clinical images.
Do not type diagnoses, test results, sensitive health histories, Social Security numbers, insurance member IDs, passwords, or bank and payment details into any message field. Contact submissions are sent to our designated email service and may be retained in email inboxes and service logs as necessary to respond. An inquiry submitted through email is not the same as a secure patient portal and should not be treated as one.
We may also receive basic browser or server request information, such as IP address, request timestamp, device/browser type and error information, through our hosting platform or necessary security services. We use such information for site operation, abuse prevention, performance diagnostics and legal compliance when applicable.
How our browser-based clinical tools work
Our interactive eligibility matcher processes selected patient profile, insurance category and general dental need directly in browser JavaScript. The Federal Poverty Guideline calculator uses the household information that you enter to compute an estimated threshold. The referral letter generator combines your selections into an editable text document that you can review and export.
We do not run these calculations as server-side eligibility determinations. We do not use these browser-only inputs to create a treatment file or transmit them to a third-party clinic. When you choose to send a contact inquiry or an email draft, that is a separate communication containing the details you elect to include. We encourage you to remove any unnecessary health or identification information before sending.
Log files, security analytics and service providers
Like most publicly accessible sites, our hosting and delivery infrastructure may process server logs and security signals such as IP addresses, URLs requested, approximate device information, referrers, response statuses and timestamps. These may be used to defend against automated abuse, investigate technical failures, diagnose performance and maintain availability.
When a contact form is configured to send email, our email delivery provider processes the contact details and message to complete the requested communication. Our cloud infrastructure may use limited hashed security identifiers for rate limiting. We do not publish individual inquiry messages, sell a submitted medical narrative, or deliberately build individual health profiles from calculator responses.
Service providers operate under their own technical and retention practices. Request or event logs can persist for limited operational periods according to the services actually enabled. You may ask our compliance desk what contact data remains associated with an identifiable inquiry.
California CCPA/CPRA and other US consumer health privacy rights
Depending on the law that applies to you and to our operations, you may have rights to request access to certain personal information, correction, deletion, or information about data use and disclosure, and to opt out of particular sale or sharing practices. California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), recognizes rights relating to knowing, correcting, deleting, limiting certain sensitive information uses and opting out of qualifying sales or cross-context behavioral advertising.
Other states have enacted privacy laws that may govern consumer health data or certain online communications. We assess requests according to the relevant law, the data we actually hold, identity-verification needs and applicable exceptions. We do not assume that all privacy rights apply in the same way to every person or every website operation.
Send requests to compliance@applyfreedental.com with “Privacy Rights Request” in the subject line. Please do not email copies of identity documents, medical files or full government identifiers unless a separate secure verification process is specifically provided. We may need enough non-sensitive contact information to locate and authenticate the record covered by your request.
Visitors from the European Economic Area, United Kingdom and other regions
Our content primarily concerns US programs. If data protection laws in your place of residence apply, we will consider requests about transparency, access, correction, erasure, portability, objection, restriction or consent withdrawal according to the relevant legal basis and applicable exceptions.
Contact information sent voluntarily may be processed to respond to an inquiry. Service access, security measures and any optional advertising technologies may have separate legal bases depending on their purpose and location. The website does not present itself as an EU healthcare delivery service.
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
Our website is intended for adults seeking information about dental care and public or charitable assistance. It is not directed to children under age 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without appropriate authorization. If you believe a child has submitted identifying information, please contact our compliance team so we can review and delete it as appropriate.
Information security, retention and third-party links
We use reasonable safeguards intended to reduce unauthorized access, such as HTTPS on supported production services, restricted contact endpoint validation, spam resistance and limited data collection. No public website, email system or internet transfer can guarantee absolute security. For that reason, we strongly discourage sending medical histories and identification records to a general website contact desk.
Contact correspondence may be retained for the time reasonably needed to handle the request, preserve an operational record, protect the service against abuse, or meet applicable legal requirements. Data held by an outside provider may be governed by that provider's separate retention schedule. We do not promise a specific retention interval without confirming the deployment's actual provider configurations.
Official charity, health center, university, Medicaid, Google and other external websites maintain their own privacy notices. Their collection practices begin when you choose to visit or use those services. We encourage you to review a provider's privacy and intake policies before sending them documents or medical records.
Changes to this policy and how to reach us
We may update this policy when law, advertising technology, website functions or processing practices change. When a material revision is made, we will update the visible revision information and describe the active practices accurately. The original April 12, 2018 adoption date is retained as part of our archive history, not as a substitute for reviewing current data use.
Wilmington, DE 19801, United StatesPrivacy and compliance: compliance@applyfreedental.comOther contact options
Last reviewed: October 2026. This policy describes ApplyFreeDental.com's informational services and does not replace the separate privacy policies of dentists, hospitals, Medicaid agencies or connected charities.