HelpMaps Venezuela · DocumentationDOCUMENTATION · HELPMAPS
How we protect data
An emergency map handles two very different things: places, which exist to circulate, and people, who exist to be found by whoever is looking for them and by nobody else. This page explains how we treat each.
Places are published
A shelter, a kitchen, a donation point or an initiative is public information: its address, hours, contact and needs are there to travel as far as possible. There is nothing to protect there; the wider it circulates, the more help arrives.
People are protected
In an emergency, affected people do need to be identified: so that a family knows their people are alive and where to find them. That is what ends the anguish of thousands, and it is also the most dangerous kind of data a platform like this can hold.
The rule: The minimum for someone searching to recognise the person they are searching for is published, and nothing else. A name and the place they are at is enough to reunite a family. Home address, clinical status, reason for admission or that person's contact details add nothing to the search and do serve anyone who wants to cause harm: they are never public.
- Minors carry reinforced protection: no identity document and no photograph, on every screen and in every data export.
- A death is not published until it is confirmed, and it is shown with the care it deserves.
- Whoever reports a missing person leaves a contact only the team sees: a report is a lead to follow, never a publication.
- Nobody can download the full list of people. The public API publishes places, not people.
Where that protection lives: Not in a promise: in the database. Sensitive fields never leave it towards the application, and access rules are enforced on the server, not in the browser. A mistake in the interface cannot leak what the database does not hand over.
Note for this deployment: The people features are switched on country by country, and only where a network exists to confirm every record. If they are not active in Venezuela yet, it is because publishing a list of people with nobody verifying it does more harm than good.
Where the information comes from
- From the point itself: whoever runs a shelter or a donation point says what it receives and what it lacks.
- From the field team, confirming by phone or in person.
- From the public, through the form. Those suggestions do not publish themselves: they enter a queue only the team can read, and a person confirms them before they appear.
Why you will see dates everywhere: Because three-week-old data is a guess, not information. Every card says when it was updated and warns when it has gone too long without confirmation. We would rather you doubted an old record than trusted it.
Who can change the map
A vetted team. They publish live, with no review queue, because in an emergency waiting costs hours that do not exist. What holds that trust up is that access is revoked instantly and every change is logged with its author and time.
Deleting a point is reserved for administrators: to a family that was looking for it, a point vanishing from the map is indistinguishable from a place that closed.
Your rights
You can request access, correction or deletion of your data, and ask us to take down a point you reported. Write to info@helpmapvzla.net and we answer by the same channel. If you see something published that should not be, telling us is the most urgent thing on this page.
Need something or want to collaborate? info@helpmapvzla.net