This policy explains what information this website collects, what happens to it, and how to ask for it to be removed. It covers www.melissanolan.com only.
If you go on to become a client, the information gathered during an evaluation is separate from this website. That is governed by the consent and privacy paperwork provided during the intake process, not by this page.
What the contact form collects
The contact form appears at the bottom of every page. It asks for four things, of which two are required:
- Your name (required)
- Your email address (required)
- Your phone number (optional)
- A message, if you choose to write one (optional)
You decide how much to put in the message. You do not need to disclose anything about a diagnosis, a condition, or your child in order to request a consultation. A name and an email address are enough to start a conversation.
Two further things are recorded automatically when you submit the form:
- Your IP address, used only to limit how many times the form can be submitted from one place in a short period. It is held briefly in the server's memory, is not written to a database, and is not attached to your message.
- The time the page was loaded, compared against the time you submitted, to filter out automated submissions.
Where you arrived from
When you first arrive, this site records which page you landed on, the address of the site that referred you if there was one, and — if you came from an advertisement — the details that identify it: the click identifier Google adds to the link, the campaign it belongs to, and the search term the advertisement was matched to.
It is held in your browser for that visit only, and sent nowhere unless you submit the contact form. If you do, it is included at the bottom of the email to Melissa, underneath your message, so that she can see which advertisement or search brought you to the site, and the advertisement click identifier is also sent to Book Assessments with your enquiry. It describes the link you clicked, not the person who clicked it.
It is not sold, rented or shared with anyone else. It is not used to build a profile of you or to follow you around the web, and this site does not add it to anything it sends to Google. Beyond that one email and Book Assessments, it is stored nowhere, and your browser discards it when you close the tab.
What happens to your message
The form sends your message as an email to Melissa Ortiz Nolan, and also records it in Book Assessments, the inquiry and advertising system that Melissa co-owns with her husband and that handles her advertising and enquiries. This website itself has no database and no account system, so nothing you submit is stored on the site. The email is delivered by Resend, a transactional email provider, and the site is hosted by Vercel; both handle the message in transit.
What reaches Book Assessments is this enquiry and nothing more:
- Your name, email address, phone number if you gave one, and your message
- The page you submitted the form from
- The advertisement click identifier, if you arrived from an advertisement
- A reference number generated for this submission, and the time you sent it
It is used for two things only: to reply to you, and to manage Melissa's advertising, which means knowing which advertisements produce enquiries rather than just clicks.
Your email address is set as the reply-to address, so that a reply goes straight back to you.
Beyond Melissa and Book Assessments, your information is never sold, rented, or shared with anyone. It is not added to a mailing list. Your name, email address, phone number and message are never passed to any advertising platform.
Preventing spam
Three measures screen automated submissions, and none of them involves a CAPTCHA or any third-party tracking:
- A field hidden from people but visible to automated scripts. If it is filled in, the message is marked as suspected spam.
- A check on whether the form was submitted faster than a person could plausibly complete it. If it was, the message is marked as suspected spam.
- A limit on how many submissions can come from one IP address in a short window. This is the only one that can stop a message being sent.
The first two mark a message rather than block it, and it is still delivered. That is deliberate: both of them can be triggered by a real person — a browser or password manager can fill the hidden field on your behalf, for instance — and a genuine request for help should never be thrown away because an automated check misread it. If your message is marked, it still reaches Melissa and she still reads it.
Analytics
This site uses Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager to understand how many people visit and which pages they read. These set cookies in your browser.
No personal information is ever sent to Google. Your name, email address, phone number and message are never transmitted to any analytics or advertising service, in any form, encoded or otherwise. When the contact form is submitted successfully the site records that a request was sent, as an event with no information attached to it.
On the advertising pages, a successful request also tells Google Ads that an enquiry happened, so that Melissa can see which advertisements are worth paying for. That message carries the reference number for your submission and nothing else. Measuring it this way means Google sets a cookie of its own to match the enquiry to the advertisement you clicked.
Google signals and ad personalization are deliberately switched off on this property. That means the analytics on this site are not used to build advertising audiences or to follow you around the web. It was a deliberate choice: people reading these pages are often researching a child's possible learning disability, and that is not something to hand to an ad network.
Google Analytics still contacts Google's own domains as part of how it works, and it records the address of each page you view — which includes any advertising parameters Google itself added to the link you clicked. If you would prefer not to be counted at all, you can block analytics cookies in your browser settings, use private browsing, or install Google's own opt-out browser add-on.
Children
This site is written for adults: parents, educational advocates, school staff, physicians and attorneys. The contact form is intended to be completed by an adult. Information about children is not knowingly collected through this website, and children should not submit the form.
Seeing or deleting your information
Email Melissa@melissanolan.com and ask. You can ask for a copy of what you sent, ask for a correction, or ask for it to be deleted. Deletion means the email is removed from the inbox it was delivered to, and your enquiry is removed from Book Assessments. Those are the only two places it is held.
If you are a California resident, you may have additional rights regarding your personal information under California law.
Changes to this policy
If the contact form, the analytics, or how information is handled changes, this page is updated and the date at the top changes with it.
Questions
Email Melissa@melissanolan.com with any question about this policy.