Frequently Asked Questions

Covid Meetups is for anyone interested in taking precautions against COVID-19 and other diseases. By working together, we can all take precautions cooperatively.

Yes, as long as you are respectful towards those who choose to take precautions, anyone can join the platform.

Choosing to take precautions is a difficult decision in a society that has decided to ignore the harms of repeated infections. Hopefully, by finding others who are already taking precautions, it will be easier for your to take precautions in the future.

In an airborne pandemic, there is very little an individual or family can accomplish single-handedly. However, even with a small group willing to take precautions, we can improve all our lives considerably.

With a small group, social activities such as outdoor meetups can be relatively safe, especially if everyone is taking some precautions and/or agrees to be tested beforehand. The same applies to play dates for younger children.

With a larger number of members, it is possible to organize formal institutions (such as safer schools), or push for changes where governments have failed. This is starting to happen in some areas.

Lastly, members in an area can help contribute to a directory of COVID-safe businesses and services in an area, helping to facilitate a much wider range of activities while limiting infection risks.

There are three main things to do: finding others near you, participating in group chats, and finding businesses/services that seek to mitigate against COVID.

Finding others near you: After creating your account, you can search for others in an area around you. Upon finding another profile, you may message the other user. Once your message is sent, they will receive an email notification, and may respond to you.

Group chat: In an effort to facilitate group discussions among users from different areas, there are a variety of user-created groups on Covid Meetups. Some groups offer regular group video chats, while others cater to specific interests. Groups can be global (open to everyone on the network), or tied to a specific location such as a country, state or city/town.

COVID-safe businesses/services: Our directory allows any member of the network to upload the contact details and safety measures of a business or service. Anyone on the internet can search through our directory to find businesses and services who take COVID safety measures in their area.

Covid Meetups has no source of revenue today. The service is built and operated entirely by a group of World Health Network volunteers and remains free for all users.

While there are some costs involved in operating the service, these are kept to a minimum by design.

No, you can create an account by signing up with an email address or by using your Facebook account.

First, please check your junk or spam folder. If you cannot locate the email confirmation, please navigate to the following page to re-send the email. Finally, if that does not work, please contact us via the email address in the footer at the bottom of this page. We will be happy to help you.

We ask you to provide:

• A first and last name (we do not enforce a real names policy)
• Your location (country, state, city/town)
• A pin showing your approximate location on a map (for example: on a public building, such a coffee shop, near your home). The pin helps calculate distances between areas (for example: different parts of London).

We specifically ask that you do not upload any personal details such as your home address or phone number for safety reasons.

Lastly, we ask you to describe what you are looking for (for example: children's playdates, friendship, etc.) and what kind of precautions you are taking and willing to take.

Your profile includes a text field that allows you to write a short description of yourself and what you are looking for. We recommend honestly stating what kinds of precautions you take (or are willing to take), and what you are looking for. Profiles with clear descriptions are much more likely to receive messages.

As a safety precaution, we do not recommend including any personal details such as your home address or phone number.

There are risks associated with meetings others online as well as in-person. Firstly, we encourage you not to share any personal details such as your home address, email account, or phone number in your profile.

Secondly, if you decide to meet in-person with others, we strongly encourage you to take all appropriate precautions such as following COVID protocols and meeting in a public area. You may also consider organizing a call or a video conference with the other member beforehand. Unfortunately, we can neither eliminate nor fully mitigate against these such risks.

Upon creating a profile, others can see your first name, last initial (not full last name), your profile picture (if provided), icons representing the precautions you are taking, and your self-description.

Other users do not have access to your full last name, your email address (if you signed up using an email address) or Facebook account name (if you signed up using Facebook), or the pin showing your approximate location on a map. The pin is only used to calculate distances between users, such that you appear in searches if you are within a specific distance of another user.

We only use your data in order to provide the service. This requires us to share your data with a limited number of third parties, as described in the privacy policy. For example, when you create an account, your login details are stored with Heroku (Salesforce.com), a third party data hosting service.

We do not sell your data for financial gain to any third parties.

We use a number of complementary measures in order to keep your data safe. Specifically, (1) we host your data with reputable third parties such as Amazon Web Services, (2) we employ measures to protect against attacks, and (3) we comply with all applicable data protection laws.

Reputable third parties: In order to ensure data security, Covid Meetups does not use any in-house servers. Instead, the company uses Amazon data centers which are both accredited and regularly tested via security audits. For further details, please see our privacy policy orAmazon's security policies.

Security measures: All traffic between your device and the website is fully encrypted, ensuring all communications are confidential. Passwords, used for logging into the service, are also encrypted before they are saved on our database. We also have measures against code injection attacks, by preventing anyone from uploading code into the application. Finally, we use Cloudflare to defend against DDoS attacks.

Data protection laws: We have designed Covid Meetups to comply with all data protection regulations, such as GDPR in the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as CCPA in California. To comply with all applicable laws, we use Iubenda, which helps us manage aspects of our privacy program such as user cookie preferences and information rights. If you have concerns regarding your data, please contact us using the email address in the footer below.

After logging in, please navigate to "My Account" under your profile picture on the upper right hand side of the screen. Then select the "Settings" tab. At the bottom of the screen, please click on "Delete my account".

All your underlying data will be deleted immediately after you delete your account.