How Vanguard Optimization collects, uses, and protects member information. We do not sell personal data. Health-related information — the supplements you log and the questions you ask our assistant — is treated with particular care.

Effective date: October 2, 2026  ·  Last updated: October 2, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Vanguard Optimization, a service of Crawford Medical, LLC, collects, uses, and protects information when you use our website at vanguardoptimization.com (the "Service"). We take privacy seriously because the information members share with us is often health-related, and we treat it accordingly.

If you live in Washington State or Nevada, please also read our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy, which is linked from the footer of every page and describes additional rights you have over health-related data.

Questions about anything in this policy: [email protected].

What We Collect

Account information. When you sign up, we collect your email address, your subscription tier (Free, Optimized, or Vanguard), and basic account metadata generated by our membership platform. Signing up for the free guide creates your account immediately — we do not require you to click a confirmation link.

Payment information. Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. Stripe sends us a customer reference, the tier you purchased, and your subscription status. Your payment details are governed by Stripe's privacy practices at stripe.com/privacy.

Supplement stack data (Optimized and Vanguard members). Members on paid tiers can record supplements, peptides, hormones, and medications in the stack tracker: substance name, dose, frequency, your reasons for use, and any notes you write. This is stored in our PostgreSQL database, hosted by Railway, associated with a reference to your member account.

AI assistant conversations. When you use the Vanguard research assistant, your messages and its responses are sent to Anthropic's Claude service for processing. We do not permanently store full transcripts on our servers; conversations exist for the duration of your session and are subject to Anthropic's data handling policies at anthropic.com/privacy.

Email engagement. Our email systems record whether you opened an email or clicked a link in it, so we can tell which content is useful. Newsletters are sent through our content platform; the welcome series and research alerts are sent through Resend.

Technical data. Our servers log the ordinary technical record of a visit: network address, browser type, pages viewed, referring address, and timestamp. This is used for security, debugging, and aggregate usage analysis.

Advertising, and What We Share With Meta

We no longer run an advertising tracking pixel on this site. Until October 2026 a Meta (Facebook) pixel loaded on every page, including individual research monographs, and reported page views to Meta. It has been removed from the entire site. No third-party advertising or analytics script now runs in your browser when you visit.

What we do still send. When you sign up for the free guide, our server sends Meta a one-way encoded (hashed) form of your email address, together with which landing page you arrived on, so that we can tell whether the advertising we pay for actually produces signups. Meta cannot read your email address from the hashed value; it is used only to match against accounts Meta already has. We do not send Meta your name, your supplement stack, your assistant conversations, or which monographs you read. The signup form tells you this before you submit it.

How to avoid it. If you would rather we sent nothing to Meta at all, write to us at [email protected] and we will delete the record and exclude your address going forward. You can also simply not sign up through an advertisement — but because the measurement happens at signup, the surest route is to ask us.

Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use a small number of cookies, and none of them are advertising cookies:

  • Membership session cookies — set by our content platform so you stay signed in and can read members-only content.
  • Stripe — set during checkout, for payment processing and fraud prevention.
  • Cloudflare — set by our content delivery and security provider to route traffic and block abuse.
  • Email open and click measurement — a tracking pixel and wrapped links inside the emails we send you, not on the website.

We do not use third-party advertising cookies, cross-site tracking, or behavioural retargeting.

What We Do With It

We use the information we collect to provide the Service, process payments, communicate with you about your account, send the educational emails you subscribed to, understand which content is useful, measure our advertising as described above, detect and prevent abuse, and comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your supplement stack, your assistant conversations, or your account information with advertisers or data brokers.

Service Providers

  • Ghost (Pro) — content platform and member database
  • Stripe — payment processing
  • Anthropic — powers the research assistant
  • Railway — application hosting and the PostgreSQL database
  • Resend — welcome series and research alert emails
  • Cloudflare — domain routing and content delivery
  • Meta — receives only the hashed signup email described above, for advertising measurement

Each has access only to the data necessary for its function and is bound by its own privacy commitments and our agreements with it.

We recognise that your supplement stack, your assistant conversations, and the health content you read may reveal information about your health. Vanguard Optimization is not a covered entity under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and we are not a medical service, telehealth provider, or substitute for clinical care. We nonetheless treat this information as sensitive:

  • Stack records are visible only to you through your authenticated account, and to the administrator of the Service where there is an operational need
  • Assistant conversations are not retained in our database after the session ends
  • Health-related data is never linked to advertising identifiers and never shared with advertisers
  • We do not sell, license, or share health-related data with any outside party

Residents of Washington State and Nevada have specific statutory rights over this data. See our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

Data Retention

We keep your account information while your account is active. If you cancel, we keep the account record for up to 24 months so you can rejoin without re-entering anything, after which it may be deleted or anonymised. Payment records are kept as tax and accounting law requires, typically seven years.

Stack entries are kept while your account is active or until you delete them yourself. You can ask us to delete your stack data at any time. Assistant conversation data is not stored on our servers after the session ends.

Your Rights

You may ask us to give you a copy of what we hold about you, correct anything inaccurate, delete your account and its data, export your stack data in a portable format, stop sending you marketing email, or stop a specific use of your data. Write to [email protected] and we will respond within 30 days.

Every email we send carries a one-click unsubscribe link, and you can change which emails you receive from your account at any time. Depending on where you live you may have further rights — for example under the European General Data Protection Regulation, the California Consumer Privacy Act, or the Washington My Health My Data Act — and we honour those where they apply.

Children

The Service is not intended for anyone under 18 and we do not knowingly collect information from minors. If you believe a minor has created an account, tell us and we will delete it.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy. Material changes will be emailed to members and noted by the "Last updated" date above.

Contact

Vanguard Optimization, a service of Crawford Medical, LLC

Kristopher Crawford, MD

[email protected]

Crawford Medical, LLC · 626 W Evans St · Florence, SC 29501