The National Human Trafficking Hotline collects two types of data - personally identifying information, such as location of a particular trafficking case and name of an alleged trafficker, and non-personally identifying information such as the city/state of a caller and how he/she learned about the Hotline.
The Trafficking Hotline collects personally identifying information where necessary to help a victim or survivor access services and to provide to law enforcement for the purposes of helping victims get to safety and/or investigating potential human trafficking cases. Individuals can get help or report a tip anonymously, and are asked to share only as much information as they are comfortable providing. The Trafficking Hotline will never share personally identifying information to any external agency, including law enforcement, service providers, and government agencies without the explicit permission of the caller, unless where required by law. Read more about our confidentiality policy here.
The Trafficking Hotline also collects basic, non-personally identifying information about the caller, including his/her city and state, basic demographic information and how he/she heard about the hotline, and about the type of trafficking reported, including the city and state of the trafficking situation, and the basic demographic information of the individuals involved. Using non-personally identifying information, the Trafficking Hotline produces public reports with aggregate statistics based on region, trafficking type, and/or demographics to identify trends and patterns that can help inform anti-trafficking prevention and intervention efforts at the local, state, and national levels. The Trafficking Hotline will redact or group in an "other" category data we publish regarding unique or unusual cases if we believe it could be used to identify a particular person or situation. Check out our publicly available hotline statistics here.