Privacy

The short version

The reference pages have no accounts, no forms and no advertising. They count page views, and they use one analytics cookie, holding a random id, to see how readers move through the site and into the planning tool; it never holds your name or email, and Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track turns it off. The planning tool at app.resideact.org stores more, but only once you sign in, and only to do what you ask of it.

Page-view counts

Visits are counted with a privacy-focused analytics service, Vercel Web Analytics. It does not set cookies or use your browser’s local storage. Each visit is associated with a hash derived from the incoming request, and that hash is discarded after 24 hours, so the same visitor cannot be recognised from one day to the next or followed to other sites.

What is recorded is the page viewed, the site that linked to it, and coarse information about device type, browser, operating system and country. It is reported only as totals.

Product analytics

To learn which pages are useful and where readers of the planning tool get stuck, the site also uses Mixpanel, on the reference pages and at app.resideact.org alike. It records each page you view and, in the planning tool, the same steps counted below: starting a packet, the steps it reaches, and downloading, saving or sending one.

What identifies a browser. Mixpanel sets one first-party cookie on resideact.org holding a random id, so a visit that starts on a reference page and continues in the planning tool is seen as one visitor. It lasts a year unless you clear it, and the browser’s local storage briefly holds events waiting to be sent. If you sign in, your activity, including what this browser did before you signed in, is linked to your account by an id derived from it. That id is not your email address, and your email is never sent to Mixpanel. So that accounts can be counted, Mixpanel keeps a profile for each signed-in account holding only that id, when it first signed in, and the browser and operating system it used.

What is left out. Addresses are cut down before they are sent: the parts of a link that sign you in, open a packet sent to you or identify a saved packet are removed, as is everything after the “?” except campaign tags such as utm_source. Short links of the form resideact.org/r/… that we put in emails add such tags naming the campaign and the link, never your name or email address, and they are taken out of the address bar once read. Mixpanel is told not to work out your location from your IP address. It does not record what you type, collect clicks beyond the planning steps above, or record sessions. The page that draws packet PDFs is never tracked.

Turning it off. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, Mixpanel is not loaded at all. Clearing this site’s cookies starts a new, unconnected id.

Hosting

The site’s hosting provider necessarily processes standard request information — IP address, browser user agent and the address requested — to deliver pages and protect the site from abuse. This site does not use that information to identify visitors.

The hosting and analytics providers, Vercel and Mixpanel, process this request information in the United States.

The interactive map

The interactive map’s street basemap comes from a third-party map tile provider. When the map is on screen, your browser requests those tiles directly from that provider, which receives your IP address as part of the request. Fonts are served from this site, not from a third party.

The published dataset

The scored dataset available for download describes commercial buildings, not people. It is built from public city records from San Jose, Denver, Philadelphia and Boston — building footprints, heights, zoning and street addresses — and contains no personal information. Downloading it is counted as a page view like any other.

The planning tool

Before you sign in, the planning tool keeps your unsaved inputs in your own browser’s storage, so a reload does not lose them. They stay on your device.

When you sign in, it stores: your email address; the date of the terms you agreed to; the packets you save, which are a building and your inputs; for each person you send a packet to, their email address, the label you gave them and when the packet was sent, opened and viewed; and corrections sent from your packets.

How it is used. It counts visits to its start page and, for each building, when a new packet is started, which steps it reaches, and when a PDF is downloaded or a packet is saved or sent, with the kind of recipient (a lender, city staff, a partner or a view link) but never their address. Your browser marks what it has counted for as long as the tab is open, so a reload is not counted twice. The counts the site keeps itself name the building, not you: they hold no email address, account or IP address. The same events also go to Mixpanel, where they are linked to your browser’s random id and, once you sign in, to your account, as described under product analytics.

One cookie. Signing in sets a single cookie that keeps you signed in for 30 days. It identifies your account to this site alone, cannot be read by scripts on the page, and is removed when you sign out. There are no advertising or cross-site cookies.

If someone sends you a packet. They gave this site your email address. It is used to deliver that packet, and for nothing else; you are not added to any list. When you open the packet’s link, the visit is recorded and shown to the sender, and the email may carry a small image that tells the sender when it was opened. Mixpanel counts that visit like any other page view, without the link’s private part and without your email address.

Corrections. A correction is stored with its topics, its text and the email address you choose to give. Your IP address is kept only as a one-way hash, used to limit how many corrections one connection can send. The same kind of hash limits how many sign-in links one connection can ask for and how much it can count; those are deleted after two days.

Who processes it. The database is hosted by Neon, email is delivered by Resend, product analytics are processed by Mixpanel, and the site runs on Vercel, all in the United States, on this site’s behalf. None of it is sold or used for any other purpose.

Keeping and deleting it. Sign-in links expire after 15 minutes and work once. Accounts, packets and the records of whom they were sent to are kept until you ask for them to be deleted: write to privacy@resideact.org from the address you sign in with, and they will be deleted along with the corrections tied to your packets and the Mixpanel activity linked to your account. A PDF the tool draws is kept for up to a day, so downloading it again is quick. Email providers keep their own delivery logs for a limited time.

What this site does not do

It does not sell data or share it for advertising, show advertising, track you across other sites or send marketing email. It asks for an email address only when you sign in to the planning tool.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

This site does not track visitors across other sites. If your browser sends either signal, the site does not load Mixpanel, so nothing is recorded about you beyond the aggregate page-view counts and, in the planning tool, what you ask it to store.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.

Questions and requests

The reference pages keep nothing tied to your name or email; their analytics know only a random id, which you can reset by clearing this site’s cookies. If you use the planning tool, you can ask for a copy of what it stores about you, including the Mixpanel activity linked to your account, or for it to be corrected or deleted. For that, or any question about this policy, write to privacy@resideact.org.

Changes

This page was updated, with the date at the top, when the planning tool added sign-in and again when the site added Mixpanel. If anything else changes how information about you is handled, this page will be updated first.