PermitNotebook

Privacy Policy

Last updated

You can read every page on PermitNotebook without an account and without submitting any personal information. Nothing on this site is behind a signup, and we do not ask who you are in order to show you a permit rule.

What we do not collect

We do not ask for your name, address, or property details in order to answer a permit question. The Check your project tool runs entirely in your browser: the answers you pick are used by your own device to assemble the result and are not sent to us unless you then choose to submit a form. We never sell or rent anything you give us, and we do not buy personal information. Cookies set by advertising partners are a separate matter, covered under Advertising below.

Forms on this site

If you request a permit checklist by email, we collect your email address along with the state, locality, permit type, and page you asked from. We may use it to send occasional verified rule-change notes for your area; any email we send will include an unsubscribe option. We do not sell or share checklist email addresses, and you can request deletion anytime via our contact form.

If you submit a correction or contact request, we use what you send only to handle that request. An email address on a correction is optional, and we use it only to reply to you about that correction.

Permit help requests. If you submit the permit help form, we share the details you provide, with your explicit consent given on that form, with a vetted local permit expediter or licensed contractor so they can contact you about your request. We never share these details without that consent, and you can withdraw it or request deletion via our contact form.

Form submissions are processed and stored by Netlify, our hosting provider, and are accessible to us there. We keep them while they are useful for the purpose they were sent for and delete them on request.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand which pages are useful (pages visited, links clicked, approximate region). We do not use it to identify you personally. We use it for one practical purpose: finding pages that answer the question badly, so we can fix them. Google sets cookies to do this, and Google's own privacy policy governs what it does with that data. Most browsers can block these cookies, and browser level "do not track" or blocking extensions will stop the measurement without affecting anything you can read here.

If you read this site from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, Google Analytics on this site starts with consent refused, for both analytics and advertising storage, and sets no cookies on your device unless you give consent. Without consent it may still send Google a cookieless signal that a page was viewed, which Google uses to estimate visits in aggregate.

Grow

We also run Grow, a reader tool from Mediavine. It counts visits to the site, and it lets you save and bookmark pages to come back to. If you create a Grow account to do that, Mediavine collects your name, your email address and a password, and may use your email in hashed form for interest-based advertising. A Grow account is held by Mediavine, not by us, and is governed by Mediavine's own privacy notice in its Legal and Privacy Center.

Advertising

Ads on this site are served and managed by Mediavine, through its Journey program. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on prior visits to this and other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads based on your visits to this site and other sites on the internet. You can opt out of personalized advertising in Google Ads Settings or at www.aboutads.info.

Mediavine runs a consent tool alongside its ads. Where the law requires consent before personalized ads, as in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, it asks for that consent first. Where a US state law gives you the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your data for targeted advertising, it offers that opt-out. Mediavine's required disclosure follows: what its partners collect, and the industry pages where you can opt out.

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising (Ver 1.1)

The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The "help" feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at All About Cookies.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.

The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:

  • IP Address
  • Operating System type
  • Operating System version
  • Device Type
  • Language of the website
  • Web browser type
  • Email (in hashed form)

Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor’s referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.

If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit National Advertising Initiative opt out page. You may also visit Digital Advertising Alliance website and Network Advertising Initiative website to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at Digital Advertising Alliance’s AppChoices app to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please visit Mediavine Partners.

Advertising never influences what our permit pages say. That is a content rule rather than a privacy one, and it is set out in our disclaimer.

Affiliate links

Many permit pages carry a sponsored link, and often a banner image, for Angi, a service that matches homeowners with local contractors, through the CJ affiliate network. The banner image is stored on this site, so seeing it sends nothing to Angi or CJ. If you click a sponsored link or banner, you pass through CJ's tracking link, which records the click and may set a cookie so that Angi can credit us if you go on to request quotes. From that point Angi's and CJ's own privacy policies apply.

Your choices

You can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, and we will do it. Depending on where you live you may have these rights by law, under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation or under California's privacy legislation among others. We do not make you prove which one applies: send the request through the contact form and we will action it.

This site is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has sent us something, tell us and we will delete it.

We update this page whenever our forms, analytics, advertising, or affiliate practices change, and the date at the top says when that last happened.