Privacy Policy

What we collect

CityRuleLookup collects minimal personal information. When you use the site, we may collect:

• Usage data: Pages visited, search queries, time on site, and referring URLs. This data is not used to identify you personally.
• Email subscriptions: If you subscribe to updates for a page, we store your email address, the page and topic you subscribed from, your browser type, and your country.
• Contact form: If you contact us, we store the name, email address, and message you provide, along with your IP address for spam and abuse prevention.
• Correction submissions: If you submit a correction, we store the information you provide (description, source URL, and optionally your email address for follow-up).
• Location lookups: If you use the location picker, the place name you type is sent to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service, and coordinates (if you provide them) are sent to the FCC's public geocoder, to resolve your county. We store the resolved place, not your identity.

Cookies

We use a minimal number of cookies. Here is exactly what we store:

• user_location (1 year). Stores the last city whose page you opened on this site, so the home page and topic pages can point you back to it. It holds only the city, county and state names and slugs, nothing about you, and it is never set from your IP address or approximate location. You can clear it with the “Forget this city” link wherever it is used.
• Analytics identifiers. Our analytics tools (Google Analytics and PostHog, below) set their own cookies and browser-storage entries containing a random anonymous identifier so repeat visits can be counted as one visitor.
• Advertising cookies. Google and its advertising partners set cookies and similar identifiers on the pages that carry ads. See the Advertising section below for what they collect and how to opt out.

We use Google Analytics and PostHog to understand how visitors use the site: pages visited, time on site, searches, and traffic sources. PostHog is configured without session recording and without identifying profiles; its events are tied to a random anonymous ID, not to your name or email. This data helps us improve content and prioritize new cities. You can opt out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

If you are visiting from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, our analytics tools do not load until you accept them through the consent notice shown on your first visit. Declining changes nothing about how the site works for you.

Advertising cookies are set by Google and its partners on the pages that display ads. Those pages are our ordinance detail pages, our state rule pages, and our articles; hub, search, comparison and other navigational pages carry no advertising code at all. The Advertising section below describes what is collected and how to opt out. You can also disable cookies entirely in your browser settings.

How we use your information

We use collected information to:

• Improve site content and user experience
• Process and verify correction submissions
• Understand which cities and topics are most searched so we can prioritize content
• Understand overall traffic patterns and site performance
• Send the emails you asked for (see the next section)

Email

We only email you if you gave us your address: a confirmation when you subscribe to a page, a notification when a page you subscribed to changes, and acknowledgments when a correction you submitted (with an email attached) is received or resolved. We do not send marketing email, and we never share or sell your address to advertisers. Emails are delivered through Resend, our email service provider, and contain no tracking pixels. Every email includes a one-click unsubscribe link; unsubscribing stops all future email immediately. We keep unsubscribed addresses on a suppression list solely so we never email them again.

Advertising

This site is owned and operated by CityRuleLookup. We display third-party advertising supplied by Google AdSense. Ads appear only on pages with substantive content: ordinance detail pages, state rule pages, and articles. Hub pages, search, comparisons and other navigational pages load no advertising code whatsoever.

Advertising networks place cookies and similar technologies and may collect information such as your IP address, approximate location, browser and device details, and the pages you view: used to choose which ads to show, limit how often the same ad repeats, and measure performance. We do not send your name, email address, or any other information you give us directly to an advertising partner. We do not control what these partners collect, and we receive only aggregate performance reporting in return: never data identifying an individual reader.

Google is one of those third-party vendors: ads on this site may be served through Google's advertising systems (including Google Ad Manager and Google AdSense). Google and its partners use advertising cookies to serve ads based on your visits to this and other websites. You can opt out of personalized advertising from Google by visiting Google Ads Settings, and you can read more about how Google uses data from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

If you are visiting from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, a consent notice is shown on your first visit covering the analytics tools described above, and you can change that choice at any time from the same notice. Wherever you are, you can opt out of interest-based advertising industry-wide at aboutads.info or the Network Advertising Initiative. Opting out stops ads from being personalized; it does not remove ads.

Data sharing

We do not sell your personal information for money. We share data with the advertising partners named above and the advertising companies they work with, for the purposes described above, and with Google Analytics and PostHog for traffic measurement. We also rely on service providers that process data on our behalf: Supabase (database hosting for subscriptions, corrections, and contact submissions), Cloudflare (site hosting and security), and Resend (email delivery). If you use the location picker, your typed place name or coordinates are sent to OpenStreetMap Nominatim or the FCC geocoder to resolve your county. Beyond that, we share personal information only as required by law. Note that some privacy laws define "sale" or "sharing" broadly enough to cover interest-based advertising: if you are covered by one of those laws, use the consent notice described above to opt out.

Your rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal information. Contact us at privacy@cityrulelookup.com for any data requests.

California residents (CCPA)

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) gives you specific rights regarding your personal information:

• Right to know: You can request what personal information we have collected, the sources, and the business purpose for collecting it.
• Right to delete: You can request that we delete any personal information we have collected about you.
• Right to opt out: You can opt out of the sale of your personal information. We do not sell personal information.
• Non-discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights.

To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@cityrulelookup.com. We will respond within 45 days as required by law.

Children's privacy

CityRuleLookup is not directed at children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at privacy@cityrulelookup.com and we will delete it promptly.

Data retention

We retain usage analytics data for up to 26 months. Correction submissions are retained indefinitely for content accuracy purposes. Email subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe; unsubscribed addresses remain on a suppression list so we never email them again. Contact submissions are kept as long as needed to handle your inquiry. Cookies expire according to the durations listed above. You may request deletion of your data at any time by contacting us.

Changes to this policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated revision date.