Last updated August 7, 2026
This page describes exactly what happens to your information. It is written to match what the site actually does, and it is kept accurate rather than broad.
When you check an address: we keep no copy of the address, and no copy of the answer we gave you. Your address goes to the county's public records system and the result comes back to your browser. The only thing we write down is a running count for the day, like "Illinois, 12 checks" and "no appeal, 9 times." It's a tally on a page rather than a record of your visit, and there's nothing in it that could point back to you.
When you give us your email: we store your email address, which of our lists you asked to be on (a state waiting list, a property-type waiting list, watching your home, or interest in a packet), the state you selected, one short line of context such as your address or state name, the date, and your browser's user-agent string.
When you order a free packet: we store your email address, the parcel number and address the packet covers, the verdict our checker gave, the date, and the finished packet itself, so your link keeps working. We email you the packet link right away, and after that at most two follow-up emails asking how it went: one about two weeks in, one later asking how it ended. Reply to any of them and we stop writing to you.
When you answer our feedback questions: we store your answers together with the packet they belong to. Nothing you write is published unless you tick the box saying we may quote you, and if you do, we show your first name and city only and say the packet was free as an early user. Email us any time and we take your words down.
We keep one file per day. It holds counts and nothing else: how many times each page was opened, which sites or search engines sent people, how many checks were run in each state, which answers we gave, and how many packets were taken. A whole day looks like a scoreboard.
What that means in practice is that there's no row for you. We set no cookie, store no IP address, and create no id of any kind, so we can't recognize you when you come back, can't tell whether two checks came from the same person, and can't follow you to any other website. Honestly, even we couldn't reconstruct one person's visit from what we keep, because the information to do it was never written down.
The state count comes from the dropdown you pick, which is where your property is. We don't guess your location from your internet connection.
The phone or computer count is a single word, like "mobile" or "Android". We never keep the full description your browser sends about itself, because that string is detailed enough to help identify you, while "mobile" describes a couple of billion people and identifies nobody. We started counting it because we needed to know whether to build these pages for a phone screen first.
We also use Vercel Web Analytics, run by the company that hosts this site, which counts page views and the country they came from on the same terms: no cookies, no tracking pixel, no IP address stored.
So we turned all of this on because we genuinely didn't know whether anybody had found us, and one number in particular tells us something we cannot learn any other way. If a hundred people open the checker and only ten type an address, that gap is people deciding we can't help them before they've tried, and we'd want to fix whatever is causing it. If you block scripts, the page count simply misses you and nothing breaks.
The less we hold, the less there is to lose or misuse. Your property information is already public record at your county, and we would rather send you to look at it there than keep our own copy.
Email signups are stored in encrypted storage operated by Vercel, our hosting provider, in the United States. Access is limited to the owner of this business.
We keep your email until you ask us to remove it, or until the thing you signed up for stops existing. If a waiting list you joined is one we decide never to fulfill, we will tell you and delete the list.
Email hello@propertytaxbuddy.com and ask. We will delete your record and confirm. No form, no login, no reason required. If you are in a place with a legal right to see, correct, or export what we hold, the same email address handles that, and the answer is small because what we hold is small.
This site is for property owners and is not directed at children.
If this page changes in a way that affects information already collected, we will say so at the top and date it. We will not apply a new use to information collected under an older version without asking you first.