Privacy policy

UpdateWave is a research service for general contractors. For anything in this policy — questions, requests, complaints — email matthew@updatewave.org. Email is how to reach us.

• —Your account email. Used to send one-time sign-in links and to deliver what you buy. There are no passwords, so there is no password to store. If you buy before creating an account, we receive the email you enter at Stripe checkout and use it to create your account and deliver your purchase.
• —Purchase records. What you bought and when, tied to your account so your purchases stay accessible to you.
• —Project data. The listings we sell are compiled from public government records. They describe construction projects and the professionals attached to them — not our customers. See section 06.

That's the whole list. No behavioral profiles, no advertising identifiers, no third-party marketing pixels.

Stripe processes every payment. Your card number goes directly to Stripe and never touches our servers — we can't see it and we don't store it. We keep only what Stripe reports back: that a payment happened, for which product, and its status. Stripe's handling of your data is covered by its own privacy policy at stripe.com/privacy.

We set session cookies to keep you signed in — one for customer sign-in and one for the site owner's admin session. Beyond those, our hosting provider (Cloudflare) may set short-lived infrastructure cookies for security and load balancing; they don't identify you to us.

For traffic measurement we use a Cloudflare Web Analytics beacon, which gives us aggregate page counts. No ad trackers, no cross-site tracking, and we don't sell data to anyone.

We send two kinds of email. Transactional email — sign-in links, receipts, delivery of what you bought — is part of using the service. And if you've interacted with us, we may occasionally send product email.

Every product email honors opt-out: write to matthew@updatewave.org(or use any unsubscribe option in the message) and we'll stop. Unsubscribe requests are honored promptly.

Our listings describe construction projects and the professionals attached to them, compiled from public government records. If you are an architect or other professional who appears in a listing, you can have it removed: email us with the listing in question and we'll take it down. This mirrors the standing offer in our footer — listing removal on request, at any time.

If you live in California, the CCPA gives you the right to know what personal information we hold about you, to receive a copy of it, and to ask us to delete it. Email matthew@updatewave.organd we'll verify the request and respond within the statutory window.

We do not sell our customers' personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising — so there is nothing to opt out of on that front. If you are a professional who appears in a listing, section 06 describes how to have that listing removed at any time.

We keep your account email and purchase records for as long as your account exists — purchases stay accessible to you indefinitely. If you ask us to delete your data, we will, except records we're legally required to keep (payment and tax records, for example).

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top. If a change is material, we'll email account holders before it takes effect. Questions: matthew@updatewave.org.