Privacy policy

This is a plain-language description of what we collect, why, and what we do with it. We handle personal information in line with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). It is not legal advice.

Who runs this site

Forest City Insider is operated by Hometown Legend. References to "we," "us," and "our" on this page mean Hometown Legend.

What we collect when you visit the site

When a business owner logs in to manage a claimed listing, we set one first-party cookie, wg-owner-token, to keep that owner signed in. It is httpOnly (not readable by JavaScript), scoped to this site only, and it expires after 14 days. Visitors who are not logged in as a business owner do not receive this cookie.

We do not run any third-party analytics package on the public site today. There is no Google Analytics property configured for this brand, and we do not load Plausible, Posthog, Vercel Analytics, third-party tracking pixels, or ad-network scripts. The platform this site runs on supports an optional Google Analytics 4 property per brand. If we turn one on for Forest City Insider, we will say so here before we do.

Our hosting provider records standard server logs (request URL, response code, IP, user agent) for short retention to operate the site and diagnose problems.

What we collect when you subscribe to the newsletter

When you submit your email to subscribe, we store the email plus the source page (e.g. "footer", "subscribe-flow") and any UTM parameters from your URL. We send your email and these fields to Beehiiv, our email service provider, which delivers the newsletter and manages unsubscribes.

Beehiiv has its own privacy policy at beehiiv.com/privacy. We do not control what Beehiiv does with subscriber data; we use their service so we can deliver email reliably.

What we collect when you claim a business

The business claim form collects your name, email, phone, the business you are claiming, and an optional message. We store this in our database to verify the claim, and we relay a copy to our submission helper (Web3Forms) for operator notification. We use this information to verify ownership before approving a claim.

What we collect when you pay for Pro

Pro upgrades are processed by Stripe via Stripe Checkout. We never see or store your card number, expiration date, or CVC; Stripe handles all of that. After a successful payment, Stripe sends us a webhook that records the subscription on our side: which business, which tier, and Stripe's session identifier. Stripe's privacy policy is at stripe.com/privacy.

What we do not collect

We do not buy data about you from third parties. We do not run cross-site retargeting. We do not sell your email or any other information. We do not run ad networks or behavioral profiling on the public site.

Your choices

• Unsubscribe from the newsletter using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email.
• Business owners can log out at any time to end an owner session immediately; the wg-owner-token cookie also expires automatically after 14 days.
• Email us at the contact address to request deletion of your subscriber record or your claim submission. We will confirm and delete, except where we are legally required to retain a record (e.g. fraud-prevention logs).
• Use your browser's privacy controls. We do not respond to Do Not Track headers because there is no industry consensus on what they mean.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the "Last reviewed" date at the top of the page. Material changes will also be announced in our newsletter so subscribers see them.

Contact

Questions about this policy go to the email address on our Contact page.