Privacy

Effective October 13, 2026. Beta version. PRA is in beta, and a lawyer hasn't reviewed these pages yet. We'll update them before the public launch and change the date above when we do.

The short version

• You don't need an account, and we don't ask for your name or phone number.
• We don't use advertising trackers, sell data, or share what you look up with marketers.
• We count visits ourselves, without cookies, and we don't keep IP addresses.
• Buildings you save and your light or dark setting stay in your own browser.
• The records we show come from public government sources and are about buildings, not about you.

What we collect

Visit counts. When a page loads, our server records the kind of page (for example “a building page”, never which building), the day, the kind of device, the site or campaign that sent you, and whether you opened or shared a story card or saved a building. To count daily visitors without cookies, it mixes your IP address and browser type with a random value that changes every day and keeps only the resulting code. The daily value is deleted after two days, so the code can't be traced back to you or linked across days. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we don't count you at all.

Search. What you type in the search box goes to NYC Planning's public address service (GeoSearch) to find the building. We don't save it in our visit counts.

Details you type into a report. If a report lets you add a detail such as an apartment number, we use it only to show you that page. We don't save it in our database or our visit counts.

Reports and feedback. When you report a mistake or send feedback, we save your message, the page or building it's about, and the topic you picked. Please don't include other people's personal information. The email field is optional. We use it only to reply about that message, never for marketing, and we delete it 30 days after we've handled your message, and in any case within 90 days.

Spam protection. To stop a form from being flooded, the server keeps a count per visitor for one day, keyed by the same kind of daily code (not your IP address).

In your browser only. Saved buildings, your last viewed building, which story cards you've seen, and your light or dark setting are kept in your browser's storage. They never reach us, and clearing your browser data deletes them. “Send to roommates” uses your device's own share sheet; nothing goes through our server.

Services that see some data

• Vercel hosts the site, so it receives your IP address and the pages you request.
• Neon stores our database, encrypted at rest.
• OpenFreeMap serves the map, so it receives your IP address and the area you view when a map loads.
• NYC Planning GeoSearch receives the address you search for.

These providers keep their own technical logs under their own policies. We don't sell or rent personal information or share it for advertising. We may disclose information if the law requires it or to protect someone's safety.

People named in public records

Some records name organizations, and some name people in a business role, such as a building's registered agent. We show a person's name only in that role, on that building's own page. We have no search by person, build no profiles of individuals, show no contact details, and never show which apartment an eviction happened in. If you think a record about you is shown in error, tell us through our feedback form.

Your choices

• Turn on Global Privacy Control to be left out of visit counts.
• Clear your browser storage to remove saved items.
• Ask us to delete something you sent through our feedback form. Since we don't collect names, tell us roughly when you sent it and what it said.

Security and children

We use encrypted connections and an encrypted database, keep secrets out of our code, and limit who can reach stored data. If a breach affects personal information, we'll notify people as the law requires. PRA isn't aimed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information.

Changes

We'll post changes here with a new date. See also our terms of use.