Privacy

The address lookup

Address suggestions come from this site's own address index, fetched in pieces by your browser; the text you type is matched on your device. When you pick a suggestion, your browser works out the FCC hexagon for it and fetches that one coverage file directly from our data store. The address is not sent to this site's server and is not logged.

Two steps do leave your browser. If you press Check without picking a suggestion, the text you typed goes through this site's server to the US Census Bureau geocoder, and if that finds nothing, to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service, to turn it into coordinates. For every lookup, the coordinates (not the address) go through this site's server to the Census geocoder to find the county, so the result can link to the county page. Neither request carries anything that identifies you, and the server keeps a short-lived cache of answers, not of who asked.

Analytics

Pages carry Google Analytics, which records page views and the share button's use with a cookie-based identifier. It does not see the address you look up.

Contact form

A message sent through the contact form is emailed to the people who run the site, with the name and email address you gave so they can reply. It is kept in that mailbox and used for nothing else.