Privacy policy

The short version: no accounts, no login, and no personal data needed to use the site. Our own analytics set no cookies; two third-party services we load on all public pages — Google Analytics (first-party _ga cookies) and Mediavine's Grow reader widget (its own cookies/identifiers) — plus an Impact.com affiliate-link tag on our homepage, are each described below, and one switch (?notrack=1) turns off everything we load. Our host, Cloudflare, also adds a cookieless page-speed beacon at the edge (no cookies, no cross-site tracking) — described below too. Here is exactly what is collected and by what.

Our own analytics (first-party, cookieless)

Pages send a small usage beacon to our own server so we can count visits and see which pages help people. It stores no IP address, no cookie, no user-agent string, and no persistent identifier. Daily unique counts use a one-way token derived from connection data plus a secret that rotates every day, so visits can't be linked across days or to a person. Add ?notrack=1 to any URL to turn off all the analytics we load on your device (?notrack=0 re-enables).

Our host (Cloudflare Web Analytics)

The site is served by Cloudflare, our hosting provider, which adds its own cookieless analytics beacon (static.cloudflareinsights.com) that measures page-load performance and counts visits in aggregate. It sets no cookies, builds no cross-site profile, and stores no persistent identifier; Cloudflare processes your IP address transiently to deliver and measure the page. Because this beacon is injected by our host at the edge — not by our own code — it runs independently of the ?notrack=1 switch (which controls the scripts we load ourselves). Cloudflare's practices: cloudflare.com/privacypolicy.

Google Analytics

Public pages also load Google Analytics 4 for audience measurement (ad networks and partners generally require it). GA4 sets first-party cookies on this site (names starting _ga) to tell returning visits apart, and Google processes your IP to deliver the service. We have Google Signals off (no advertising personalization from our traffic) and we send no personal identifiers. The ?notrack=1 switch stops GA loading on your device (no new cookies; clear your browser cookies to remove existing ones). Google's own practices: policies.google.com/privacy.

Grow reader features (Mediavine)

Public pages also load Grow, a reader-features widget from Mediavine — the small floating button that lets readers bookmark or subscribe, and the audience measurement ad partners require. Grow is third-party code: it may set its own cookies and similar identifiers and processes usage data (including IP address) under Mediavine's privacy policy, with Mediavine's own opt-out controls at privacy.mediavine.com. Creating a Grow account is optional and entirely between you and Mediavine — nothing on this site requires it. The ?notrack=1 switch stops the Grow widget from loading on your device entirely.

Location searches

When you search a ZIP, address, or use the locate button, the lookup runs in your browser against public geocoding services (Zippopotam, the U.S. Census geocoder, Nominatim/Photon, the FCC area API) and utility-territory data — your query goes to those third-party services to be resolved, the same as using any map site, under their own policies. We do not store your searched text or coordinates on our servers: our own analytics records only the search outcome (found/not found, the kind of search, and the resolved state + county code — never the words you typed). Your last-used view may be kept in your own browser's local storage.

Outage alerts (push notifications)

If you turn on alerts, your browser creates an anonymous push subscription (a delivery endpoint minted by your browser vendor — Google, Apple, or Mozilla process the delivery under their own policies) and we store that endpoint together with the county or city you chose — that's all: no email, no name, no account. Turning notifications off in your browser, or unsubscribing, invalidates it. Notification decisions ("is your power back?") run on your device. With ?notrack=1 set, alert-related analytics (subscribe/tap counters) are also suppressed — the notifications themselves keep working.

Feedback & contact

The contact form (and the map's feedback button) forwards your message to the operator's private inbox via a webhook — it is not stored on this site's servers and never published. Exactly what is sent: your chosen topic, your message, the optional reply route you provide (an email or handle — only if you want an answer), and, from the map's feedback button, a small auto-attached context block so we can reproduce what you saw: the place you had open (name + county code), the utilities listed, which data feed was showing, how old the data was, the page path, and your viewport size — never your IP, exact location, or anything you didn't have on screen. If you include personal details in the message text, we see them only to handle your note; ask in the same thread if you want a message deleted from the operator's inbox.

Advertising & affiliate links

Display ads are currently off. If we enable them, ads would be served by an established third-party ad network, which sets its own cookies/identifiers under its own policies — this page will name the specific provider and be updated the same day that changes. Some pages contain clearly-disclosed affiliate links (we may earn a commission; it never changes what we recommend). Our homepage loads Impact.com's affiliate tag (utt.impactcdn.com) — a third-party service that turns those outbound merchant links into trackable links so a partner can attribute a purchase to us, and records an anonymous page impression. It processes usage data (including your IP address) under Impact.com's privacy policy; the ?notrack=1 switch stops it loading on your device. Ads never appear inside live outage results, alerts, or emergency callouts — that rule is enforced in code.

What we never do

• We never sell personal data, and our own systems are built to hold as little of it as possible: no accounts, no stored IPs or user-agents, no stored search text, no persistent identifiers. What does exist — push delivery endpoints, feedback messages you write, and the connection data Google processes to serve GA4 — is used only for the purpose described above and is never sold or shared for advertising.
• No fingerprinting, and no advertising cookies of ours. The cookies/identifiers in use come from the two disclosed services above — Google Analytics' first-party _ga cookies and the Grow reader widget's own — each governed by its provider's policy and both disabled by ?notrack=1; our own beacon sets none.
• No accounts, ever, to check an outage.