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 load on our public pages, Google Analytics (first-party _ga cookies) and Mediavine's Grow measurement script (its own cookies and identifiers), and our homepage also requests an Impact.com affiliate-link tag. Each is described below. One switch (?notrack=1) turns all three off in this browser, along with our own analytics; it does not stop the map and outage data from loading, or ads once they are switched on.

Our host, Cloudflare, adds two things of its own to every page: a cookieless page-speed beacon, and an automated bot check that sets one security cookie (cf_clearance). They come from the host, not our code, so the switch does not reach them; both are described below. Here is 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. For each visit it keeps the page you viewed, the website that sent you (its domain only), the approximate country and state or province your connection comes from (as our host looks it up), whether you're on a phone, tablet or desktop, and the kind of action, such as a page view, a scroll or tap, a button used, a search's outcome or an alert turned on — never the words you typed. Those records are deleted after about 90 days.

It stores no IP address, no cookie, no user-agent string, and no persistent identifier. Daily unique counts use a one-way token computed from connection data, the date and a secret key held on our server. Because the date is part of it, the same visitor gets a new token every day, and because the connection data it came from is never stored, what we keep can't be linked across days or back to a person. Add ?notrack=1 to any URL to turn off all the analytics we load in this browser (?notrack=0 re-enables).

Our host (Cloudflare)

The site is served by Cloudflare, our hosting provider, which adds two things of its own to every page at the edge:

• Cloudflare Web Analytics: a cookieless 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.
• A bot check (Cloudflare's JavaScript detections): a small script that examines browser signals to tell people from automated traffic. It stores its result in one security cookie, cf_clearance, which your browser currently keeps for up to a year. Cloudflare lists that cookie as strictly necessary. Our own code never reads it, and it plays no part in our analytics or in advertising.

Cloudflare processes your IP address to deliver the page and run both. Because our host adds them at the edge, not our own code, both run 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 in this browser (no new cookies; clear your browser cookies to remove existing ones). GA never loads inside the outage widget other sites embed. Google's own practices: policies.google.com/privacy.

Grow (Mediavine)

Public pages that search engines may index also load Grow, an audience-measurement script from the ad-management company Mediavine. Grow can also show reader buttons for bookmarking and subscribing, but those are hidden on this site, so what runs is its measurement, including page-view reports to Mediavine's content-recommendation service (Recombee). To run, it also loads a font from Google Fonts and a frame from Grow's own site (app.grow.me).

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. Mediavine's notice for its ads and Grow says it shares or sells the personal information it collects to its partners, including advertisers, for interest-based advertising. The ?notrack=1 switch stops Grow from loading in this browser entirely, and it never loads inside the outage widget other sites embed.

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. Two lookups can also reach our own server, which keeps nothing from them: a ZIP the first service can't find is looked up on our server from public Census data, and if your device can't share its location, the locate button asks our host for the approximate city your connection comes from.

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.

Maps and live data

Some of what a page shows loads straight from public services, so your browser contacts them directly, the same as on any map site: the homepage map's tiles from Esri (ArcGIS) — the map is also set up to use CARTO's tiles, which it doesn't use today — and live figures from some utilities' outage-map provider, Kubra. If our own copy of the nationwide numbers is missing or more than 90 minutes old, the homepage also fetches them straight from ODIN, the U.S. Department of Energy's county outage data. National Weather Service alerts reach your browser through our own servers, not from the Weather Service directly. The services your browser does contact see your IP address, as any web request does, under their own policies; we add nothing about you to those requests.

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, Microsoft 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 and your message;
• the optional reply route you provide (an email or handle — only if you want an answer);
• from the map's feedback button, a small context block so we can reproduce what you saw: the search you had made (the place or street address it matched, or that spot's coordinates), the place you had open (name + county code), the utilities listed, which utility's data was showing, which source the numbers came from and how old they were, the page's full address, your viewport size, and the map area you were viewing (region-level, read from the map itself — not your device location);
• from the contact form, only the page path plus the same-site page you arrived from (its path alone — never its search text, and never an off-site referrer).

Either way: never your IP address, and never your device's exact location (a search made with the locate button is sent only as the town it found, or as "My location"). If you had searched a street address, that address is included. 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 advertising is provided by Google AdSense. Ads are switched on only once our AdSense account is approved and enabled; while they are off, no ad code loads and no advertising cookies are set. When ads are on:

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the Internet.
• You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings. In the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland, ads will be switched on only once Google's consent message is live for visitors there, so you are asked before personalized ads are shown; you can also manage choices for participating vendors at youronlinechoices.eu.
• How Google uses information from sites that show its ads: policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites; Google's advertising practices: policies.google.com/technologies/ads.

No page carries affiliate links right now; any we add will be clearly disclosed where they appear (we may earn a commission; it never changes what we recommend). Our homepage includes a tag from Impact.com, an affiliate network: it asks your browser to fetch a script from utt.impactcdn.com, so Impact.com's servers see your IP address, under Impact.com's privacy policy. The script is meant to turn outbound shopping links into trackable affiliate links and record an anonymous page view, and Impact.com's policy says it uses cookies on its clients' visitors; at our last check (October 6, 2026) Impact.com was not serving the script, so none of that was happening. The ?notrack=1 switch stops the request in this browser. Ads never appear inside live outage results, alerts, or emergency callouts — the placement policy sets out how that is kept.

What we never do

• We never sell the personal data we hold, 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 (unless you send it with feedback, as described above), no persistent identifiers. What we do hold — push delivery endpoints and the feedback messages you send — is used only for the purposes described above and is never sold or shared for advertising. What Google Analytics, Grow, Impact.com and Cloudflare collect through their own code is handled under their own policies, linked above, and Mediavine's notice says it shares or sells personal information it collects for interest-based advertising.
• No fingerprinting by us, and no advertising cookies of ours. (Cloudflare's bot check, above, examines browser signals only to tell people from automated traffic.) The cookies and identifiers in use all come from the services described above: Google Analytics' first-party _ga cookies, Grow's own, Cloudflare's cf_clearance security cookie, Impact.com's if it starts serving its script, and, once display ads are on, Google's advertising cookies. Each is governed by its provider's policy. ?notrack=1 also turns off Google Analytics, Grow and the Impact.com tag in this browser; ad personalization is controlled through Google's Ads Settings above; our own beacon sets none.
• No accounts, ever, to check an outage.