Privacy

Our Timberwood is run by neighbors who live here and it is hosted on Cloudflare. There are no ads on it and no trackers from other companies, and nothing on it is for sale.

What an account holds

Your first and last name.
Your house number and street. This is checked against the Harris County appraisal roll when you sign up.
Your email address.
A sign-in link when you ask for one. It works once and it stops working after a day.
A password if you set one, stored scrambled. Nobody can read it back and that includes an admin.
A phone number, a photo and a line about yourself if you add them. All three are optional.

What other neighbors see

Other neighbors see a first name, a last initial and a street, and nothing else.

Your house number stays hidden. You can turn it on for your own posts in your account and you can turn it off again. Your phone and your email and your full name each have their own switch, and all of them start off.

What the site records as you use it

Page views are recorded, and while you are signed in they are tied to your account. The site records which page was opened, when it was opened, which page on this site linked to it, and whether you got there from a link in the Friday letter. It keeps that so the neighbors who run the site can see what people here are interested in, and put the work where it is actually wanted. Signed out, a view carries no account and there is nothing on it that says who you are.

Where you were before you arrived is not recorded either way. If you come in from a search or a post or a message, that is not kept. The only journeys stored are the ones inside this site.

Delete your account and everything recorded this way stops being tied to you.

Search terms are recorded, and while you are signed in they are tied to your account. Searches that come back empty are used to decide what the Record should cover next. To keep a search from being attached to your name, sign out first.

Sign-in and submission attempts are counted, to stop abuse. When a request hits one of those limits the site records the IP address it came from, and on a sign-in attempt it records the email address that was typed. Both are kept for about two hours and then deleted.

Nothing is collected from anywhere else. There are no tracking pixels and no advertising networks, and no data is bought from or sold to anybody.

Who can see it

An admin can see contact details, notices waiting for review, and activity on the site, including which pages have been read. Nobody without an admin account can see any of it, and none of it is shown to other neighbors or sent anywhere off this site.

Deleting your account

There is a button for it at the bottom of your account. It asks for your password and for you to type DELETE. After that your account and your name and your contact details are gone from this site for good, and so is any message you sent through the contact form.

One thing survives. A notice you posted that gave an address, like a garage sale, keeps that address on it, because the notice is no longer about you once it is on the board. Take the notice down first if you would rather it went with you.

Notices and Services entries you added stay up with your name taken off them, because other neighbors are relying on them. A notice or a logged job will read a neighbor afterwards. If there is something specific you would rather was gone then take it down first. Every notice you posted has its own button on that page.

Anything sent for review

If an admin asks you to confirm your address then the photo you send is visible to admins only and it is deleted when the request is cleared. It never appears anywhere on the site.