Privacy
Last updated 2026-10-30
This page explains what Groundwork collects, why, and what we do with it. The short version: we keep what is needed to run the service, we do not sell data, and we use no advertising or analytics trackers.
What we collect
- Account details. Name, work email, the workspace name and a hashed password when you create an account or are invited to a workspace. We never store the password itself. If you arrived through a tagged link or a free check (see Cookies), that short tag is stored with your account.
- Workspace data. What your team puts into the application: your site criteria, unit addresses and statuses, prospects and their candidate addresses, uploaded comparison sheets, notes, decisions, and the saved results of each analysis.
- Free address checks. When you use /check without an account we keep the address you typed, the place it resolved to and the result, so the result page works when you come back to it. If you ask for the result by email we keep that email address with the check. We do not store your IP address with a check. Checks are deleted once they are 90 days old (a clean-up runs twice a day); the demographic result for that location (Census figures, nothing about you) is kept so a repeat check of the same place is instant.
- Packet orders. Brand, contact name, work email, the candidate addresses and notes you enter on the order form.
- Usage events. A log of actions in the product (for example a signup, an analysis run, an export, a report link opened) recorded by account and workspace id, with no names, email addresses or site addresses, and per-workspace counts built from it. We use it to see whether the product is working for people.
- Technical logs. Our host (Fly.io) records request logs with IP addresses for a short period for security and debugging. Our own request log records the method, path, status, timing and workspace id of each request, not your IP address.
- Cookies. Two first-party cookies, no others:
tsession, a signed session cookie that keeps you signed in. It is set when you sign in and cleared when you sign out.gw_ref, a 30-day attribution cookie. It is set when you open a link that carries a?ref=tag (for example from an email or a shared report) or when you run a free check, and it holds only that short tag (such asshareorcheck:followed by the check's id). If you then create an account, the tag is stored with it so we know which link brought you. It is not used for anything else.
Payment
Where card payment is offered, it is handled by Stripe on Stripe's pages. We never see or store card numbers. Stripe sends us the fact that a payment happened, the amount, and the email and order reference attached to it. Stripe's own privacy policy applies to the checkout. Invoiced customers are billed by email.
How we use it
- To run the service: sign you in, run analyses, build packets, deliver orders, send the emails you ask for.
- To support you and to tell you about changes to the service or your plan.
- To look at aggregate usage (for example, analyses run per workspace, or how many free checks lead to a workspace) to improve the product. We do not use one customer's data to build models for another.
Who else sees it
- Data providers. To analyze a site we send its coordinates to openrouteservice (drive times), the US Census Bureau (demographics and boundaries) and TomTom or OpenStreetMap's Overpass and Photon services (business listings). Addresses typed into the map's search go to Nominatim and Photon (OpenStreetMap), and addresses typed into the free check go to the US Census Bureau's geocoder and Photon. They receive the location or the address text, not your name, account, brand or prospect. See the data sources page.
- Narrative. When it is switched on for this server (one setting for every workspace on it, off unless configured), the figures of each analysis are sent to Anthropic's Claude API, which writes the plain-words paragraphs in the reports. What it receives: your concept's name and industry, its criteria and the verdict; the kind and size of the trade area, its state and its demographics; the name and demographics of the city the site is in; the counts of places found; and, for the internal version only, the score, the market type, the names, demographics and verdicts of the most similar markets in your workspace's history, and the name, status and distance of your nearest existing unit. It does not receive the site's address or coordinates, the prospect's name, or any person's name or email address. Anthropic's commercial terms govern what it keeps and for how long; under those terms it does not use API data to train its models. The prospect-facing version is written from the prospect-facing facts only.
- Email. When email is switched on, account emails (password resets, invitations) and free-check results you ask for are sent through Resend, which receives the recipient's address and the message.
- Hosting and backups. The application and its data run on Fly.io in the United States. When backups are switched on, a copy of the data is stored nightly in a private storage bucket (an S3-compatible service such as Tigris on Fly.io).
- Payments. Stripe, as above.
- Nobody else, unless the law requires it. We do not sell personal data.
How long we keep it
Workspace data stays for as long as the workspace exists, and is deleted within 30 days of the account closing; copies inside earlier backups remain until those backups are deleted. Free checks, with any email given for them, are deleted once they are 90 days old; the clean-up runs twice a day. Packet orders are kept for as long as we need them for tax and accounting. Saved analyses can be deleted on request.
Your choices
You can change your password in Settings. Workspace admins can edit or delete everything in their workspace. To change your name or email, export or delete your data, or ask what we hold about you, email christian@groundworkintelligence.net; we answer within 30 days.
Security
Passwords are hashed with scrypt, sessions are signed cookies, data is written to an encrypted volume and the site is served over HTTPS. If we ever have a breach that affects you, we will tell you promptly.
Changes
If this notice changes in a way that matters, we email account holders before the change takes effect.
Contact
Privacy questions? Email christian@groundworkintelligence.net.