Sales representatives. We store representative identity, assigned territory ZIPs, account status, their current leads and holds, creation actors and timestamps, and an audit history of administrator assignments and configuration changes. Representatives cannot access other representatives' current records or company-wide sold totals. Representative records are included in the member data export. Account deletion requires administrator review of sales assignments and retained audit records; contact support for that review. Commission calculations, representative agreements and W-9 uploads are not currently available.
Inquiry attribution and server-side advertising measurement. We record campaign tags and the landing and referring page (without URL query strings or fragments) with your inquiry to understand its source. These are reported signals, not proof of a representative's commission eligibility. Facebook click IDs are retained only when you allow advertising tracking. Where configured, and only with your permission, our server also sends the successful Lead event to Meta using the same event identifier as the browser for deduplication, plus a one-way SHA-256 hash of your normalized email for matching. Hashing does not make that identifier anonymous. Server-side events do not bypass tracking opt-outs, Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track. Delivery may be retried for up to seven days; withdrawal cannot recall an already submitted event.
1. Who we are and what this policy covers
Magazine advertiser accounts: we use single-use invitations to link paid advertising spots to a matching verified account email. We store invitation metadata and versioned insertion orders, including the exact PDF fingerprint, terms, agreed price, typed acceptance name, account identity and timestamp. Deleting saved account data removes invitations and unaccepted orders but does not erase accepted advertising contracts or their PDFs, which are retained as financial and legal records. The legal retention schedule remains subject to counsel review. Claiming an ad does not activate a software subscription or charge a payment. Contract acceptance remains disabled for draft terms.
ZipScout is operated by Zipscout LLC ("ZipScout," "we," "us" or "our"). Our mailing address is 4111-E Rose Lake Dr #9623, Charlotte, North Carolina 28217, United States.
This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use and share it, and the choices you have when you use the ZipScout website, free scan, member account, Monday brief, the optional Overhead Audit, and any related services (together, the "Service").
ZipScout is built for businesses. Most information we handle is about your business, such as its name, location, website and competitors. Some of it is personal information, such as your name, email address, mobile number, and recordings or documents you choose to upload.
The short version
We do not sell your information, share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, or use it for advertising.
We collect what we need to run the Service, and you can export or delete your saved business data from your account.
AI tools help produce research, drafts, transcripts and audit findings. Nothing is posted, published or sent to your customers or competitors on your behalf without your approval.
We use trusted service providers, listed in Section 4, to run the Service. They may use your information only to provide services to us.
2. Information we collect
Advertiser inquiries. When you ask about magazine advertising, we store the business name, contact name, email, optional phone number, ZIP, category, preferred ad size, and message you provide, together with the time and version of your permission to respond. Our administrators use these details to follow up about your inquiry and may record sales notes and temporary holds. This does not subscribe you to marketing texts or a newsletter, reserve or purchase an ad, or automatically send your information to HubSpot. To access or delete inquiry information, contact us using the details below; inquiries submitted without an account are not included in the member self-service export or deletion.
Information you give us
| Category | Examples | When |
|---|---|---|
| Free scan inputs | Business name, ZIP code, business category, optional website | When you run a free scan or live discovery; no email, phone or payment details are requested |
| Account information | Name, email address and sign-in details | When you create an account (handled by our sign-in provider, Clerk) |
| Business profile | Business name, trade, ZIP code, website, and the competitors you select | When you save member setup |
| Optional business facts | Business phone, full address, Google business category, weekly hours, a short service description | If you choose to add them to improve your Market Score |
| Delivery preferences | Email address for briefs, time zone, email consent and the date you gave it | When you turn on the Monday brief |
| SMS consent | Mobile number, consent status, the version of the disclosure you accepted, where and when you opted in or out | Only if you opt in to text messages |
| Drafts and approvals | Facts you supply for drafts, edits, and your approve, edit or dismiss decisions | When you use draft responses |
| Overhead Audit application | Company size, revenue range, trade, the process you want audited, current software tools, preferred contact time | If you apply for the Overhead Audit |
| Overhead Audit evidence | Audio and video recordings, images, documents, spreadsheets, job-history CSV files, recording consents, and the transcripts and text extracted from them | If you purchase an audit and upload evidence |
| Category | Examples | When |
|---|---|---|
| Owner estimates | Hourly costs, hours lost, number of people affected, software subscriptions and costs, recommendation notes and outcomes | When you enter them in the audit workspace |
| Payment information | Billing name, billing address and payment card details | When you buy a membership or audit; collected and processed by our payment processor, Stripe; we do not store full card numbers |
| Communications | Messages you send us, and notes from kickoff and review calls | When you contact us or take part in audit calls |
Recordings may include other people. If you upload recordings or documents that include your employees, customers or others, you are responsible for having the right to share them and for giving any notices or obtaining any consents the law requires. We ask you to confirm recording consent before upload.
Information we collect automatically
Request and security data. When you use the Service, our servers record technical information such as the date, time, page or endpoint requested, response status and device or browser information, to operate and secure the Service.
Network quotas. To prevent abuse, we store a keyed, one-way hash derived from your network (IP) address, plus request counts and expiry times. We do not store your raw IP address for this purpose. People sharing a network may share an allowance.
Browser storage and cookies. See Section 5.
Information we collect from public sources and third parties
Public business information about your business and the competitors you select, such as website text, listed prices, services and business listing details, from public web sources and search providers.
Google Places. We compare your saved business facts with your Google business listing. We keep the Google Place ID and a yes, no or unknown match result for each field, not Google's listing text.
AI search results. We send fixed local search questions (for example, "best AC repair near [ZIP]") to AI providers with web search turned on, and record whether your business is named, with the cited sources.
Your own website. If you give permission in member setup, we fetch pages from your own saved website to check business facts. Changing your website clears that permission. We do not directly crawl competitor websites for scoring.
Payment status from Stripe, such as whether a payment succeeded, failed or was refunded.
We do not intentionally collect sensitive personal information, such as health, financial account or government ID information. Please do not upload it. If it appears in a recording or document you upload, it is processed only as part of your audit and deleted with it.
3. How we use information
We use information to:
Provide the Service: run free scans, find and monitor competitors you confirm, detect public changes, run AI visibility checks, calculate your Market Score and Operations Score, prepare drafts, and send your Monday brief.
Deliver the Overhead Audit: review your application, schedule calls, transcribe recordings, extract text, analyze your process, and produce flowcharts, SOPs, recommendations and your savings report.
Process payments, manage memberships, seasonal pauses, cancellations, audit credits and refunds.
Communicate with you about your account, briefs, audits, billing, security and changes to the Service. If you opt in to texts, we send texts only as described at opt-in.
Protect the Service: enforce usage limits and spending caps, prevent fraud and abuse, debug problems and keep records of approvals and access changes.
Improve the Service in aggregate, such as understanding which features are used and where processing fails.
Meet legal obligations, keep required financial records, and enforce our Terms of Service.
How AI is used
AI models from our providers help find evidence, extract prices, check AI visibility, transcribe recordings, write draft responses, and identify findings in your audit.
Findings must cite exact quotes from the evidence you provide or that we collect. Results the AI can't support with evidence are rejected or shown as unknown.
AI output can be wrong. Drafts and recommendations are suggestions for you to review. Nothing is published, posted, or sent to customers, competitors or anyone else on your behalf.
We do not use your uploaded recordings, documents or business data to train our own AI models. We configure our transcription provider to opt out of using your audio to improve its models where that option is available.
What we don't do
We do not sell personal information for money. If you allow optional advertising tracking, Meta Pixel receives browser and device information and public-page visit or successful inquiry events for advertising measurement and optimization. This may constitute sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising under applicable law. You can decline or withdraw through Cookie choices.
We do not send inquiry form contents, audit files or member account details to Meta Pixel, or license those contents to others. Optional advertising measurement uses browser and device information and event signals rather than your inquiry message.
Any future member benchmark comparing businesses will be opt-in, aggregated, and will hide groups with fewer than five members.
4. How we share information
We share information only as described here.
Service providers. These companies process information on our behalf to run the Service, under their own terms and privacy policies:
| Provider | What they do for us | Information involved |
|---|---|---|
| Replit | Application hosting, database and private file storage | All Service data |
| Clerk | Account sign-in and session management | Name, email, sign-in details, session cookies |
| Stripe | Payment processing, billing and refunds | Billing details, payment card data, purchase and refund status |
| Exa | Public web search for discovery and competitor evidence | Business name, category, location, website and competitor domains |
| Provider | What they do for us | Information involved |
|---|---|---|
| Google (Places API) | Business listing lookups and comparisons | Business name, location and website |
| OpenAI, Google (Gemini) and Perplexity | AI visibility checks with web search | Trade and location search questions; your business name is not inserted into these questions |
| Perplexity and Anthropic | Generating drafts, extracting evidence and analyzing audit evidence | Facts you approve for drafts, extracted text and transcripts from audit evidence |
| Deepgram | Transcribing audio and video you upload for an audit | Audio from your recordings |
| Resend | Sending email, including Monday briefs and service notices | Email address and message content |
| Twilio | Sending text messages, once SMS is available | Mobile number and message content, only if you opted in |
Text messaging. Mobile numbers and SMS opt-in consent are never shared with third parties or affiliates for their marketing or promotional purposes. Service providers may process them only to deliver the messaging service.
Other sharing
With your direction. When you copy an approved draft, export a report, or share files yourself.
Legal and safety. To comply with law, legal process or a valid government request, or to protect the rights, safety and property of ZipScout, our users or others.
Business transfers. If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction. It will remain subject to this policy or one that is at least as protective, and we will notify you of any material change.
Aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably identify you or your business, such as total usage counts.
We do not show your business data to other members.
5. Cookies and browser storage
We use essential cookies and browser storage for the Service, and optional advertising tracking only with your permission:
Sign-in cookies set by Clerk keep you signed in and protect your account.
Demo workspace cookie. If you approve or dismiss sample drafts in the public demo, those choices are kept in a browser cookie for 7 days. They are sample records only.
Session storage. Sample scans and earlier public-web leads may stay in your browser tab until you close the tab, dismiss them or delete your saved data. Live Google Places suggestions are transient: they are not saved in session storage or copied into your account, and clear when you leave or reload the page.
Optional Meta Pixel. If you actively allow advertising tracking, we load Meta Pixel on eligible public marketing pages to measure PageView and successful Lead events. Meta may receive IP address, browser and device information, page and referral URLs, campaign parameters and cookie identifiers, and process them under its privacy policy at https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy/. Automatic advanced matching and automatic event detection are not enabled by this integration. No Meta tracking request is initiated by this integration before permission. The no-script tracking image is deliberately omitted. Your choice is stored in this browser until you change it or clear browser storage. Use Cookie choices on public marketing pages or this Privacy Policy to withdraw permission; withdrawal stops future tracking but cannot recall information already sent. Meta Conversions API server-side tracking is not enabled.
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, but you will not be able to sign in without sign-in cookies.
Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. We treat either signal as an opt-out of optional Meta advertising tracking, even if a previous browser choice allowed it.
6. Retention, deletion and security
How long we keep information
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Business profile, competitors, research, observations, scores, drafts, briefs and delivery settings | Until you delete your saved data or your account is closed |
| Overhead Audit evidence (original files, transcripts, extracted text, analysis) | Until you delete it, delete your saved data, or your account is closed; original files are accessible only while you have audit access |
| Savings report files | Download links expire after 30 days; you can generate a new export while you have access |
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Read-only audit access after a membership ends | 30 days to view and export, then the audit is locked |
| Network quota records | Until the quota window expires, then removed by daily cleanup |
| Access, approval and consent history | A minimal record of status changes, approvals and consent is kept after deletion to show what was authorized and when |
| Payment and transaction records | As long as needed for tax, accounting and legal requirements (typically up to 7 years) |
| Anonymous spending totals | Kept without any owner, job or personal data, solely to enforce overall spending limits |
Deleting your data
From member setup you can export your saved data as a JSON file, or delete your saved business data after typing a confirmation phrase.
Deletion cancels queued work, removes your profile and everything linked to it, and queues your uploaded files for removal from storage. File removal from storage is automatic and retried until complete, but it may not be instant.
Deleting saved business data is separate from closing your sign-in account. To close your account entirely, contact us (Section 8).
If you have an active membership or unused audit credit, we will explain the billing effect before deletion.
Backups may keep copies for a limited period until they are overwritten in the normal backup cycle.
Security
We use reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards, including:
Encrypted connections
Private file storage
Account-level data separation, so one member can't access another's data
Restricted administrator access
Logs that avoid storing raw IP addresses for quotas
Database protections that prevent changes to approval records
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we learn of a security breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you as required by law.
7. Your choices and privacy rights
Choices everyone has
Access and export: download your saved data from member setup at any time.
Correct: edit your business profile, competitors, facts and delivery settings in member setup.
Delete: delete your saved business data from member setup, or ask us to close your account.
Email: turn off the Monday brief in delivery settings, or use the unsubscribe link in any brief. We may still send essential account, billing and security messages.
Text messages: reply STOP to any text to opt out, or opt out on the text preferences page. Reply HELP for help. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Consent to texts is not a condition of any purchase.
Website permission: remove permission for us to fetch your own website in member setup.
State privacy rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights under state privacy laws, such as those in California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut and others. These can include the right to:
Know what personal information we have collected and how we use and disclose it
Access, correct, or delete your personal information
Get a copy of your personal information in a portable format
Opt out of sharing for targeted advertising through Cookie choices, Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track. We do not sell personal information for money.
Not be discriminated against for exercising your rights
To make a request, email us or write to us at the address in Section 8. We will verify your identity, usually by confirming control of your account email, before acting on a request. You may use an authorized agent; we may ask for proof of their authority. If we deny your request, you may appeal by replying to our decision, and we will respond as the law requires.
California notice at collection. In the last 12 months we have collected:
Identifiers: name, email, mobile number, IP-derived hashes.
Commercial information: purchases and audit credits.
Internet activity: request logs.
Audio and visual information: recordings you upload.
Professional information: business details.
Inferences: scores and findings about your business.
We collect these for the purposes in Section 3 and disclose them to service providers for business purposes. Optional Meta advertising measurement, described in Section 5, may constitute sharing under California law. We do not sell information for money and have no actual knowledge of selling or sharing information of anyone under 16.
8. Children, changes and contact
Children. The Service is intended for businesses and adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or under 16 where state law sets a higher age). If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
Where we process data. ZipScout is operated in the United States, and our service providers may process information in the United States and other countries. By using the Service, you understand your information will be processed in the United States.
Advertiser concierge
Text messages and phone verification. The concierge sends texts or calls only after an advertiser actively checks a consent statement and verifies their phone number with a one-time code. Consent is optional and is not a condition of purchase. Reply STOP to opt out or HELP for help.
Homeowner requests. When someone sends a request through an advertiser's public form (/local/ad/...), we share their name, contact details, ZIP code and message only with the business they selected, after they check a sharing permission. This does not subscribe them to marketing messages. The public directory at /local lists only advertisers from printed editions who chose to be listed.
Referrals. An advertiser may refer a customer to another participating advertiser in the same edition only after confirming that customer gave permission to share their contact details.
Owner preferences. Tone, seasonality, busy months, specialties and preferred offer are supplied by the advertiser, are used to assemble draft ad text, and can be viewed and edited at any time in the member portal (/member/concierge).
Optional AI drafting. Draft text is assembled from owner-provided facts without AI by default. If an advertiser chooses AI polish and checks the permission for that draft, the selected draft text and owner facts are sent to our AI service provider to suggest revised wording. Nothing is published automatically; the advertiser reviews and approves all copy.
Phone interviews. If an advertiser requests an automated phone interview, our telephony provider's speech recognition transcribes the spoken answers. We do not request audio recording of the call.
Retention. Homeowner requests and referrals are deleted after 180 days. Phone interview transcripts are deleted after 30 days. Text and voice provider webhook replies are kept up to 7 days for retries. A message marked sent means our provider accepted it, not that the recipient's carrier confirmed delivery.
Disconnect and erase. Disconnecting stops future concierge delivery and features but keeps history. Erasing permanently deletes concierge history, including drafts, requests, referrals, notices, message logs, preferences and settings. After a verified phone is removed, we may keep the minimum record needed to honor a carrier STOP opt-out.
Changes to this policy. We may update this policy as the Service changes. We will post the new version with an updated effective date. If we make a material change, we will notify you by email or in the Service before it takes effect.
Contact us
Zipscout LLC Attn: Privacy 4111-E Rose Lake Dr #9623, Charlotte, North Carolina 28217, United States Email: privacy@zipscout.ai