Your privacy

Submissions and newsroom messages

We collect the contact details and story information you choose to share so the publication team can review your idea and contact you about it. Submissions are stored privately for this publication. They are not automatically published or added to a mailing list.

Messages and media you send through newsroom chat go only to the newsroom. You can verify an email or phone number to receive replies. Please do not include sensitive personal information.

Community Maps submissions

Places, attachments and publication-permission records are stored privately for review by authorized network editors. Embedded location metadata is removed from accepted media, and editors review visible and audible content before publishing. Residential displays generally appear at street or neighborhood precision. Your private contact details are not part of the public guide; the optional public credit is the attribution you choose to submit.

Reader accounts and newsletters

Signing in does not subscribe you unless you choose the newsletter. Reader accounts store your email, optional verified phone, and the update preferences you select. You choose whether to receive daily or weekly updates and can unsubscribe using any digest or your reader account.

Sponsorship and payments

Sponsorship requests stay with the publication team; payments are processed securely by Stripe, and we never see or store card numbers.

Usage measurements

We count page views, story reads and page performance for every visit without placing anything on your device: the server derives a daily-rotating, non-reversible hash from your truncated IP address and browser, which cannot be linked back to you or across days. With your permission (on by default in the United States and most regions, where you can turn it off under Cookie Settings; off until you accept in the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland), first-party cookies additionally let us recognise a return visit and measure reading sessions and sponsor acknowledgments. We do not include your email, messages, sign-in tokens or URL query strings in these events, never use third-party advertising trackers, and honor Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control as an opt-out from identifiers.

Contact us

To request a correction or deletion, contact the newsroom and identify your earlier submission.