Legal

Privacy Policy

How this site handles personal information: what the two forms ask for, what the site records, who else can see it, and what stays behind in your browser. Everything below describes what the site actually does.

Last updated: July 27, 2026
Organization: True Cost Of Living Analysis Project
Applies to: www.truecola.org
User accounts: None; there is nothing to sign in to
Cookies set by this site: None
Personal data sold: None, ever

What this policy covers

This policy covers www.truecola.org: the pages published there, the two forms on the site, the emails those forms send, and the report download. It does not cover the government agencies, data providers, and other organizations we link to. Each of those has its own policy.

The rules for using the site itself are separate and live in the Terms of Service.

Reading the site

You can read every public page, including the monthly report and all 435 district pages, without telling us anything at all. There is no sign-in, no password, and no user account. The site does not create one, and it has nothing to create one with.

Visitor numbers come from Cloudflare Web Analytics. It sets no cookies, keeps nothing on your device, and does not follow you from one site to another. It counts page views, not people.

The contact form

The contact form is how you reach a person here. Using it is entirely your choice: nothing on the site requires it.

What it asks for: Your name, your email address, and your message. All three are required, because we cannot read a message or answer it without them.
Optional details: An inquiry type, your office, outlet, or organization, a deadline and time zone, and a state or district. Leave any of them blank and the form still sends.
Why we collect it: To read your message and reply, to look into a possible correction, and to keep a record of what was asked and what was answered.
What is written down: The date and time, your name, your email address, your message, and the internet address the form was sent from. That record is stored in a folder on our web host that the web server refuses to serve.
Where it goes: The message is emailed to the project, and a confirmation copy is emailed back to you so you know it arrived. It is not sold, and it is not shared with anyone for marketing.

The report request form

The full report is free. The form exists so we can email a download link that belongs to you rather than posting the file in the open.

What it asks for: Your name, your email address, and the role you pick from the list, for example individual, student, journalist, or congressional staff. The form requires all three.
Why we collect it: The report is emailed to you, so a working address is the point of the form. The role tells us who the report is reaching.
What is written down: The date and time, your name, your email address, your role, and the internet address the request came from, in the same private folder.
Your download link: Each request creates a one-time code held with your name, email address, and role. The link works for seven days and up to three downloads, then stops. Codes are deleted about a month after expiry.
Where it goes: The link is emailed to you, and the project is told a request arrived so a link that goes astray can be sent again. Nothing here is sold, and nothing is shared with anyone for marketing.

Logs and security records

Like any website, this one runs on a web server that keeps ordinary request logs: the internet address a request came from, the time, the page asked for, and the browser that asked. Our hosting company and the security layer in front of the site keep those records to deliver pages, diagnose faults, and hold off attacks.

The site keeps two small records of its own. A flood guard notes which internet addresses recently used the report form, allows five requests an hour from any one of them, and forgets an address an hour later. A mail log records the time, the address a message went to, and whether the mail server accepted it, so a message that never arrived can be traced afterwards.

Both forms also carry a hidden field that only automated spam scripts fill in. When it is filled, the submission is dropped and nothing about it is recorded.

How long we keep it

Contact messages and report requests are kept as a working record, not deleted on a fixed schedule, because a question or a correction can come back months later. Download codes are removed about a month after they expire. The flood guard forgets an address after an hour.

If you would rather we did not keep the record of what you sent, ask through the Contact Us page and we will delete it.

Who else can see it

Three kinds of service provider are involved in running this site, and each one sees only what its job requires.

Web and email hosting. The pages, the private files described above, and the mailbox the site sends from all sit with our hosting company, on a shared cPanel server. Outgoing mail leaves through that same company.
Content delivery and security. Cloudflare sits in front of the site, carries the pages to your browser, and filters abusive traffic before it reaches the server.
Visitor analytics. Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device, and identifies nobody.

Beyond those, we hand over information only when the law genuinely requires it, when valid legal process demands it, or when it is needed to stop fraud or abuse or to protect people from harm.

What we do not do

We do not sell personal data. No arrangement exists under which anyone pays us for it, and none ever has.
We do not share personal data with third parties for their own marketing, and we do not rent, trade, or publish mailing lists.
We do not carry advertising. Nothing here builds an advertising profile or targets ads at you anywhere else.
We do not create user accounts, so there is no password of yours for this site to hold or to lose.
We do not ask for financial account numbers, medical information, or government identification numbers, and we would rather you did not send them through a form.

What is stored in your browser

This site sets no cookies of its own, and it puts nothing in local storage.

It does save a copy of itself. A service worker keeps recent pages, the monthly data file, and the design assets in the browser cache so the site still opens when the connection does not. That copy is site content, not information about you: it stays on your device and is never sent back to us.

Clearing site data in your browser removes it. If you added TrueCOLA to a home screen from the app page, deleting the icon and its data does the same. The install button there remembers nothing between visits; it asks the browser each time whether TrueCOLA is already installed.

Children

TrueCOLA is a general audience research publication. It is not directed at children, it carries nothing aimed at them, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13. If you believe a child sent us something through a form, tell us and we will delete it.

Questions, and changes to this policy

To ask about anything in this policy, or about information you have already sent us, use the Contact Us page: https://www.truecola.org/contact/

Site email is sent from an address nobody reads, which is how the junk mail is kept down, so the form is the route that reaches a person. There is no published mailbox to write to instead.

If this policy changes, the revised version appears on this page with a new last updated date at the top. A change that affects what we collect or who can see it will be described in plain language, not folded in quietly.