Privacy

Commerce Institute is a website that publishes place-data research from public-domain federal sources. This is the short, plain-English version of how we handle your data.

What we collect

• Pageview analytics via Cloudflare Web Analytics or a similar tool that does not use cookies or fingerprinting.
• API request logs for authenticated API endpoints (rate-limit + abuse prevention).
• Email addresses you provide when you sign up for the newsletter or create an API account.
• Photo submissions and metadata (when you submit a user-contributed photo).

What we do not collect

• We do not run third-party advertising trackers.
• We do not sell or share user data with third parties.
• We do not require an account to read any content on the site.

Cookies

We use no cookies on the public site. The API and user-contribution areas use a single session cookie for authentication; it is HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Strict.

Photo submissions

If you submit a photo, EXIF data (including any GPS coordinates) is stripped on intake. Photos are stored on Cloudflare R2. The photographer name and license you specify are displayed on the place page; we do not display any other personal information.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Questions

Contact privacy@commerceinstitute.org.