Privacy

Understory is run by one neighbor and hosted on Cloudflare. There are no ads on it, no trackers from other companies, and nothing on it is for sale.

What an account holds

Your first and last name.
Your house number and street. This is checked against the Harris County appraisal roll when you sign up.
Your email address.
A password, stored scrambled. Nobody can read it back, including the admin.
A phone number, a photo and a line about yourself, if you add them. All three are optional.

What other neighbors see

A first name, a last initial and a street. A post reads Carlos C. on Pheasant Run.

Your house number stays hidden. You can turn it on for your own posts in your account, and you can turn it off again. Your phone, your email and your full name each have their own switch, and all of them start off.

What the site records as you use it

Page views are counted and are not tied to you. The site records that a page was opened and when, and nothing about who opened it. There is no account, no address and no device identifier on that record, signed in or signed out, so it can say which pages get read and it can never say what you read.

Search terms are recorded, and while you are signed in they are tied to your account. A search that finds nothing is the most useful thing on this site, because it is a page the Record does not have yet. If you would rather a search not be attached to your name, sign out first.

Nothing is collected from anywhere else. No tracking pixels, no advertising networks, no data bought from or sold to anyone.

Who can see it

The admin can see everything on the site: contact details, notices waiting for review, and activity. Nobody else has an account with that access.

Deleting your account

Ask through the contact form and the account and its contact details are removed. Notices and Services entries you added stay, with your name taken off, because other neighbors are relying on them.

Anything sent for review

If the admin asks you to confirm your address, the photo you send is visible to the admin only and is deleted when the request is cleared. It never appears anywhere on the site.