Legal
Privacy Policy — Treasure Valley Insider / What's Up 208
⚠️ ATTORNEY REVIEW REQUIRED. This is a working draft based on common patterns for a small US-based publisher with email subscriptions and limited data collection. Pay $200–400 to an Idaho-licensed business attorney to review before publishing. Especially flag: §4 (cookies & analytics — disclosure must match what's actually deployed), §6 (CCPA / state privacy), §9 (children's privacy).
Publish at:
/privacy(route already in routing spec). Last-updated date in the footer must update with every revision.
Privacy Policy
Effective date: [DATE]
Last updated: [DATE]
This Privacy Policy describes how What's Up 208 / Treasure Valley Insider ("we," "us," "our") collects, uses, and shares information when you use our website (whatsup208.com, treasurevalleyinsider.com), subscribe to our email newsletters, attend our events, or otherwise interact with us.
If you have questions, contact us at brayden@whatsup208.com.
1. Information we collect
Information you provide directly
- Email subscription: when you sign up for our newsletter (web, booth event, QR code, or referral), we collect your email address. Optionally: your name, ZIP code or city of interest, and event-category preferences.
- Forms: when you submit a recommendation, sponsor application, contact request, event suggestion, or report-an-issue form, we collect the information you choose to provide.
- Sponsorship: if you become a sponsor, we collect business contact information, signing-authority details, payment information (handled through our invoicing platform; we do not store credit card numbers ourselves), and content you provide for publication.
Information we collect automatically
- Usage data: when you visit the site, our analytics tools (currently PostHog) collect information about your visit: pages viewed, time on page, referring source, device type, approximate location (city-level), and whether you completed certain actions like clicking an event detail or signing up.
- Cookies and similar technologies: we use cookies for essential site functionality (e.g., remembering which city you've selected) and for analytics. See §4 for more.
- Email engagement: when you receive our emails, our email service provider (currently Beehiiv) tracks whether you opened the email, which links you clicked, and any unsubscribe action.
Information from third parties
- Recommendations: if someone recommends a business to be highlighted, we may receive that business's name and other information from the recommender.
- Public sources: when researching local events or businesses, we collect publicly available information from official websites, news sources, and other public listings.
2. How we use information
We use the information we collect to:
- Operate and improve our products (the website, the email newsletters, the print mailer)
- Send you the newsletters you subscribed to
- Respond to your inquiries
- Process sponsor applications and fulfill sponsorship deliverables
- Aggregate audience data for sponsor reporting (in aggregate; never individually identifiable)
- Comply with legal obligations
- Detect and prevent fraud or abuse
We do not use your personal information to:
- Sell or rent it to third parties for their independent marketing
- Train artificial-intelligence models on your personal data
- Profile you for any purpose unrelated to our publication
3. How we share information
Service providers
We use third-party services to operate our business. They process your information on our behalf and under contracts that limit their use:
- Beehiiv — email delivery and engagement tracking
- Resend — transactional email (e.g., confirmation emails)
- Vercel — website hosting
- Supabase — database and authentication
- PostHog — site analytics
- Sentry — error monitoring
- Google Maps — map display when you use map features
- Cloudflare Turnstile — bot protection on public forms
- Stripe (as it becomes applicable) — payment processing
Legal disclosures
We may disclose information if required by law, subpoena, or court order; to protect our rights or safety, or those of others; or in connection with a sale or transfer of business assets (in which case the acquirer would be bound by terms at least as protective as this policy).
Aggregate / anonymous data
We may share aggregated, de-identified statistics (e.g., "5,000 subscribers in Meridian") with sponsors, partners, or the public. This data does not identify any individual.
We do not sell your personal information.
4. Cookies and analytics
We use cookies and similar technologies for:
- Strictly necessary — to remember your selected city, your consent to certain features, and to keep you logged in if you have an admin account
- Analytics — to understand how the site is used (PostHog)
- Optional features — geolocation when you click "Use my location" on the events map
You can refuse cookies through your browser settings. Some site features may not work properly if you do.
5. Your choices
Email preferences
- Every email we send includes an unsubscribe link in the footer. Clicking it removes you from our list.
- You can also email brayden@whatsup208.com and request removal; we'll process it within 10 business days.
Data access, correction, deletion
You can email brayden@whatsup208.com to:
- Request a copy of the personal information we have about you (we'll send within 7 days)
- Correct any inaccurate information
- Delete your information from our active systems (we'll process within 7 days; some information may be retained in backups for a limited additional period and in legal records as required)
Do Not Track
Our site does not respond to Do Not Track browser signals. We don't track you across third-party sites, so the signal isn't directly applicable to our practices.
6. State privacy rights
California residents (CCPA / CPRA)
Although we are an Idaho business and do not believe we meet the threshold for CCPA applicability, we voluntarily honor the following for California residents:
- The right to know what personal information we collect, use, and share
- The right to delete personal information
- The right to opt out of "sale" or "sharing" — note that we do not sell or share personal information for behavioral advertising
- The right to non-discrimination for exercising privacy rights
To exercise these rights, contact brayden@whatsup208.com.
Other state privacy laws
For residents of states with comprehensive privacy laws (Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, etc.), we honor analogous rights. Contact us at brayden@whatsup208.com.
7. Data security
We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), database access controls (Row-Level Security), credential restrictions, and limited employee access.
No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a security incident affecting your information, we will notify you in accordance with applicable law.
8. Data retention
We retain personal information for as long as needed to operate the services or comply with legal obligations:
- Email subscriber data: until you unsubscribe + 30 days for compliance reconciliation, then a hashed identifier is retained indefinitely to prevent inadvertent re-add
- Sponsor records: for the term of the relationship + 7 years for tax and legal records
- Form submissions (recommendations, contact, etc.): up to 5 years
- Analytics data: up to 24 months at the visitor level; longer in aggregate
9. Children's privacy
Our services are intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.
If a parent or guardian believes a child under 13 has provided us with information, please contact brayden@whatsup208.com and we will delete it.
10. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The "Last updated" date at the top reflects the most recent change. Significant changes will be announced by email to subscribers and a banner on the site.
11. Contact us
What's Up 208 / Treasure Valley Insider [Publisher legal name] [P.O. Box address] Meridian, ID [ZIP]