Privacy policy

Last updated November 3, 2026

This policy explains what Blokova (“we”) collects when you use blokova.com, why, and the choices you have. We try to collect as little as we can.

What we collect

• Things you send us. The contact form, business listing, local update, coverage request and advertising forms store what you type (usually your name, email and message) so we can reply or review it. Sending a form does not sign you up for email.
• Newsletter. If you sign up we store your email, city, topics and the time you agreed. Our email provider, Buttondown, sends the newsletter and handles unsubscribes under its own privacy policy.
• Account features. Saved areas and alerts are tied to your sign-in identity and are visible only to you and the site owner.
• Spam protection. Forms keep a daily, hashed counter to slow down abuse. We don’t store raw IP addresses for this, and the counters are deleted after the day ends.
• Ad counts. For sponsor cards we sell directly, we count views and clicks with a random token. It isn’t linked to you.

Public records on this site

Permit records come from city open-data portals. We strip obvious phone numbers and email addresses from descriptions, but the original records can still contain names of owners, contractors or applicants. If a record about you is wrong, send a correction and we’ll look at it. We can’t change the city’s original record.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to see which pages people use. It only runs after you click “Allow analytics” in the banner, and you can change your mind any time with the “Analytics choices” button at the bottom of the page. Besides page visits we record which features are used: that a form was sent (and whether it worked), which city’s permits were opened, outbound and ad clicks, button clicks and how far down a page people scroll. We never send what you type, your email, search words or saved locations. Signed-in pages aren’t measured, and the site owner’s own visits are excluded. Google signals and ad personalization are turned off for analytics.

Advertising

Blokova shows two kinds of ads, always labeled “Advertisement” or “Sponsored”:

• Local sponsor cards that businesses book with us directly. These don’t use cookies.
• Google AdSense ads, when enabled. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your earlier visits to this and other websites. Google’s advertising cookies let it and its partners serve ads based on those visits. You can turn off personalized ads in Google Ads Settings, and opt out of other vendors at aboutads.info. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Paying for an ad never changes a permit record or what we write about a place.

Other services that receive data

Map tiles load from OpenFreeMap and USGS. Address searches we can’t match ourselves may go to the U.S. Census geocoder (without your email). Payment links for ads open Stripe or PayPal; we never see card numbers. The site runs on Cloudflare, which processes requests to deliver pages and protect the site.

How long we keep things

Form messages and requests are kept while they are useful for replying or review, and deleted on request. Newsletter records are kept until you unsubscribe and ask for deletion. Analytics data is kept for Google Analytics’ default period of 14 months.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask to see, correct or delete the personal information we hold about you. California residents have these rights under the CCPA/CPRA, and people in the EU, UK and similar places have them under the GDPR. We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t share it for cross-context behavioral advertising except through Google ads as described above, which you can switch off in Google Ads Settings. We honor Global Privacy Control signals by keeping analytics off. To make a request, use the contact form. We’ll answer within 30 days.

Children

Blokova is not meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information. If you think a child has sent us something, contact us and we’ll delete it.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS, owner tools sit behind Cloudflare Access sign-in, and form input is validated on the server. No system is perfectly secure, so please don’t send sensitive personal information through our forms.

Changes

If we change this policy we’ll update the date at the top. Big changes will also be noted on the home page for a while.

Contact

Questions about this page go to the contact form.