Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

FranchiseTracker is operated as a sole proprietorship trading under that name. For any question about this policy, or to make a request about your information, email support@franchisetracker.app.

This policy covers two different groups of people, and it is worth being clear about which is which: account holders, who sign up and use the service, and people listed in the filings, whose business contact details appear in the data. Sections 2 to 4 are about account holders. Section 5 is about people listed in the filings.

2. What we collect about account holders

• Your identity. Your email address, and your name if you give us one. If you sign in with Google, we receive your email address, your name and whether Google has verified that address. We do not receive your Google password.
• Sign-in and session data. Enough to keep you signed in and to verify one-time codes, including when your account was created and when a session was issued.
• Subscription state. Whether you are subscribed, your plan status and billing period, and the identifiers Paddle gives us for your customer and subscription records.
• How you use the paid features. Which rosters you have unlocked and when, so we can show you what you own and apply the monthly allowance.
• What you send us. The content of emails you send to support, and of messages sent through the form on our contact page — the topic you pick, your message, the email address you give us so we can reply, and your name if you give one. Contact messages are stored so that a request cannot be lost, and are kept as described in section 7.
• A one-way fingerprint of your network address, when you use the contact form. We store a salted hash, never the address itself, and use it for one purpose only: to stop the form being used to send bulk spam. It identifies nobody on its own.

We never see your card details. Payment is handled entirely by Paddle, our reseller and merchant of record. Card numbers are entered on Paddle's checkout, not ours, and are never sent to or stored by us. Paddle's handling of that information is covered by Paddle's privacy notice (opens in a new tab).

3. Why we use it, and who else sees it

We use account information to run the service: to sign you in, to give you the access you have paid for, to answer support requests, to send service messages such as billing notices, to keep the service secure, and to meet our legal and tax obligations. We do not use it to build advertising profiles, and we do not send marketing email to people who have not asked for it.

We rely on a small number of providers to operate the service:

• Neon — the database, and the authentication service that stores accounts and sessions.
• Vercel — hosting for the website and its server-side code, and aggregated visitor analytics (see section 4).
• Paddle — payments, tax and invoicing, as merchant of record.
• Google — only if you choose to sign in with a Google account.
• Our email provider — delivery of one-time sign-in codes and service emails.

These providers act on our instructions and may only use the information to provide their service to us. We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim. We do not trade or rent account holders' personal information.

4. Cookies and analytics

We use only the cookies the service cannot work without. There is no advertising and no cross-site tracking on this site.

• A sign-in session cookie, set when you sign in, so that you stay signed in as you move between pages. Clearing it signs you out.
• Paddle's checkout cookies, set only when a checkout is opened, so the payment step works and can be secured against fraud.

We use Vercel Web Analytics to see how many people visit and which pages they use. It does not use cookies and does not build a profile of you: it counts page views and aggregates them by page, referrer and rough location, without identifying you or any other visitor individually.

Because we set nothing for advertising or cross-site measurement, there is no consent banner to click through. If that ever changes, we will update this policy and ask before setting anything new.

5. People listed in the filings

This is the part of the service that handles information about people who are not our customers, so we want to be plain about it.

Franchise brands are legally required to publish a Franchise Disclosure Document, and those documents include a roster of current, former and signed-but-not-yet-open franchisees. That roster typically lists a franchisee or entity name, a business address, a business phone number, and occasionally a business email address. We read those published filings and make them searchable.

Why we publish it. The service exists so that suppliers, contractors and service providers — signage, construction, equipment, security, furniture — can reach the operator who has committed to opening a location. The information is business contact information, already published by the brand, and is presented for that business purpose.

Contacts in California are not shown. We do not show, provide or export franchisee contacts located in California to anyone using the service. We do keep the records we extracted from those public filings; they are simply not presented.

We do not enrich or infer. We do not append data from other sources, build profiles, score individuals, or add personal (as opposed to business) contact details. What you see is what the filing said, on the date it said it.

Asking for correction or removal

If you are named in a filing we have published and you want your details corrected or removed, use the removal form on our contact page or email support@franchisetracker.app from any address, whichever you prefer. Tell us the name and the brand as they appear so we can find the right rows.

We will action removal requests within 7 days. You do not need an account, and you do not need to give a reason. Because the underlying filings stay public at their source, removal applies to our service — it does not and cannot erase the original document.

6. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. Where we rely on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time.

To exercise any of these, email support@franchisetracker.app. We may need to confirm who you are before we act, so that we do not disclose someone's information to the wrong person. We will not charge you or treat you differently for making a request. If you are unhappy with how we have handled it, you may complain to your local data protection authority.

7. How long we keep things

• Account information — for as long as your account is open, and for a short period afterwards so that a cancellation or billing question can be resolved.
• Billing records — for as long as tax and accounting law requires, which is typically several years. Paddle keeps its own transaction records under its policy.
• Support email and contact-form messages — for as long as it is useful to support you and to show we handled the request, then deleted. The spam-prevention hash is only meaningful for an hour and is deleted with the message.
• Filing data — for as long as it is part of the service, subject to the removal requests described in section 5. Records for locations in California are kept on the same basis, though they are not shown.

8. Security

Connections to the site are encrypted. Access to the production database is limited, payment details never reach our systems, and sign-in uses one-time codes or Google rather than passwords we would have to store. No service can promise perfect security, but if a breach ever affects your information we will tell you and the relevant authority as the law requires.

9. Children

The service is for business use and is not directed at anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

10. Where information is handled

We and our providers operate internationally, so your information may be processed in a country other than your own, including the United States. Where personal information moves across borders, we rely on our providers' safeguards for those transfers.

11. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the last-updated date at the foot of the page, and we will tell account holders about material changes before they take effect. We review it at least once a year.

12. Contact

Email support@franchisetracker.app for any privacy question, or see our contact page.