Privacy policy

Updated October 9, 2026.

This policy covers the Binghamton Local Guide website (binghamtonlocalguide.app) and the Binghamton Local Guide app for iPhone and Android, which shows the same site inside the app. It explains what we collect, why we collect it, who else handles it, how long we keep it and what you can do about it.

The short version

• You can browse listings, events, guides, published community posts and notices without an account.
• If you sign in, we keep your name, email address and a user ID so we can save your places and plans and show your posts.
• The website shows no Google ads. The app shows Google AdMob ads unless you buy the ad-free upgrade. You choose general or personalized ads, and on iPhone personalized ads also need your permission to track.
• We don’t sell your account details, posts, notices or contact information.
• You can delete your account inside the app at any time.

Browsing

Browsing never needs an account, and Binghamton Local Guide never asks for your location. Listings show businesses’ public addresses and phone numbers so you can contact them.

When your browser or the app loads pages and data, our hosting provider (Vercel) and our database provider (Supabase) receive ordinary connection information, such as your IP address and your browser or device type. The website uses no analytics or advertising cookies. The only cookies we set are for signing in and keeping you signed in.

Your account

Signing in is optional. It lets you save places, build plans, post in the community and connect an ad-free purchase to your account. You sign in with Apple or with Google; we don’t use passwords.

• Google shares your name, email address and profile picture link.
• Apple shares your email address, or a private relay address that forwards mail to you, and, the first time you sign in, your name if you choose to share it.

Supabase, our account provider, stores this with a user ID it creates for you. We use your email address to identify your account. We don’t send marketing email, and we never show your email address to other people.

If you sign in with Apple, we keep the token Apple issues only so we can revoke it when you delete your account, as Apple requires. We don’t keep Google sign-in tokens.

Saved places and plans, including any notes you add to a plan, are stored with your account and are visible only to you.

Community posts, photos and comments

When you post, we store what you share: the text, the town and topic you pick, any photos or short video, and your comments, likes, reports and blocks. Moderators review posts and comments before they appear publicly. Published posts and comments show your first name (or “Neighbor”), never your email address.

Photos are re-encoded on your device before upload, which removes details stored in the file, such as where it was taken. Videos are uploaded as they are and may still contain those details. The app asks for camera, microphone or photo library access only when you choose to attach a photo or video, and uses it only for that attachment.

Your reports and your block list are private; moderators see reports so they can act on them. Moderators can remove content and ban accounts that break the terms.

Notices and phone numbers

Anyone can submit a notice (a missing pet, a memorial, a fundraiser or a community announcement) without an account. We ask for your name and email address so moderators can contact you about the notice. These stay private and are never published.

You can also choose to show one public contact method in the notice: an email address, a phone number or a website. If you add a phone number, it is published with the notice, anyone who views the notice can see and call it, and it stays visible until the notice expires or is removed. Add only a phone number you have permission to publish, and never someone else’s private number without their permission.

Everything else you enter in a notice, such as a pet’s name, a person’s name for a memorial, dates, a location or a fundraiser’s beneficiary, is public once a moderator approves it. Reports and update requests about a notice ask for your name, email address and a message, which only moderators see.

Suggestions, corrections, business claims and Featured placement requests (sent through “Suggest a correction”, “Add something local” or “For local businesses”) include your name, email address and the details you enter. Our editors use them to check and update listings and to reply to you. Your name and email address are not published.

Ads in the app (Google AdMob)

The website shows no Google ads and does not load Google’s ad software. The iPhone and Android app shows banner ads and occasional full-screen ads from Google AdMob, unless you have the ad-free upgrade. Separately, local businesses can pay for listings and offers marked “Sponsored” on the website and in the app; these are placed by town and category, and no information about you is shared with those businesses.

Your choice. The app asks you to choose General ads or Personalized ads, and it requests no ads until you choose. You can change or clear your choice at any time under Privacy choices at the bottom of the app; clearing it turns ad requests off until you choose again. Where Google’s consent rules apply, for example in the European Economic Area or the UK, Google’s consent form also appears, and “Review Google privacy options” in Privacy choices lets you change your answers.

Personalized ads and tracking. Ads are personalized only if you choose Personalized ads and, on iPhone, also allow tracking when iOS asks. The app shows that iOS request only after you choose Personalized ads. If you allow tracking, Google can use your device’s advertising identifier to connect your activity in this app with information from other companies’ apps and websites to choose ads for you; Apple calls this tracking. If you choose General ads, or don’t allow tracking, every ad request asks Google for non-personalized ads. You can change tracking at any time in iOS Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking.

What Google’s ad software collects. To show, measure and limit ads and to prevent fraud, Google’s software in the app can collect:

• Device identifiers. On iPhone, the advertising identifier is available only if you allow tracking. On Android, Google can read your device’s advertising ID, which you can reset or delete in your device settings. Google can also use other app and device identifiers, for example to limit how often you see the same ad.
• Ad interaction data, such as which ads you were shown, whether you tapped them, and app launches.
• Approximate location, which Google estimates from your IP address. The app never asks for or shares your precise location.
• Diagnostics, such as crash reports and performance data from the ad software.

Even general ads use this information to show, count and limit ads and to prevent fraud, but they are not based on your interests. We don’t give Google your name, email address, user ID, posts, notices, saved places or plans. Google uses what it collects under the Google Privacy Policy; see also how Google uses information from apps that use its services.

The ad-free upgrade (App Store, Google Play and RevenueCat)

The one-time ad-free upgrade is sold through the App Store or Google Play, which handle the payment. We never receive your card or bank details.

RevenueCat manages purchase records for us. Whenever in-app purchases are set up for your device’s store, the app asks RevenueCat whether ad-free is active each time it opens or comes back to the foreground, even if you have never bought it. So RevenueCat receives, from everyone who uses the app, an app user ID (your Binghamton Local Guide user ID when you are signed in, or otherwise a random anonymous ID that RevenueCat creates on your device), basic app and device details (such as the platform and app version) and, like any connection, your IP address. When you buy or restore the upgrade, it also receives the store’s record of the purchase (such as the product, transaction details and purchase date). RevenueCat handles this under the RevenueCat Privacy Policy.

When you are signed in, our server checks your purchase with RevenueCat and stores your user ID, whether ad-free is active, which store sold it, whether it was a test or a real purchase, and when it was last checked. We also keep a record of RevenueCat’s purchase notifications (a notification ID, its type, the user IDs it named and when it arrived) so the same notification is never processed twice. That record has no set deletion date, and deleting your account does not remove it.

Business photos and details from Google Maps

When Binghamton Local Guide loads Google Maps photos and details for a listed business, our server sends Google that business’s public name and address, or its Google place ID. The request includes nothing about you: no account, email address, saved places or location. Your browser or device then loads the photo directly from Google, so Google receives ordinary connection information such as your IP address. Google Maps features are subject to the Google Privacy Policy. You can open a business on Google Maps instead.

Notifications

Event alerts, reminders for dinners you plan and optional dining-offer alerts are local notifications: the app schedules them on your own device, and only after you tap Enable phone alerts and allow notifications. Dining-offer alerts stay off unless you turn them on. Your notification settings and dinner reminders are stored only on your device. We don’t collect a push token, and our servers don’t send notifications. Turn categories off from the bell button in the app, or turn notifications off in your device settings.

Information kept only on your device

Some things stay in your browser or app storage and are not sent to our servers: your notification settings and dinner reminders, your advertising choice, the times recent full-screen ads were shown (so they stay spaced out), today’s history quiz answer, and where to return and what to finish after signing in. Clearing site data or deleting the app removes them.

Who else handles your information

• Supabase runs sign-in and stores accounts, saved places, plans, community posts and media, notices, submissions and purchase status.
• Vercel hosts the website and the pages the app loads.
• Apple and Google provide sign-in, and the App Store and Google Play handle payments.
• Google AdMob provides the ads in the app.
• RevenueCat answers the app’s ad-free check each time it opens and manages ad-free purchase records.
• Google Maps Platform provides business photos and details.

We don’t sell your account details, posts, notices or contact information, and we don’t give them to advertisers. We may disclose information when the law requires it.

How long we keep information

• Your account (name, email address, user ID and sign-in details): until you delete it.
• Saved places and plans: until you remove them or delete your account.
• Community posts, comments, photos and videos: until you delete your account. Deleting a post or comment yourself, or a moderator removing it, takes it out of public view at once; its stored copy is erased when your account is deleted.
• Notices: an approved notice is shown for 14 days (community announcements), 30 days (missing pets and memorials) or until the day after a fundraiser ends, and never longer than 90 days. A notice marked resolved stays visible for up to 7 more days. After that it is no longer shown, but the moderation record, including your private name and email address and any public contact, is kept. Notices are not linked to an account, so deleting your account does not remove them; email us to have them deleted.
• Notice reports, suggestions, corrections and business claims: kept for our editors’ records. They are not linked to an account; email us to have them deleted.
• Purchase status: until you delete your account. RevenueCat and the store that sold the upgrade keep their own records under their own policies.
• Record of RevenueCat’s purchase notifications: kept with no set end date, including after you delete your account. It contains user IDs only, not names or email addresses.
• Apple sign-in token: until you delete your account, when it is revoked and erased.
• Spam and abuse limits: we keep a hash of the email address (not the address itself) on each notice, notice report, suggestion, correction or business claim, used only to limit repeat submissions. Notices and notice reports share one list, and suggestions, corrections and business claims share another. Hashes more than an hour old are deleted the next time a submission of the same kind arrives, so a hash stays longer if none does. Repeated failed food-truck operator codes are limited by IP address, held only in server memory and never saved.
• Bans: if a banned member deletes their account, we keep one-way hashes of their sign-in identities and email address, along with the date and the moderator’s reason for the ban, with no set end date, so the ban applies again if they return.
• Connection information (such as IP addresses) in our hosting and database providers’ logs: kept by Vercel and Supabase for a limited time under their own policies.

Deleting your account

Open the account dialog (the profile button in the header) and choose Delete my account. Your account, saved places, plans, community profile, posts, comments, photos, videos, likes, reports, blocks and purchase status are deleted permanently and at once, and any Apple sign-in token is revoked. Our record of RevenueCat’s purchase notifications, which may name your user ID, is not deleted. Photo and video links issued shortly before deletion stop working within 10 minutes. An ad-free purchase stays with your App Store or Google Play account and can be restored later.

If you can’t sign in, email us from the address on the account and we will delete it for you. You can also email us to delete notices, reports or suggestions you sent, or to ask what information we hold about you.

Your choices

• Browse without an account, or sign out at any time.
• Change or clear your ad choice under Privacy choices in the app, or buy the ad-free upgrade.
• On iPhone, turn tracking off in Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking. On Android, reset or delete your advertising ID in your device settings.
• Turn notification categories off in the app, or turn notifications off in your device settings.
• Allow or deny camera, microphone and photo access in your device settings.
• Delete your account in the app.

Children

Binghamton Local Guide is not meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information. If you think a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

Security

Connections use HTTPS. Database rules let each account read and change only its own private data, and Apple sign-in tokens can be read only by our server. No system is perfectly secure, so please don’t post anything you want to keep private.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, we update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

For questions or requests, email johnprodromidis1@gmail.com or visit the support page.

Read the terms