Privacy Policy

Restoration Advertising is a static website with one form, on the contact page, and accounts for owners of businesses in its directory. If you only read the site you need no account and sign in to nothing. It has no comments, and it uses Google Analytics to count visits. Its home page and articles show ads served by Google AdSense; see Advertising below.

The contact form

If you send the form on the contact page, it collects your name, your email address, your message, whether you would like a call, and which page you came from. It is emailed to us so we can reply, and may be kept in our own database on our web host so we can keep track of the conversation.

Alongside your message we keep a hashed version of your IP address (not the address itself), the page you came from, and your browser type. The form also records the time the page loaded, checks a hidden field, and keeps the spam score Google reCAPTCHA gave your visit. If your message asks to be added to the business directory, we also look up the name of the network your message came from (for example, a hosting company or an internet provider; we keep that name, not the address), and note whether the email address you gave matches the website you named and whether that website is already listed. All of this is used only to reject spam and abusive submissions and to review directory requests.

Nothing you send is sold, shared, or added to a mailing list.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 on every page to count visits and see which pages are useful. It sets cookies in your browser so it can recognize a returning visit, and reports data such as page views, approximate location by region, the referring site and device type. We do not use it to identify individual visitors. Google's handling of this data is described in Google's privacy policy.

Blocking cookies or using a tracker-blocking extension stops this collection, and the site works normally without it.

Advertising

This site shows ads served by Google AdSense on its home page, its articles, four of its article category pages (water damage, fire and smoke, mold and insurance) and its other content pages. The directory pages, the article index, the other category pages, the contact page, this privacy policy and the error pages show none. On the home page and those four category pages, ads load only after you scroll or 15 seconds have passed, whichever comes first. This section explains how the ads work.

• Google uses cookies to serve ads. Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and other sites on the internet.
• What Google receives. To show and measure an ad, Google and its partners may receive information from your browser, such as your IP address, the page you are on and cookie identifiers. How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services explains what it does with it, and its advertising policies page covers ad cookies.
• You can opt out of personalized ads. Visit Google Ads Settings to turn off personalized advertising. You can also opt out of some other vendors' use of cookies for personalized advertising at aboutads.info or the Network Advertising Initiative.
• Where the law requires consent. For visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Google asks for your consent before showing personalized ads, through its own consent message.
• Google may also load reCAPTCHA on pages with ads. As part of serving ads, Google's ad code may load a Google reCAPTCHA frame in the page. That is separate from the contact form's reCAPTCHA, and it is subject to Google's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
• Ads do not change the directory. They are served by Google. They do not change which businesses are listed here or in what order.

Video previews

The video previews on our pack pages are hosted on YouTube. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play; the video then plays in YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), and YouTube's own terms apply from that point.

Accounts for listing owners

An account is for the owner of a business in our directory, so that you can claim your listing and keep its details up to date. Nobody else needs one.

What we collect.

• Your email address, which you confirm by following a link we send.
• A password. We store it scrambled, so we cannot read it.
• For the second sign-in step, which is required: the authenticator setup you choose, or a code we email you each time you sign in, and backup codes in case you lose your device.
• Which listing you claim, and the changes you ask for to its details.
• A record of sign-ins, and of each change to a listing and who made it, kept for security and so we can review changes.

What is public and what is private. Only what already appears on a directory page (the business name, services, city and region, country, phone number, website, summary and description) is public, and a change to it appears only after our next update, and for some details only after we have read it. Your email address, password, security codes and the requests you send are private. We do not sell them, share them or use them for marketing.

How long we keep it. An account you have not signed in to for 24 months is deleted, after an email to you 30 days beforehand. A change that was rejected or withdrawn is deleted after 90 days.

Deleting your account. Ask us through the contact form and we will delete your account and its history of changes. A listing that is already public stays, unless the business asks us to remove it, which is a separate request.

The sign-in cookie. When you sign in we set one cookie that keeps you signed in. Scripts on the page cannot read it, it goes only to our sign-in service, it is not used for tracking, and it is removed when you sign out.

What is recorded

Like any web server, ours keeps standard access logs: the address that made each request, the page asked for, the time, and the browser's description of itself. They are used to keep the site running and secure, and are not shared or sold.

What is stored in your browser

This site itself stores a copy of a small "you are offline" page, so that if your connection drops you see a helpful page instead of an error. It is not a tracking cookie and holds nothing about you. If you sign in to an account, it also sets the sign-in cookie described under Accounts for listing owners, and nothing else. Google Analytics sets its own cookies on every page, as described under Analytics. Google reCAPTCHA sets its own cookies on the contact page, and can do so on pages with ads, as described above and under Advertising. On the pages that show ads, Google and its ad partners also set cookies, as described under Advertising.

Links to other sites

Directory listings link to the businesses' own websites, and the home page links to Next Day Videos. Those sites have their own privacy practices.

Directory listings

The businesses in the directory supplied their own names, phone numbers, websites, descriptions, logos and images. We also summarize facts from each business's own public website, such as the services it lists and the area it serves, and say on the listing that they come from its site. An owner who has an account can ask to change their listing, as described under Accounts for listing owners. We publish no email addresses.