What we collect

PolkTX uses Google Analytics 4, a service from Google LLC, to measure readership: how many people visit, which pages they read, what kind of device they use, roughly what area they are in (city or region level, worked out by Google from the connection — never a precise location), and whether they arrived from a search, Facebook, or a link we posted.

Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (named _ga and _ga_…) so a returning reader is counted once rather than every time. We use the numbers in aggregate — for example, "4,200 people read PolkTX last month, most of them in Polk County" — to run the site and to show local businesses what advertising here reaches. We have not turned on Google's advertising features, so this data is not used to show you ads.

To stop it: Google's opt-out browser add-on, a content blocker, or your browser's cookie settings all work, and PolkTX works exactly the same without it. Google's handling is described in its privacy policy and in how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

PolkTX is served through Cloudflare, Inc., which also provides Cloudflare Web Analytics: visit and page-view counts by country, with no cookies and no cross-site tracking. Cloudflare's privacy policy applies.

Alongside those, PolkTX keeps simple counters of its own, because they keep working when an ad blocker stops the services above. They look like this:

p:2026-10:burn-ban:view                   412
n:2026-10:casa-della-tire:call             18
a:2026-10:sponsor--events:view            960
s:2026-10:fb-lne                          133

A page, a business or an ad placement, a month, a kind of action, and a number. The last line counts readers who arrived on a link PolkTX itself posted — we add a short tag like ?s=fb-lne to our own links and remove it from the address bar as the page opens. These counters store no cookie, no identifier, no IP address and nothing about you; one person opening a page four times counts four. Businesses with a paid listing or placement receive their own counts monthly.

No Meta (Facebook) pixel. No advertising networks or retargeting. We do not sell, rent or trade information about readers to anybody. Advertisers receive totals — never anything about an individual reader.

Forms on this site send what you typed to PolkTX by email. We use it to answer you and to check the record you are telling us about. We do not sell it, we do not add you to a mailing list, and we never publish an email address or phone number given on a form.

Messages sent from a business page go to that business, with your email as the reply address so they can answer you directly. PolkTX is copied on those messages — not to read your business, but so a message that bounces is not silently lost, and so that if one of our forms is ever used to send a local business abuse, we can see it and stop it.

The newsletter list is kept at Resend and used for the newsletter. Every issue has a one-click unsubscribe, and leaving removes you from the count.

Right after you subscribe we ask a few optional questions (your area, whether you own or rent, any plans to move, and what you want more of); we use the answers to choose what goes in the update and which sponsors fit it, and we never sell or share anyone's individual answers.

Payments for listings, sponsorships and promotions are processed by Stripe. Stripe collects your card details and we never see or store your full card number. We receive your name, email, phone, billing details and the answers you give at checkout, and use them to set up the placement, send receipts and keep the records the law requires. Stripe's privacy policy applies to what it handles.

• src/layouts/Base.astro — everything every page loads, including Google Analytics
• functions/api/tap.js — our counters, and the list of what they accept
• functions/api/forms.js — where a form submission goes

Something here wrong, or something you would rather we did not do? Tell us.