Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Your Hometown Guide (“Your Hometown Guide,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is an independent community guide at yourhometownguide.com, operated by its owner in Los Angeles County, California. We publish city events, school events, church and nonprofit events, local business listings, and things to do. We are not affiliated with any city government, school district, or public agency.

This policy applies to our website, our newsletter, business accounts, and any other place that links to this policy (together, the “Service”).

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

• Newsletter: your email address and the city or cities you choose.
• Business accounts and listings: your name, email address, phone number, password, and business details such as business name, address, phone, website, social media links, hours, photos, logo, and description.
• Event submissions: event name, date, time, location, cost, description, flyer or photos, and the contact person’s name and email.
• Purchases: the package you buy and your billing name and email. Card payments are handled by our payment processor (Stripe). We never see or store your full card number.
• Messages: anything you send us by email or through a form, including corrections and privacy requests.

Information collected automatically

• Device and browser information, IP address, and approximate location (city or region) based on your IP address.
• Pages you view, links you click, searches on the site, the site that referred you, and the date and time of your visit.
• Information collected by cookies, pixels, and similar tools (see Section 7).

Information from public sources

We gather publicly available information about local events and businesses, such as public event calendars, city and school websites, business websites, and public social media pages. We may use automated and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help find and organize this information. This is mostly information about businesses and events, not about private individuals.

3. Categories of personal information (California disclosure)

In the past 12 months we have collected, or expect to collect, these categories of personal information as defined by the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA):

• Identifiers: name, email address, phone number, IP address, account username, online identifiers.
• Customer records (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80): name, address, phone number, and billing information.
• Commercial information: packages purchased and payment history.
• Internet or other electronic network activity: browsing and search activity on the site and interaction with our emails and ads.
• Approximate geolocation: city or region based on IP address. We do not collect precise geolocation.
• Professional or business information: your business name, role, and business details.
• Sensitive personal information: only account login credentials (your username and password). We use these only to let you sign in and keep your account secure.

We do not collect Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, health information, or other sensitive information beyond what is listed above, and we do not ask for it.

4. How we use information

• To run the Service: publish listings and events, show city pages, and operate business accounts.
• To review event submissions and listings before they go live.
• To process payments and deliver paid packages.
• To send the newsletter and service messages (like receipts, account notices, and renewal reminders).
• To respond to questions, corrections, and requests.
• To understand how the site is used and improve it.
• To advertise the Service and measure how well our ads work.
• To protect the Service, prevent fraud and spam, and enforce our Terms of Use.
• To comply with the law.

5. Who we share information with

• The public: business listings and approved events are published on the site and may appear in our newsletter and on our social media pages. Do not include anything in a listing or event that you do not want made public.
• Service providers who help us run the Service and may only use the information to do work for us. These include website hosting (Kinsta), payment processing (Stripe), email newsletter delivery (for example, MailerLite), website plugins, and AI tools that help us organize content.
• Analytics and advertising partners such as Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram), which may collect information through cookies and pixels to count visits and show and measure ads. See Sections 6 and 7.
• Legal and safety reasons: when required by law, court order, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our users, the public, or us.
• Business transfer: if the Service is sold, merged, or transferred, information may be transferred to the new owner, who must honor this policy.

6. Selling and sharing personal information

We do not sell personal information for money. However, California law treats some advertising and analytics cookies as a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, meaning ads shown to you on other websites based on your visit here. In the past 12 months, we may have shared identifiers and internet activity with advertising and analytics partners for this purpose.

Your privacy choices (Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information). You can opt out at any time by:

• Using the Your Privacy Choices page, which turns off advertising and analytics cookies in your browser.
• Turning on Global Privacy Control (GPC) in your browser or with a browser extension. We treat a GPC signal as a valid request to opt out of sale and sharing for that browser.
• Emailing contact@yourhometownguide.com with the subject line “Do Not Sell or Share.”

We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16.

7. Cookies, pixels, and Do Not Track

Cookies are small files stored by your browser. We use:

• Necessary cookies to keep you signed in, remember settings, and keep the site secure.
• Analytics cookies (such as Google Analytics) to count visits and see which pages are popular.
• Advertising cookies and pixels (such as the Meta Pixel and Google Ads) to measure our ads and show ads to people who visited the site.

Third parties such as Google and Meta may collect information about your online activities over time and across different websites when you use our Service. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. You can also learn about Google’s practices at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites and adjust Meta ad settings in your Facebook or Instagram account.

Do Not Track: Some browsers send a “Do Not Track” signal. Because there is no common standard for it, we do not respond to Do Not Track signals. We do honor Global Privacy Control as described in Section 6.

8. How long we keep information

• Newsletter email: until you unsubscribe, then kept on a do-not-email list so we do not contact you again.
• Business account and listing information: while your account or listing is active, and up to 3 years after it is closed or removed, unless you ask us to delete it sooner.
• Payment and purchase records: up to 7 years, for tax and accounting.
• Event submissions: up to 2 years after the event date.
• Messages and requests: up to 2 years, and privacy request records for 24 months as required by law.
• Analytics data: up to 26 months.

We may keep information longer if the law requires it or to resolve disputes.

9. Your California privacy rights

If you are a California resident, you have the right to:

• Know what personal information we have collected about you, where it came from, why we collected it, and who we shared it with.
• Access a copy of your personal information.
• Correct inaccurate personal information.
• Delete your personal information, with some legal exceptions.
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information (see Section 6).
• Limit the use of sensitive personal information. We only use sensitive personal information (your login credentials) for purposes allowed by law, so no further action is needed.
• Not be discriminated against for using any of these rights. We will not deny you service, charge you a different price, or give you a lower quality of service because you made a request.

How to make a request: email contact@yourhometownguide.com with the subject line “Privacy Request” and tell us what you would like us to do. We will confirm we received it within 10 business days and respond within 45 days. If we need more time (up to 45 more days), we will tell you why.

Verification: to protect you, we will ask for information to confirm your identity, usually by confirming the email address connected to your account or newsletter subscription. We will only use that information to verify your request.

Authorized agents: you can have someone else make a request for you. We may ask for proof that they are allowed to act for you and may ask you to confirm your identity directly.

10. Business listings we create

Some listings are created by us from publicly available information so neighbors can find local businesses. If you own or represent a listed business, you can claim the listing, ask us to correct it, or ask us to remove it by emailing contact@yourhometownguide.com. If you are a private individual and believe your personal information appears on the site, contact us and we will review it promptly.

11. Emails from us

Every newsletter and marketing email includes an unsubscribe link. You can also unsubscribe by emailing us. Even if you unsubscribe from marketing emails, business account holders will still receive service messages such as receipts and renewal notices.

12. Children and teens

The Service is a general community guide and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it. You must be 18 or older to create a business account or buy a package.

If you are under 18 and live in California, you may ask us to remove content or information you posted on the Service (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 22581) by emailing us. Removal from the site may not mean complete removal from our records or from copies made by others.

13. California “Shine the Light”

We do not share personal information with third parties for their own direct marketing purposes. California residents may ask about this under Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.83 by emailing us.

14. Security

We use reasonable safeguards, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), secure hosting, and limited access to accounts. No website is 100% secure, so please use a strong, unique password for your business account.

15. Visitors outside California and the United States

The Service is run from and hosted in the United States. If you visit from elsewhere, your information will be processed in the United States. We apply this policy to all visitors.

16. Links to other websites

Listings and events often link to other websites, such as a business’s website or an event organizer’s page. We are not responsible for their privacy practices. Please read their policies.

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the new version here and change the effective date at the top. If we make important changes, we will also email business account holders. We review this policy at least once every 12 months.

18. Contact us

Questions or requests about privacy: contact@yourhometownguide.com.