Privacy

Your information, plainly

Effective September 26, 2026

A town square should respect the people in it. Here is exactly what Social Squares collects, why we collect it, and what we will never do with it. “We” means the people who run Social Squares and its town squares, starting with The Elkhorn Square.

The short version: we collect only what you type into our forms. We never sell it or share it with advertisers. There are no trackers, no analytics scripts and no cookies on this site.

What we collect

When you become a founding neighbor: your first and last name, your email, and, if you choose, your ZIP code and the parts of the Square you’d use most.
When a business asks for a storefront: the business name, a contact name and email, and, if given, a phone number, website, category and note.
When you send an event tip: the event details you type, a photo of the flyer if you add one, and, if you choose, your name and email.
When you ask for a Square in your town or write to us: what you type into that form.
Automatically: our hosting provider processes standard request information (like IP address and browser type) to deliver the site and keep it secure. To slow down spam, our servers briefly use a one-way scrambled form of your IP address. We don’t store IP addresses with anything you send us.

What we never do

Sell your information, or share it with advertisers or data brokers.
Use advertising trackers, third-party analytics or cookies. This site doesn’t set any cookies.
Publish your email address or phone number.
Use what you send us to train AI models.

How we use it

To send the Thursday email you signed up for, plus a few notes about the Square’s opening.
To set up storefronts, follow up on tips, and answer your messages.
To understand what neighbors want most from the Square, in aggregate.
To keep the Square safe and working.

Who can see it

The square keeper for your town (in Elkhorn, that’s Pete) and the people who run Social Squares.
Companies that help us run the site, only to do that job: Vercel (hosting and storage, in the United States). Before the first Thursday email goes out we’ll name the email-delivery service here.
Anyone the law requires us to share with.

Event tips may appear on the public calendar after review. Your name and email never do unless you ask us to include them.

The weather

Forecasts and alerts come from the National Weather Service’s public data. Our server asks the weather service for your town’s forecast; nothing about you is sent.

How long we keep it

As long as we need it to run the Square, or until you ask us to delete it.

Your choices

Every email we send will have a one-click unsubscribe link.
You can ask us to show you, correct or delete your information at any time: write to us and choose “My information.”

Children

The Square is for adults 18 and older. We don’t knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you think a child has sent us information, tell us and we’ll delete it.

Changes

If this policy changes, we’ll update the date at the top. For meaningful changes, we’ll also tell founding neighbors by email.

Questions

Write to us. A real person reads every message.