How we handle your information

When you search or open a report

You may enter a Cook County property address or property index number (PIN). We use it to find the property and prepare a report from public Cook County records. There are no user accounts or logins, so the search is not attached to an account profile.

The site also creates a random browser ID in local storage. We use that ID to group basic first-party activity, such as a report view or checkout click. An activity record may include the PIN, result type, action, and time. The activity record itself does not contain your name or email. Some checkout events include an order ID, which can connect the event to the order and its checkout email. We do not use Google Analytics, advertising pixels, or cross-site advertising trackers.

For security and rate limits, the server processes your IP address in server memory. It is not written to the report, order, analytics, or prediction tables. The in-memory rate-limit record clears when the service restarts and may be pruned under load. Hosting systems may also process limited technical and security logs needed to run the service.

Appeal-window email alerts

If you ask us to notify you when a township's filing window opens, we collect your email address, property PIN, township, subscription and confirmation status, and delivery-attempt history. Delivery history can include attempt times, whether an email was sent, a provider message ID, and a short error description if delivery fails.

We use this information only to send the appeal-window notice you asked for and to operate that alert. You must confirm the request through a double-opt-in link that expires after 48 hours before we send a window alert. Confirmation and alert emails are sent by Resend from the dedicated alerts.checkthecounty.com subdomain, which is separate from our main domain for email deliverability.

Every alert email has an unsubscribe link. You can also stop alerts by emailing support@checkthecounty.com. Unconfirmed subscriptions are deleted after seven days. If you unsubscribe, the subscription and its delivery-attempt history are deleted after 30 days. Confirmed subscriptions and their delivery history are kept while needed to provide the alert you requested.

Support email

If you email support or ask us to recover a purchase, we keep the message and the information needed to answer it. Support email is separate from the appeal-window alert list.

Payments

Payment entry happens on Stripe's hosted checkout page. Check the County never receives or stores your full card number. Stripe handles payment and fraud information under its own Privacy Policy.

After checkout, Stripe sends us the payment status, amount, transaction reference, and checkout contact email needed to fulfill the order.

Orders and research-guide delivery

We store the order ID, property PIN, tax year, price and payment status, Stripe checkout reference, contact email, Terms acknowledgment, dated report snapshot, signed-link security value, and email-delivery status and attempt times. This lets us confirm payment, reopen the same purchased snapshot, and recover access when needed.

A completed checkout immediately opens a signed, unique research-guide link. If you lose that link, support can recover it and manually send it to you again. Resend is not used for research-guide delivery or purchase recovery. Dormant automated guide-delivery code is separate from the appeal-window alert system and remains disabled. The link is a passwordless access key. It is meant to be long-lived, so keep it private. Anyone who has the full link may be able to open the purchased research.

The PDF is created from the saved report when you request it. It is not kept as a file in the application database or permanent application storage.

Identity-free accuracy tracking

We keep a separate internal table to compare predicted results with later public Cook County appeal outcomes. It is keyed only by property PIN and tax year. It contains public-property values, the result type, comparison counts, snapshot date, and public appeal outcome.

This table has no name, email, user ID, browser ID, session ID, IP address, or order ID. The application does not join it to customer or order tables. Absolute separation cannot be promised because a PIN is also used across property records and could be correlated by a person with privileged, direct database access. Access controls separate normal application and monitoring work across that boundary.

Cookies and browser storage

The active report flow uses local storage for the random browser ID described above. We do not use third-party advertising cookies. Dormant packet-testing code can store a first-party price-assignment ID in local storage and a cookie for up to one year, but that packet product is disabled for launch.

How long information is kept

We delete completed order, payment-status, contact-email, signed-link, and saved-report records seven years after checkout is completed. A purchased research link stops working when its order record is deleted. We delete checkout records that were never completed after 30 days. We delete first-party activity records after 13 months.

We delete ordinary application and security logs after 30 days unless specific records must be preserved for an active security investigation. Local database backups are kept for 14 days. Any encrypted off-server database backup is deleted within 30 days. Alert-subscription retention is described in the appeal-window alert section above. Requested support records are kept while needed to provide that service. You may ask us to review or delete information by using the contact below. Some records may need to be kept longer for payment, fraud, tax, legal, or security reasons.

Reports are dated snapshots and do not update automatically. Older reports may no longer reflect current Cook County records. Check the snapshot date and run a new search when current information matters. This is about the freshness of Cook County property data, not how long personal information is kept. Identity-free prediction and public outcome records are currently kept indefinitely for long-term accuracy checks.

Companies that help run the service

• Stripe hosts checkout and processes payments.
• DigitalOcean hosts the site, application, and database.
• Google Workspace hosts the support mailbox and manual support email.
• Resend sends only appeal-window confirmation and alert emails from alerts.checkthecounty.com when that feature is enabled. It does not handle manual support or purchase recovery.

These providers process information needed to perform their service and follow their own privacy terms. See the providers' policies: Stripe, DigitalOcean, Google Workspace, and Resend.

We do not sell personal information.

Privacy questions and deletion requests

Email support@checkthecounty.com. Tell us what you want us to find, correct, or delete. We may need enough information to verify the request and protect another person's purchase link.