Privacy Policy

Effective October 18, 2026

GridPermit is a product of Backburner Labs. This policy describes what personal information we collect when you visit gridpermit.backburnerlabs.net, submit one of our forms, or use a GridPermit account, and how we use and protect it.

Information we collect

• Forms on the public site. The buyer qualification and landowner inquiry forms collect your name, email address, company or ownership name, phone number (landowner form, optional), project or site details, and any notes you include. We email these submissions to brendan@backburnerlabs.net to review and respond.
• Free Quick Check. When you run the free site check we record the address or place you entered, your IP address, and the approximate location (country, state and city) derived from that IP address, along with the time and the result. We use this to see where visitors come from, to limit abuse, and to improve the tool. If you choose to give your email address for a follow-up, we store it with the request. IP addresses are removed from these records after 12 months, and records without an email address are deleted after about four months.
• Client and internal accounts. If you sign in, our sign-in provider (Clerk) stores your account details and organization membership. Assessment data you enter, such as parcel identifiers, site details, load assumptions, and uploaded documents, is stored in our database and file storage.
• Website analytics. We use Vercel Analytics to count page views and visitors. It records aggregated information such as pages visited, approximate location at the country level, device type, and browser type.
• Email. When you email us directly, we keep the contents of that correspondence.
• Security and abuse logging. To protect the site and its data from automated copying and misuse, we record, for requests to our data endpoints, forms and downloads: your IP address, the page or endpoint requested, your browser or client identifier (user agent), the time, and the reason a request was flagged (for example, an unusually high request rate). For API keys we also record the IP addresses a key is used from and daily usage counts, and when an API customer accepts the API terms we record their name, the time, their IP address and the terms version. For signed-in downloads we keep a count of downloads against the account. We do not record which locations an API customer looks up, only how many lookups they make. An invisible bot check (Vercel BotID) runs on some forms to tell people from automated scripts. Requests judged to be abusive can lead to the IP address, domain, account or API key being blocked; a blocked person can write to us to appeal and we will review the log entries for their block. We keep this security log only as long as needed to protect the service, and records tied to a block are kept for as long as the block remains in place.

Public records lookups

When an analyst runs a site assessment, GridPermit sends parcel coordinates or addresses to public government and infrastructure data services (such as HIFLD, the FCC Broadband Data Collection, OpenStreetMap Nominatim, and the U.S. Drought Monitor) to pull public infrastructure data. These requests contain location information about land, not personal information about you.

How we use information

We use information to respond to inquiries, deliver assessments and reports, operate and secure the site and accounts, measure site traffic, and communicate with you about the services you requested. We do not use submitted form content to train AI models, and we do not sell personal information.

Service providers

We share information only with service providers that run parts of GridPermit for us, under their own confidentiality and security terms:

• Vercel (website hosting, analytics, firewall and bot check)
• Neon (database and file storage)
• Clerk (sign-in and account management)
• Resend (sending form notification emails)
• Google (Search Console for search performance reporting)

Cookies

We use cookies that are strictly necessary for sign-in (set by Clerk) and for basic site operation. Vercel Analytics does not use advertising cookies. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Retention

We keep form submissions and assessment records for as long as needed to respond to the inquiry, deliver the service, and meet legal and recordkeeping obligations. You can ask us to delete your information at any time (see below).

Your choices and rights

You can ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, by emailing brendan@backburnerlabs.net. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under applicable state privacy laws, and we will honor them where they apply.

Security

We protect information with access controls, encrypted connections (HTTPS), and organization-scoped access to client assessments. No internet service is perfectly secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Children

GridPermit is a business-to-business service and is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The effective date at the top shows when it last changed.

Contact

Questions about this policy: brendan@backburnerlabs.net