Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

The Service is owned and operated by:

PriceBenchmarKing.ai LLC
Email: support@hometaxappeal.us
Website: https://hometaxappeal.us

References in this Policy to "we," "us," or "our" mean PriceBenchmarKing.ai LLC, d/b/a HomeTaxAppeal.

2. Scope of This Policy

This Policy applies only to the HomeTaxAppeal Service. It does not apply to any other website, product, or service operated by PriceBenchmarKing.ai LLC or its affiliates, nor to any third-party website, application, or service that may be linked from or integrated with the Service. Those third parties have their own privacy policies, which we encourage you to review.

The Service is directed to users located in the United States. By using the Service, you represent that you are located in the United States and consent to the collection, transfer, storage, and processing of your information in the United States.

3. Information We Collect

3.1 Information You Provide to Us

• Contact information — your email address, provided when you request an estimate, sign up for deadline reminders, verify your identity via one-time code, or purchase a protest packet.
• Property information — the property address you submit and any corrections, additions, or condition notes you provide about the property (for example, pool status, defects, needed repairs, features).
• Photographs — images you upload during the packet wizard to document property condition or defects (JPG, PNG, or WebP, up to 10 MB per file).
• Claim documents — files you upload when submitting a no-reduction guarantee or arbitration claim (PDF, JPG, or PNG, up to 5 MB per file).
• Communications — the contents of emails, support requests, or other correspondence you send to us.

3.2 Information Collected Automatically

• Session data — we set a first-party session cookie (hta_purchase_session) to maintain your session and, after purchase, your access to packet content. This cookie is HTTPOnly, uses the Secure flag in production, and expires after 30 days. Session records are stored in our database.
• Log and device data — when you access the Service, our servers automatically record information such as your IP address, browser type and version, operating system, referring URL, pages visited, date and time of access, and similar technical data.
• Analytics data — we use Google Analytics, Google Ads conversion tracking (tag ID: AW-17969814549), and PostHog (posthog.com) to understand how visitors interact with the Service. PostHog may collect anonymized usage data including page views, clicks, and session recordings with input fields masked. These tools may set their own cookies and collect information as described in their respective privacy policies.

3.3 Information We Obtain from Third Parties

When you enter a property address, we query third-party data providers to build your analysis. We may receive:

• Property and assessment records — current assessed value, owner name of record, parcel identifiers, square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, year built, lot size, and tax history (sourced from county appraisal district records and licensed real estate data providers).
• Comparable sales data — recent nearby property sales, including sale prices, dates, distances, and property characteristics (sourced from county appraisal district records and licensed real estate data providers).
• Property feature enrichment — cooling, heating, garage, pool, and similar characteristics (sourced from licensed real estate data providers).
• Address validation data — normalized, standardized, and geocoded address components (Google Address Validation API, Google Places API).

Much of this information originates from public records maintained by county appraisal districts, recorders' offices, and similar governmental sources.

3.4 Information We Do Not Collect

We do not collect or store:

• Payment card numbers, expiration dates, CVCs, or bank account credentials (handled entirely by Stripe — see Section 6).
• Passwords (the Service uses email verification codes instead of password-based accounts).
• Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, or other government identifiers.
• Precise geolocation data from your device.
• Biometric identifiers.
• Information from children under 13 (see Section 11).

4. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

1. To provide the Service — to look up your property, retrieve comparable sales, calculate a protest signal, generate your estimate, produce your PDF evidence packet, and deliver county-specific filing instructions.
2. To generate AI-assisted content — portions of the protest narrative included in your PDF packet are generated with Google Gemini based on your property data, selected comparables, and any condition notes you provide. Your inputs are sent to Google for processing as described in Google's API terms.
3. To process transactions — to create a Stripe checkout session, confirm payment, generate and deliver your access code, and honor our no-reduction guarantee (subject to its stated terms).
4. To communicate with you — to send verification codes, receipts, packet delivery emails, support responses, and, if you opt in, future appeal-deadline reminders.
5. To maintain, secure, and improve the Service — to monitor performance, detect and prevent fraud or abuse, enforce our terms, debug issues, conduct analytics, and develop new features.
6. To comply with law — to meet our legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, and reporting obligations, and to respond to lawful requests from government authorities.
7. To protect our rights — to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims, and to protect the rights, property, or safety of PriceBenchmarKing.ai LLC, our users, or others.

We do not use your information to sell or rent personal information, send unsolicited marketing, or build cross-site advertising profiles.

5. How We Share Your Information

We share information only as described below. We do not sell your personal information for money, and we do not "share" personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising as those terms are defined under U.S. state privacy laws.

5.1 Service Providers and Processors

We share information with vendors that perform services on our behalf under contractual confidentiality and data-protection obligations:

In addition to the providers named above, we use other service providers to support the Service, including for property feature enrichment, transactional email delivery, database hosting, application hosting and compute, and related infrastructure and operations. These providers process personal information only on our instructions, under written agreements that require confidentiality and appropriate data-protection safeguards, and are not authorized to use your information for their own independent purposes (including marketing). We may change providers from time to time without updating this Policy, provided any successor provider is subject to equivalent contractual protections.

5.2 Legal and Safety Disclosures

We may disclose information when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to: (a) comply with applicable law, subpoena, court order, or other legal process; (b) respond to lawful requests by public or governmental authorities; (c) enforce our Terms of Service or other agreements; (d) detect, prevent, or address fraud, security, or technical issues; or (e) protect the rights, property, or safety of PriceBenchmarKing.ai LLC, our users, or the public.

5.3 Business Transfers

If PriceBenchmarKing.ai LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, bankruptcy, receivership, sale of company assets, or transition of service to another provider, your information may be sold or transferred as part of that transaction. We will post notice on the Service before any such transfer becomes effective.

5.4 With Your Direction

We may share information at your direction or with your explicit consent, for example if you ask us to send a copy of your packet to a third party.

6. Payment Processing

All payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. When you purchase a packet, you are directed to Stripe's hosted checkout, and your payment card information is submitted directly to Stripe. We do not receive, process, or store full card numbers, expiration dates, or security codes. We receive only a payment confirmation, your email address, and the Stripe session identifier. Your use of Stripe is subject to Stripe's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

7. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use the Meta Pixel and Meta Conversions API to measure the effectiveness of our advertising on Facebook and Instagram. We also use Google Analytics and Google Ads conversion tracking. We do not use data brokers to build user profiles. You can opt out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. You can opt out of Meta tracking by adjusting your ad preferences at facebook.com/adpreferences. We honor browser privacy settings, extensions, and Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals for opt-out purposes where applicable.

8. Data Retention

We retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy or as required by law:

Even after a deletion request, we may retain limited information where necessary to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, or enforce our agreements.

9. Data Security

We maintain reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect information against unauthorized access, loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction, including:

• HTTPS/TLS encryption for data in transit.
• Encryption at rest for our database.
• PostgreSQL Row-Level Security (RLS) policies.
• HTTPOnly, Secure, SameSite session cookies.
• Content Security Policy (CSP) and other security headers in production.
• Rate limiting on sensitive endpoints (email, verification, uploads).
• File-upload content validation (magic-byte inspection, not just file extension).
• Secrets and API keys stored as encrypted environment variables.
• Payment card handling fully delegated to Stripe (PCI-DSS compliant).

No method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure. While we work to protect your information, we cannot and do not guarantee its absolute security. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of any access code, email account, or device used to access the Service.

10. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights regarding your personal information under applicable U.S. state privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CCPA/CPRA), the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA), the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA), the Connecticut Data Privacy Act (CTDPA), the Utah Consumer Privacy Act (UCPA), the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA), and similar laws in Oregon, Montana, Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Rhode Island, Iowa, Indiana, and Kentucky.

Subject to limits and exceptions under applicable law, you may have the right to:

• Know / Access — confirm whether we process personal information about you and obtain a copy of that information and details about our processing.
• Correct — request correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Delete — request deletion of personal information we collected from you.
• Portability — receive a portable copy of your personal information in a commonly used format.
• Opt out of sale / sharing / targeted advertising — we do not sell personal information for money. We do use third-party advertising cookies (Meta Pixel, Google Ads conversion tracking, Reddit Pixel) that may constitute "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising under some U.S. state privacy laws. You can opt out of those cookies at any time via the "Your Privacy Choices" link at the bottom of every page, or by enabling Global Privacy Control (GPC) in your browser, which we honor as a universal opt-out.
• Opt out of profiling — we do not engage in profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects about you.
• Non-discrimination — we will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.
• Appeal — if we deny your request, residents of states that provide an appeal right (e.g., Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas) may appeal by replying to our denial email.

10.1 How to Exercise Your Rights

Submit requests to support@hometaxappeal.us with "Privacy Request" in the subject line. We will verify your request using the email address on file or other available means and respond within the timeframe required by applicable law (generally 45 days, with a possible extension). You may also use an authorized agent where permitted by law; we will require reasonable proof of authorization.

10.2 California Shine the Light

California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about disclosures of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

10.3 Nevada Residents

Nevada residents may submit a verified request to opt out of the sale of certain covered information. We do not sell covered information as defined under Nevada law.

11. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at support@hometaxappeal.us and we will delete it promptly. For users between 13 and 18, parental or guardian involvement is encouraged.

12. Google User Data Disclosure

Our use of information received from Google APIs (including Google Maps Platform, Google Address Validation, and Google Gemini) adheres to the applicable Google API Services User Data Policies, including any Limited Use requirements. We use Google services solely to provide the functionality described in Section 4 and do not transfer Google-sourced data to third parties except as necessary to provide or improve the Service, comply with law, or as expressly authorized by the user.

13. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Some browsers offer a "Do Not Track" (DNT) signal. There is no common industry standard for responding to DNT signals, and the Service does not currently respond to DNT signals. We do honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal as a universal opt-out: when GPC is enabled, we default both advertising and analytics cookies to off unless you explicitly override the setting via the "Your Privacy Choices" link in the footer.

14. Third-Party Links and Services

The Service may link to third-party websites or services, including county appraisal district sites, Stripe checkout, and Google services. We are not responsible for the privacy, security, or content of third-party sites. Your interactions with third-party services are governed by their own terms and privacy policies.

15. No Guarantee of Results; Limitation of Liability

Use of the Service does not guarantee any specific outcome, reduction in assessed value, tax savings, or success in any protest or appeal proceeding. Property tax protest outcomes depend on many factors outside our control, including decisions of county appraisal districts, appraisal review boards, and other authorities. The Service, and all data, estimates, comparables, maps, narratives, and reports it produces, are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis without warranties of any kind, express or implied. Your sole and exclusive remedy for dissatisfaction with the Service is as set forth in our Terms of Service and, where applicable, our no-reduction guarantee terms. Nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to create a warranty, contract, or cause of action that is not otherwise set forth in our Terms of Service.

16. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal requirements, or other factors. When we make material changes, we will revise the "Last Updated" date at the top of this Policy and, where appropriate, provide additional notice (such as a banner on the Service or an email to registered users). Your continued use of the Service after any update constitutes your acceptance of the revised Policy.

17. Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Policy or our privacy practices, please contact:

PriceBenchmarKing.ai LLC
Attn: Privacy — HomeTaxAppeal
Email: support@hometaxappeal.us
Website: https://hometaxappeal.us

We will make reasonable efforts to respond to all legitimate inquiries within 30 days, or such shorter period as required by applicable law.