Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 4, 2026

This policy describes what Critique Piqua collects and stores, and what it does not.

1. If you only read the site

You do not need an account, and we do not ask you for anything. We do not run analytics, advertising, or third-party tracking scripts. We do not set any cookie of our own for readers.

Two things still happen that you should know about:

• Server logs. Our hosting provider records ordinary request logs, which include IP addresses, for security and reliability. We do not use these to build profiles of readers.
• Embedded video, and video thumbnails. Posts may embed YouTube or Vimeo players. When a page containing one loads, your browser contacts that company directly, and they may set their own cookies and collect data under their own privacy policies, which we do not control.
• This also applies to listing pages. Where a post contains a video, its thumbnail on the feed and on member pages is the picture supplied by YouTube or Vimeo, loaded from their servers. So browsing those pages contacts them even if you never open the post. If that matters to you, block third-party cookies or use a private window.
• Video and audio can be played without leaving the feed. Pressing play on a thumbnail loads the full player on that page. For YouTube we request the player from youtube-nocookie.com, its privacy-enhanced address, which limits what is stored until you actually watch something; Vimeo offers no equivalent, so a Vimeo player is the ordinary one. Nothing plays by itself — no player loads until you press play. Audio files are served from our own storage and involve no third party.

2. If you are an approved member

We store:

• Your email address, because approval and sign-in both work by email. It is used to send you sign-in links. It is not shown publicly and is not used for marketing.
• Your display name, which is public and appears on everything you post.
• What you post — text, images, files, and video links — along with timestamps and whether a post was edited.
• Comments you leave on other people’s posts, which are public and carry your display name exactly as posts do. Editing one keeps the previous wording where moderators can see it, for the same reason posts do; deleting one hides it from readers rather than erasing the record.

Sign-in sets one essential cookie holding your session. It is not used for tracking, and there is no way to opt out of it while staying signed in.

3. Everything posted is public and indexed

Posts are visible to anyone on the internet without an account, and are intended to be found by search engines. Treat anything you post as permanent and public from the moment you submit it — a search engine or another reader may have copied it within seconds.

Members can edit their own posts at any time, and edited posts are marked as edited. Previous versions are kept privately and are visible to moderators, so the record of what a post used to say is not lost when it changes. Those prior versions are never shown publicly.

4. Images have their metadata stripped

Every image uploaded here is re-encoded on our server before it is stored. That removes EXIF metadata, including the GPS coordinates phones commonly embed in photos. This is deliberate: without it, a photo taken at home could disclose a contributor’s address.

Documents and audio files are an exception. We cannot rewrite them, so they are stored exactly as uploaded and may still contain metadata — author names and software details in a PDF, or ID3 tags, device information and recording dates in an audio file. Check those before uploading them.

Word, OpenDocument, rich-text and Excel files deserve particular care. As well as the author and “last modified by” names, these formats routinely carry things that are invisible when you look at the document: tracked changes, deleted text that was never accepted, comments, earlier revisions, and hidden rows, columns or entire sheets in a spreadsheet. Uploading one publishes all of it. If a document has been edited or shared before, the safest course is to save it as a PDF, or use your software’s “inspect document” or “remove personal information” tool first.

5. Removed content is retained, not erased

This is the part most privacy policies gloss over, so plainly: when a post is hidden or removed, it stops being visible on the site, but the record is kept in our database rather than deleted. Uploaded files likewise remain in storage. We built it this way so moderation decisions stay reversible and auditable — so we can show what was posted, when, and what we did about it.

If you need content actually erased rather than hidden, say so explicitly in a removal request and we will consider it. We will not pretend hiding is deleting.

6. Who else touches this data

• Supabase — hosts the database, authentication, and uploaded files, and sends sign-in emails.
• Our web host — serves the site and keeps request logs.
• YouTube and Vimeo — when a page you load contains one of their embedded players, when a listing page shows a thumbnail for a video post, and when you press play on a thumbnail to watch it without leaving the page, as described above.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with anyone else except where required by law. If we receive a subpoena or court order for member information, we will comply as legally required and will notify the affected member unless prohibited from doing so.

7. Requests about your information

Anyone — member or not — may ask what we hold about them, ask for a correction, or ask for removal. Write to admin@critiquepiqua.com or use the request form. We aim to respond within 30 days.

Requesting removal of content about you is handled through the same process. Being the subject of a post does not by itself require us to remove it, particularly where it concerns the public conduct of a public official — but we will read and answer every request.

8. Children

This site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. Posting about identifiable minors is prohibited by the Posting Policy. If you believe we hold information about a child, contact us and we will remove it.

9. Security

Access to post is restricted to pre-approved accounts, and permissions are enforced at the database level rather than only in the application. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee against every possible breach.

10. Changes

If this policy changes materially, we will update the effective date above and notify members.

11. Contact

admin@critiquepiqua.com
655 N Main St, Piqua, OH 45356