Privacy policy

ClearPath is a civic disposal-guidance service for residents, cities, and counties. We help you figure out the right way to dispose of an item based on your local rules — no account needed — and in some areas we also coordinate pickups when you cannot take something to the curb yourself.

You can get complete answers anonymously — an account never changes the civic answer. When you use the public lookup, here is everything that happens with data:

• Usage record. We keep a record of the search: the item text you typed (shortened to 200 characters), the ZIP you entered, and what kind of answer came back. It has no name, no account, and no network address attached. We use it to see where our coverage falls short. These raw records are deleted on our routine usage-data schedule (see "How long we keep it").
• Feedback. If corrections are available for your area, you can flag an answer without an account. We keep the flag, the item text, and the ZIP so the local review team can fix the rule.
• On your device only. Your browser remembers a few small conveniences locally — roughly how many searches you've made (so we don't nag you twice about creating an account) and your last ZIP. These never leave your device and you can clear them any time by clearing site data.
• No cookies, no third parties. The public search sets no cookies and uses no third-party analytics of any kind.

• Sign-in info. The email and display name you give us when you create an account. Your password is held inside our sign-in system, never as plain text.
• Your area. Your 5-digit ZIP code, and for any pickup you book, the pickup address. We do not track your phone or browser location. We only see what you type.
• Items you ask about. The text descriptions and photos you share when asking how to dispose of something. We use them to give you a sourced answer. We do not sell or advertise on them.
• Saved guidance and recent activity. Entries you choose to keep, and your recent lookups. You can delete saved entries yourself; recent activity also expires on our routine usage-data schedule.
• "Was this helpful?" feedback. When you tell us a verdict worked (or did not), we keep your response alongside the ZIP and item text. This is what lets the next resident see whether the answer is widely confirmed or contested.
• Standard server logs. Basic records of which pages were visited, when, and from what network. Kept for 30 days for security and bug-fixing.

• We do not sell your data. Not to anyone, ever.
• No advertising trackers, no session replay, no remarketing cookies, no third-party ad networks, no third-party analytics.
• No location tracking from your phone or browser.
• No card numbers stored on our side. If pickup payments are involved, your card details go directly to a secure payment provider, and we only see the transaction id.

ClearPath uses privacy-minimal usage information to improve guidance. Our own servers count usage events — that a search happened, for which ZIP, what was typed (shortened), and whether it produced a useful answer. These records carry no account identity and no network address, and we use no third-party analytics service to collect them.

• No identity attached. Usage records carry the ZIP code, the item, and the outcome — not your name, email, or network address.
• Small numbers stay private. Before anything appears in a public or county-facing report, we require at least five underlying events. A pattern that could describe a handful of households is shown as "not enough data" instead.
• Testing filtered out. Activity from ClearPath staff accounts is excluded from every statistic.

• Where it lives. On the choose-your-area step after signup, next to the ZIP field, there is a "Detect my area" button. If you click it, your browser asks a public region-lookup service to guess a ZIP from your network.
• Opt-in. Nothing is looked up unless you click. Type your ZIP yourself and no lookup happens.
• ClearPath never sees the lookup. It goes from your browser straight to the third-party service. Our servers are not in the path, and we do not log it.
• You always confirm. The detected ZIP just pre-fills the field. What you submit is what counts.

• AI tools. When you ask about an item, the text or photo is sent to an AI service that helps classify it. We choose vendors that contractually cannot keep your submissions or use them to train models.
• Sign-in system. Your email, a scrambled version of your password, and your role assignment live with our identity provider.
• Pickups. Pickup coordination is currently handled directly by the ClearPath team (see our Terms). Whoever performs your pickup sees exactly what's needed to do the job: the pickup address, your phone if you provided one, the items, and your preferred time window. If independent licensed haulers are onboarded later, this section will be updated first.
• Local government, in aggregate. We may share anonymized counts with the city or county that operates in your area. For example: "47 residents asked about lithium batteries in this ZIP last month." Never your name, your address, or your individual history.

Different records live for different lengths of time, under a written internal retention policy:

• Account data: until you delete your account.
• Standard server logs: 30 days.
• Raw usage records (individual lookups, typed search text, conversion events — with or without an account): deleted after 180 days.
• Aggregated statistics (counts with no individual records behind them): kept up to 24 months, then reviewed.
• "Was this helpful?" feedback and the investigation records it opens: kept while the correction case is open and up to 24 months after it closes.
• Pickup and payment records: kept while your account is active and as needed to meet tax and audit obligations.
• Civic knowledge itself — rules, sources, certification decisions, and their public history — is a public-interest record and is retained; it contains no resident data.

You have one place for all of it: your account's Data & privacy tab lets you download a copy of your data (a JSON export) and permanently delete your account yourself, effective immediately. Prefer email? Write to support@tann.app from your account address and we will do it for you.

• Get a copy of the data attached to your account.
• Delete your account and the history attached to it. One honest caveat: statistics that were already anonymized and aggregated (for example, "how many people asked about paint in 55401") cannot be traced back to you and remain in the totals.
• Correct wrong information.
• Ask us to stop any processing that is not essential to the service.

We honor these rights for everyone, in every state — you do not have to prove where you live.

Your traffic to ClearPath is encrypted on the way in and out. Your password is never stored as you type it — it is protected by one-way scrambling so even our staff cannot read it. Production data sits behind audit logs, and only a small named group on our team can reach it. Every access is logged.

ClearPath is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

ClearPath is a public beta run by a small team. Bug reports and support questions are read directly by a real person, and aggregated usage data is reviewed by our team to fix bugs and improve the platform. Where a beta limitation affects your data — like the pickup coordination model above — this page says so plainly, and we update it as the product grows.

We will post any change to this page and update the "Last updated" date. If we add a new partner we share data with, or a new category of data we collect, we will email registered users at least 14 days before that change takes effect.

Questions about your data? support@tann.app. A real human will reply.