Privacy Policy - HardnessCheck

What this site collects

HardnessCheck needs no account and does not ask for personal information to show a county's water hardness. The county you search and the hardness number you type into the converter are used to answer that request and are not stored against you. Like almost every website, the hosting platform automatically logs standard technical data (IP address, browser type, pages visited, timestamps) for security and aggregate traffic measurement.

Cookies and advertising

Analytics cookies may be set to tell repeat visits from new ones. The site may show display ads served by Google AdSense, which can use cookies to serve and personalize ads; see Google's own advertising and privacy policies for how that works. No affiliate relationship is live today. If one goes live, this paragraph and the relevant page's disclosure line are updated at the same time, so a paid relationship can never appear silently.

Third parties

Hardness data comes from the Water Quality Portal, a public service run by USGS and the EPA; no personal data is exchanged with it. Links to other sites take you to that site, governed by its own privacy policy. Hosting is provided by Firebase (Google). No data collected here is sold.

Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have rights over the limited data described above, for example under California's CCPA/CPRA, other US state privacy laws, or GDPR for EU/UK visitors. These can include the right to know what is collected, to request its deletion, and to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of information for targeted advertising. Email hello@hardnesscheck.com to make a request.

Google's ad-personalization controls are at adssettings.google.com, and industry opt-out tools are listed at optout.aboutads.info.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.

Changes to this policy

This page is updated as the site changes and always reflects current practice. Questions go to the contact page.