Privacy
Your privacy on Explore Kingston
This site is built to collect as little as possible — and to say plainly what that is, for how long, and how to get it removed.
The short version
- No accounts, no tracking cookies, no third-party analytics or ad tech.
- We never collect consumer health data. For visitor analytics, when you use the “what’s open near me” feature we store only the neighborhood your location falls in — never a coordinate.
- The one exception is the scavenger hunt: a check-in you choose to submit includes your photo and, if you allow it, your precise location. Those are sent to the hunt organizers and kept for 12 months (see the schedule below).
- We never record visits to food or health assistance resources — those taps are dropped and never stored.
- Everything we keep is on a published schedule and then deleted (see below).
- You can ask to see or delete your data at any time — no account required. We respond within 45 days.
Washington’s My Health My Data Act (RCW 19.373)
Washington’s My Health My Data Act (RCW 19.373) protects “consumer health data,” which is defined broadly enough to include precise location that could imply a visit to a health service. Our approach is to stay outside that regulated core by never collecting consumer health data at all:
- Analytics location is opt-in and area-only.The “what’s open near me” feature asks before it uses your location, and only after you accept the browser’s own permission prompt. We classify the reading into a named neighborhood on the server and immediately discard the coordinates — for analytics, only the neighborhood bucket is stored, and only in aggregate. (The scavenger hunt is separate — see below — because there the precise check-in is content you choose to send.)
- The side switcher never sends your location anywhere.The “use my location” button (Kingston side / Edmonds side) runs only when you tap it: your position is checked on your device and immediately discarded, and all that’s saved is a one-word cookie recording which side you chose — no coordinate ever leaves your device.
- We never track use of food or health resources. Taps on food-bank or health-assistance links are dropped at our servers and never recorded — not counted, not sampled, nothing.
- You have rights. You can see or delete your data (below); a legal hold can pause a deletion only where the law requires records to be preserved, and we log that instead.
What we keep, and for how long
This schedule is enforced by an automated job that runs against the same list shown here. When a window passes, the data is deleted.
| What | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Opt-in “near me” location counts, stored as neighborhood-area buckets only (never coordinates). Rolled up into monthly area totals, then the raw events are deleted. | 90 days, then monthly area totals only |
| Anonymous page views, outbound-link taps, and consent confirmations (a session id that resets when your browser closes; no cookies, no IP addresses). | 25 months |
| Anonymous visitor-survey answers (distance band, overnight stay, party size). Never tied to a person or device. | 36 months |
| Scavenger-hunt check-in photos and, when you allowed it, the precise check-in location you chose to send. Submission and photo are destroyed together; the audit trail keeps a coordinate-free record that a submission existed. | 12 months |
| The contact you give us to answer a privacy or accuracy request. Redacted from the request record once the request is resolved. | Until the request is resolved |
| Ferry-schedule observations (no personal data). The ferry store prunes itself. | 90 days (self-pruning) |
| Volunteer shift signups (a name and one contact — email or phone). The name and contact are removed 45 days after the shift date; the anonymous signup record is kept so organizations can see aggregate turnout. | 45 days after the shift date, then anonymized |
| The append-only operations audit trail (who changed what, when — the Chamber's records floor). Never purged, never edited. | Kept permanently (records floor) |
Consent, and how to withdraw it
Before the analytics feature uses your device location, it asks — with a plain description of what happens (it sorts a list by distance and adds one anonymous neighborhood-level count to Kingston’s visitor stats). Declining loses nothing: the list still works, sorted by walking time from the ferry dock. You can withdraw consent any time by declining the next prompt or clearing your browser’s site data; for analytics, nothing tied to you persists between sessions.
The scavenger hunt is different: a check-in you submit is content you send to the hunt organizers on purpose, so it is kept for 12 months (see the schedule above). To have a submission removed sooner, use the delete form below.
Member & business data
The app is becoming the Greater Kingston Community Chamber of Commerce’s membership records system — the system of record for the Chamber’s own member roster. Member contact data is held under the membership relationship and limited to the minimum the roster needs: organization identity, a contact name, email and phone, membership status and level, renewal and join dates, listing links, and a QuickBooks customer id. It honors each member’s display preferences, is kept on the schedule above, is covered by the same see-and-delete process below, and is fully exportable — the Chamber owns all of its own data.
Money never lives here. Dues invoicing and payments happen in QuickBooks; the app stores no payment-card data of any kind.
See or delete your data
You don’t need an account. Tell us how to reach you and we’ll respond within 45 days. Because most of what the app records is anonymous, a request may simply confirm that nothing is tied to you.
Version & changes
Current notice version: 2026-07.
- 2026-07 (2026-07-20) — First versioned notice: area-only location analytics, k-anonymity on published counts, retention schedule, consumer access/delete requests.
Questions? See our about page or reach the Chamber. This notice is being reviewed by the Chamber; it is not a substitute for legal advice.