Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

ClaimEngine (“we”, “us”, “our”) operates claimengine.org. We help homeowners find out whether their property tax assessment is too high, and we prepare the documents needed to appeal it. We are not attorneys, and we do not file appeals on your behalf: you file with your county using the documents we prepare.

This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It applies to our website, the emails we send, and the services we provide. By using our site or services, you agree to the practices described here.

2. Information we collect

2.1 Information you give us

Property address — the address you enter to start a free analysis.
Email address — if you ask us to email you a copy of your analysis.
Name, email address, and phone number (phone is optional) — when you agree to our service agreement and ask us to prepare your appeal package.
Payment method — entered directly into a secure form provided by Stripe, our payment processor. Your card number never reaches our servers; we store only a reference that lets Stripe charge the saved card if your appeal succeeds.
Documents and photos you upload — for example, photos of your property’s condition that support your appeal.
Eligibility details you choose to share — such as your age, veteran status, or disability status, if we ask so we can check which property tax exemptions you may qualify for. These questions are optional, and we use your answers only for that purpose.
Your appeal outcome — the decision and any new assessed value, which we use to calculate our fee.
Anything you send us when you email or call us.

2.2 Public property records

Once you give us a property address, we obtain public property records about it from our property-data provider, ATTOM Data Solutions, which compiles county assessor and recorder records. These records can include the parcel number, assessed values, the annual tax amount and tax rate, property characteristics (bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, lot size, year built, property type), sale history, and exemptions on file. To measure whether the property is over-assessed, we also retrieve public records of recent sales of comparable properties nearby.

2.3 Information we create

Using the information above, we create your analysis (an indicated market value, an estimate of over-assessment and potential savings, and a confidence rating), your appeal documents (appeal letter, evidence package, and filing guide), records of your appeal’s progress, and our fee calculation.

2.4 Information collected automatically

Agreement records. When you accept our service agreement, we record the date and time, the version of the terms you accepted, and a one-way cryptographic hash of your IP address and browser type. A hash cannot be turned back into the original value; we keep it only as evidence that you agreed.
Email records. We keep a record of the emails we send you and whether they were delivered.
Server logs. Our hosting provider keeps short-lived technical logs (such as IP address, browser type, and pages requested) to run and secure the site.
Analytics and cookies. See sections 5 and 6.

3. How we use your information

To run your analysis — comparing your assessment with public records and comparable sales.
To prepare your appeal package — the appeal letter, evidence package, and step-by-step filing guide, plus a review of any photos you upload.
To create and secure your account — we sign you in with a one-time link sent to your email address, so there is no password to remember.
To communicate with you — sending your analysis, your appeal package, status updates, and, if you have an appeal in progress, reminders 30, 14, 7, and 3 days before your county’s filing deadline. If you ask us to email your analysis, we also send a short series of follow-up emails (up to five) about your results and your county’s deadline. You can stop these at any time (see section 8).
To bill you — our fee is 30% of your first-year tax savings, charged only if your appeal results in a lower assessment. If you purchase exemption filing assistance, Stripe processes that one-time payment.
To protect our services — preventing fraud and abuse, enforcing our agreements, resolving disputes, and meeting legal obligations.
To improve the site — understanding which pages are confusing or hard to use, so we can make them simpler.

We share personal information only with the service providers listed below. Each is bound by contract to protect it and — except for Microsoft, whose own use is described in section 5 — may use it only to provide its service to us.

Supabase — hosts our database, sign-in system, and private file storage. Supabase privacy policy.
Vercel — hosts our website and keeps short-lived server logs. Vercel privacy notice.
ATTOM Data Solutions — receives the property address so we can retrieve public property records and comparable sales. ATTOM privacy policy.
Anthropic (Claude) — the AI service that drafts the written argument in your appeal package and describes the condition issues visible in photos you upload. It receives the property address, assessment details, comparable sales, and those photos. Anthropic’s commercial terms prohibit it from training its models on this data. Anthropic privacy policy.
Stripe — processes payments and stores your payment method. It receives your name, email address, payment details, and charge amounts. Stripe privacy policy.
Postmark — delivers our emails. It receives your email address, your name, and the content of each email. Postmark privacy policy.
Microsoft Clarity — website analytics. See section 5.

We may also share information:

At your direction — for example, if you ask us to send your appeal package to a family member or advisor.
When the law requires it — to comply with a subpoena, court order, or other legal process, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of ClaimEngine, our clients, or others.
In a business transfer — if ClaimEngine is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We would notify you by email before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

We do not sell your personal information, we do not give it to data brokers or advertisers, and we do not send it to your county or any government agency. You file your own appeal using the documents we prepare.

5. Microsoft Clarity (session recordings and heatmaps)

We partner with Microsoft Clarity to capture how visitors use and interact with our website through behavioral metrics, heatmaps, and session replay. A session replay is a reconstruction of a visit — the pages viewed, where the visitor clicked, scrolled, and moved the mouse, and how they moved from page to page. We use this information to improve the site and make it easier to use, and for security and fraud-prevention purposes. Website usage data is captured using first- and third-party cookies and similar technologies (see section 6).

What Clarity does not capture. Clarity masks everything typed into form fields and drop-down menus, and it masks numbers and email addresses shown on our pages, before anything is sent to Microsoft. Masked content is never uploaded. We do not use Clarity to connect a recording to your name or email address.

Retention. Microsoft keeps recording playback data for 30 days and aggregated click and heatmap data for 9 months.

Microsoft’s role. Microsoft processes this data as described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement, and may use it for its own purposes, including improving its products and advertising.

Opting out. Blocking cookies in your browser, or using a content blocker, prevents Clarity from running. You can also manage Microsoft’s advertising settings at account.microsoft.com/privacy/ad-settings, or email us (section 9) and we will help.

6. Cookies and browser storage

Cookies are small files a website stores in your browser. We use the following:

Sign-in cookies (essential). When you sign in, our sign-in provider (Supabase) sets cookies whose names begin with sb- to keep you signed in. They are set only after you sign in and are refreshed while you use your account.
Analytics cookies (Microsoft Clarity). _clck and _clsk are set by our site to recognize a returning visitor and group page views into one session. CLID, ANONCHK, MR, MUID, and SM are third-party cookies set on Microsoft domains; MUID identifies browsers across Microsoft websites and is used by Microsoft for advertising, analytics, and operational purposes. Details: Clarity cookie list.
Payment cookies (Stripe). On the page where you save a payment method, Stripe sets its own cookies to detect fraud and secure the payment form. See Stripe’s cookie policy.
Browser session storage. After an analysis, we temporarily keep your results in your browser’s session storage so the results page loads instantly. It is cleared when you close the tab.

We do not use advertising pixels or retargeting tags, and we do not use Google Analytics.

Your controls. Most browsers let you block or delete cookies in their settings. If you block essential cookies, you will not be able to sign in to your account. Our site does not currently respond to “Do Not Track” or Global Privacy Control browser signals; please use the choices described in this policy instead.

7. How long we keep your information

Analyses, appeals, documents, and account information are kept while you have an active analysis, appeal, or account with us, and for up to seven years after your last engagement, because appeal decisions, fee agreements, and tax records can remain relevant for several years.
Payment and transaction records (including records held by Stripe) are kept for seven years for tax and accounting compliance, even if you ask us to delete other information.
Agreement records (section 2.4) are kept for as long as the related agreement could be enforced or disputed. If you ask us to delete your information, these records are anonymized rather than erased.
Analytics data is retained by Microsoft for the periods described in section 5. Hosting logs are kept for a short period by our hosting provider.

When you ask us to delete your information (section 8), we remove it from our active systems within 30 days, except for the records described above that we are required or permitted to keep.

8. Your choices and rights

You can, at any time:

See a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
Correct information that is inaccurate or out of date.
Delete your information, subject to the records we must keep (section 7).
Stop marketing emails by using the unsubscribe link in any email or by emailing us. We will still send emails needed to deliver a service you have requested, such as your appeal package or a deadline reminder for an appeal in progress.
Manage cookies and analytics as described in sections 5 and 6.
Opt out of any sale or sharing of your information (section 9).

How to make a request. Email hello@claimengine.org from the email address you used with us, and tell us what you would like us to do. To protect your information, we verify requests by sending a confirmation link to the email address on file. You may also have an authorized agent make a request for you; we will ask for proof that you gave them permission. We respond within 30 days, and we will never treat you differently for exercising your privacy rights. If we decline a request, we will explain why, and you can ask us to reconsider by replying to our response.

State privacy laws. Residents of Texas, Florida, California, and a number of other states have specific rights under their state’s privacy law, including the rights to access, correct, delete, and obtain a portable copy of their personal information, and to opt out of targeted advertising, the sale of personal information, and certain profiling. We honor these requests from all of our clients, regardless of where they live, using the process above. California residents also have the right to know the categories of personal information we collect and the purposes for which we use it — that is what sections 2 through 4 describe — and the right to opt out of “sharing” for cross-context behavioral advertising (section 9).

9. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

We do not sell your personal information, and we have not sold it in the past 12 months. We do not share it with advertisers for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Some state laws define “sharing” broadly enough to include analytics cookies like those set by Microsoft Clarity (section 5), because Microsoft may use the resulting data for its own purposes. If you would prefer that we not collect analytics data about your visits, you can:

block cookies for claimengine.org in your browser, or use a content-blocking browser extension, which stops Clarity from running; and/or
email hello@claimengine.org with the subject line “Do Not Sell or Share”, and we will confirm your request and help you apply these settings.

10. How we protect your information

We encrypt information in transit and at rest, and we limit access to your data on a need-to-know basis. Each client can see only their own household’s information, enforced by our database. You sign in with a one-time link sent to your email, so there is no password that could be stolen. Your documents are stored in private storage and are reachable only through time-limited links: 15 minutes for downloads from your dashboard, and 7 days for the links in the email that delivers your appeal package. Card details are handled entirely by Stripe. Our service providers are bound by contract to protect your information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so if you believe your information has been compromised, please contact us right away.

11. Children

Our services are for property owners and are not directed to anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

12. Where your information is stored

We are based in the United States, and our service providers store and process your information on servers in the United States. If you use our services from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, where privacy laws may differ from those of your country.

13. Changes to this policy

When we update this policy, we will post the new version on this page and change the effective date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use information we have already collected from you, we will also email you at the address on file before the change takes effect.

14. How to contact us

Questions, requests, or concerns about your privacy? Email us at hello@claimengine.org. We read every message and reply within 30 days.

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