Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information ppclift ("we", "us") collects when you use ppclift.com and the ppclift application, and how that information is used.

1. Information you provide

• Account details: email address, full name, and a password (stored as a salted cryptographic hash - we never store or see your plain-text password), or a Google account identifier if you sign in with Google.
• Profile details (optional): a display name, your country, language and region, preferred distance units, and whether you are a freelancer, agency, in-house marketer or business owner - plus, for agency and in-house teams, your company name, role and team size. These set your units and help us understand who uses ppclift; they are not shared with anyone or used for advertising, and you can change or clear them under Account at any time.
• Payment information: if you subscribe to a paid plan, payment is handled entirely by PayPal. We never receive or store your card or bank details - we only receive a subscription ID and status from PayPal.

2. Information collected automatically

• Search activity: the cities, radii, and categories you search, and the results returned, are stored so that you and your team can reopen past results without repeating the underlying work.
• Lead status and notes: if you mark a business as Contacted, Replied, Not Interested, or Do Not Contact, or leave a note about it, that status and note is stored against the business and shared with every signed-in user on your ppclift account - it is not private to you. This is by design, so your team doesn't contact the same business twice.
• Session data: a session cookie identifies you as signed in. It is required for the app to function and is not used for advertising or cross-site tracking.
• How you found us: the first time you visit, a cookie records the domain of the site that linked you here (never the full address), any campaign tags in the link (such as utm_source), and the first page you opened. It lasts 90 days. If you create an account, that record is saved with your account so we can tell which pages and channels bring people to ppclift. It is not shared with anyone or used for advertising.
• Basic technical logs: standard server logs (IP address, timestamps, requested URLs) kept for security and troubleshooting.

3. Data ppclift generates about third-party businesses

To do its job, ppclift looks up publicly available information about local businesses - names, addresses, phone numbers, and websites - from OpenStreetMap, Overture Maps and, where configured, the Google Places API. It also captures a screenshot of each audited business's public website and analyses that website's publicly served HTML for on-page SEO signals. Where enabled, ppclift additionally scans a business's own public website for a listed contact email address (for example, from a "mailto:" link), so that you don't have to search for it yourself. This data concerns businesses, not individuals, and is used only to generate lead lists and lead-tracking information for ppclift account holders. A discovered email address may occasionally belong to a sole proprietor or individual rather than a generic business inbox; if you believe an address was collected in error, contact us to have it removed.

4. How we use your information

• To provide, maintain, and secure the ppclift service.
• To enforce plan limits and process subscription payments via PayPal.
• To send account-related emails (e.g. email verification), where SMTP is configured.
• To send weekly digest emails summarising new leads, but only for searches you have explicitly subscribed to (a paid-plan feature) - you can unsubscribe at any time from the Billing screen.
• To send occasional product news, tips and offers to account holders. Every one of these emails carries an unsubscribe link, and you can also switch them off under Account & Billing; account emails such as verification and support replies are unaffected. We never send marketing to an address entered only into the free SEO checker.
• To measure whether those marketing emails are useful: each one contains a small image that tells us when it was loaded, and its links pass through ppclift so we can count clicks. These are recorded against the email we sent you. Account emails (verification, digests, alerts and support replies) are never tracked this way. Many email apps load images automatically, so an "open" means the message was fetched rather than read; blocking images in your email app stops the open signal.
• To help you draft outreach messages: the "Draft email" feature fills a template with a business's name, website, and audit findings, entirely for your own use - ppclift does not send outreach emails on your behalf.
• If enabled, to display advertising (Google AdSense) to users on the Free plan. AdSense may use cookies to serve relevant ads - see Google's own privacy policy for how it processes this data.
• If enabled, and only if you agree to it, to measure site usage with Google Analytics. We ask the first time you visit; until you say yes, Google Analytics is not loaded at all and no request is made to Google for it. Once you agree, it runs on every page (including the public landing, privacy, terms, and contact pages, not just the signed-in app) and may set its own cookies or similar identifiers - see Google's own privacy policy for how it processes this data. You can change your answer at any time under Cookies below.

We do not sell your personal information.

5. Third parties we share data with

• Google - Places API (business lookups), OAuth (optional sign-in), AdSense (if enabled), and Analytics (if enabled).
• PayPal - payment processing for paid plans.
• OpenStreetMap / Nominatim / Photon - public map and business data lookups.
• Overture Maps Foundation - open business listings, downloaded monthly and searched on our own server, so no data about you or your searches is sent to Overture. The listings come from Meta, Microsoft and others under CDLA-Permissive-2.0, from Foursquare under Apache-2.0 (Copyright 2024 Foursquare Labs, Inc.), and from AllThePlaces under CC0.

Each of these providers has its own privacy policy governing how it handles data it receives from us.

6. Data retention

Account data is kept while your account is active. Cached search results are retained to allow reuse and history features; we can delete any cached search at any time. Lead status, notes, and discovered contact emails persist independently of any single search (so they still apply if the same business turns up again later) until we remove them. Deleting your account removes your login credentials; some search and lead records may be retained in anonymized or aggregate form for the shared cache.

7. Your rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data by contacting us. If you are located in a jurisdiction with statutory data protection rights (such as the EU/UK GDPR or applicable US state laws), those rights apply to the extent required by law.

8. Cookies

We use an essential session cookie to keep you signed in, and a first-visit cookie that records how you found ppclift (see section 2). If advertising is enabled, Google AdSense may set its own cookies; you can control ad personalisation through your Google account settings. If Google Analytics is enabled, it sets its own cookies to distinguish visitors and sessions, but only after you have agreed to it; your answer is remembered in your browser, not on our servers.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the date at the top of this page.

10. Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to us through the contact page.