Privacy policy
CostSquared collects as little as it can. You can use every calculator and the quote checker without giving us your name, email or address.
Who we are
costsquared.com is published by CostSquared. For any question or request about your information, email contact@costsquared.com or use the contact form.
Summary
- No accounts, no advertising, no analytics or tracking scripts, and no third-party cookies.
- We don't sell or share personal information, and we don't pass your details to contractors.
- Quote text you paste into the quote checker is not stored or logged.
- If you use the contact form, we keep your message for up to 24 months.
Calculators
Calculator inputs are sent in the page address (for example ?calc=1&rise=6&run=12) so results can be bookmarked and shared. We don't save them to a database. Like most websites, our hosting provider's web server keeps standard access logs, which include page addresses and IP addresses. Don't type personal information into calculator fields.
Quote checker
The text you paste and the lines you confirm are processed to produce your report and are then discarded. They are carried between steps inside the form on your screen, not saved on our servers, and they are sent with a form submission rather than in the page address so they don't appear in access logs. If you close the page, they're gone.
Contact form
When you send a message we store your name, email address, the topic, your message and the time it was sent. To limit spam we also store a keyed hash of your IP address that changes daily; we can't turn it back into your IP address. We use this information only to read and reply to your message and to deal with abuse. We keep it for up to 24 months and then delete it.
Cookies
We set one cookie, cs_session, and only on the contact form and the quote checker. It holds a random security token that protects forms from being submitted by other websites. It expires when you close your browser. Calculators set no cookies.
Abuse protection
To stop automated abuse we count requests to the contact form and quote checker using a keyed hash of your IP address. These counts are deleted automatically, at the latest within a day.
Error logs
If something goes wrong on our side, we record the time, the kind of error, where in our code it happened and a reference number. These logs never contain what you typed, pasted quotes, email addresses or IP addresses, and we delete them after 30 days. Our hosting provider may keep its own server logs under its policies.
Fonts and other resources
Fonts, images and scripts are served from our own server. Pages don't load content from other companies' servers, so visiting a page doesn't reveal your visit to them. Links to outside sources (such as city building-code pages) take you to sites with their own privacy policies.
Search Console
We use Google Search Console to see how our pages appear in Google search results. It reports aggregated search data to us and adds nothing to our pages.
Your choices and rights
You can ask us to show you, correct or delete a message you sent through the contact form. Email contact@costsquared.com or use the contact form, and give the email address you used. Depending on where you live, you may have other rights under state privacy laws; we'll honor any request we are able to under them.
Children
CostSquared is for adults planning home projects and isn't directed at children under 13. We don't knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
If we change how we handle information, we'll update this page and the date at the top before the change takes effect.