Privacy Policy

Appeal Tax Assessment (“we,” “us,” or “our”) operates appealtaxassessment.com (the “Site”), a paid property-tax assessment review service for Santa Clara County, California parcels. This policy explains what information we collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have. We wrote it to describe what this Site actually does, not a generic template — if something here changes, we’ll update this page and its date above.

This policy is not legal advice, and using the Site does not create an attorney-client or fiduciary relationship of any kind. If you have questions about how a specific law applies to you, consult your own attorney.

1. Information you provide to us

• Property address. The address you enter or select (via Google’s address-autocomplete feature, or typed manually if that feature doesn’t load) to identify the property you want reviewed.
• Contact and identity information. If you proceed past the free property lookup, we collect your first name, last name, and email address, and a checkbox confirmation that you own the property or have the owner’s permission to act on their behalf.
• Self-reported assessed value. Optionally, the assessed value shown on your own county notice, if you choose to provide it. This is used only to help our fulfillment process verify your packet — it does not change anything shown to you on the Site.
• Payment information. If you purchase the $49 evidence packet, your payment card and billing details are collected directly by our payment processor, Stripe — see Section 4. We do not receive or store your full card number.
• Communications. If you email us (including at the support address in Section 9), we keep that correspondence and whatever you choose to include in it.

2. Information about the property, from third-party sources

Once you provide an address, we look up publicly and commercially available information about that property — assessed value, tax history, square footage, bedrooms/bathrooms, year built, property type, listing photos, and comparable recently-sold properties nearby — from third-party real-estate data sources (currently, a direct integration with Realtor.com’s property-data service). This is information about the property, which may or may not be the same person as the visitor entering the address (for example, if you’re checking a property you don’t yet own, or acting on an owner’s behalf). We use it solely to generate your screening result and evidence packet.

3. Information collected automatically

As of this policy’s date, we do not run advertising trackers, cross-site tracking pixels, or third-party analytics scripts on the Site. We may add privacy-respecting analytics in the future (for example, aggregate visit/page-view counts) to understand how the Site is used — if and when we do, we’ll update this section to name the tool and describe what it collects.

That said, ordinary web infrastructure inherently processes some technical data on every request, whether or not any analytics tool is installed: our hosting provider (Vercel) and other infrastructure providers may log standard information such as IP address, browser type, and request timestamps, for operating, securing, and troubleshooting the Site (for example, detecting abuse of the free lookup). This is standard server operation, not a feature we built, and we don’t use it to build advertising profiles or sell it.

4. Third-party services we use

We rely on the following service providers to operate the Site. Each processes certain information under its own privacy policy, which we encourage you to read — using the Site means you’re also interacting with these services where noted:

• Google Maps Platform (Places Autocomplete). Used to help you enter your property address accurately. As you type, your keystrokes are sent to Google to generate address suggestions. This feature, and Google’s handling of information submitted through it, is governed by Google’s Privacy Policy and the Google Maps Platform Terms of Service, both incorporated into your use of the Site by reference. If this feature fails to load, the Site falls back to a plain text address field and Google does not receive your keystrokes.
• Stripe. Our payment processor for the $49 fee. Stripe collects and processes your payment card and billing information directly — we act only as the merchant of record and do not store your full card number. Stripe may also collect device and browser information for fraud prevention. See Stripe’s Privacy Policy for how Stripe itself handles your data as an independent data processor/controller for its own fraud-prevention and compliance purposes.
• Supabase. Our database provider, used to securely store screening requests, orders, and packet records.
• Resend. Our transactional email provider, used to deliver your evidence packet and related order communications to the email address you provide.
• Vercel. Our web hosting and infrastructure provider (see Section 3).

We do not control these providers’ own data practices beyond what we configure, and each may independently update its own policies.

5. How we use your information

• To look up the property and generate your free screening result
• To process payment and generate, verify, and deliver your evidence packet
• To respond to support inquiries
• To detect and prevent fraud, abuse, or misuse of the free lookup
• To comply with legal, tax, and accounting obligations
• To maintain and improve the Site’s reliability and accuracy

We do not use your information to make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you without the opportunity for human review — your evidence packet is appraiser-reviewed before delivery.

6. Sharing and sale of information

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own advertising purposes. We share information only: with the service providers in Section 4, as necessary to operate the Site; if required by law, subpoena, or legal process; to protect the rights, property, or safety of Appeal Tax Assessment, our users, or the public; or with your consent.

7. Data retention

We retain screening and order records for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, support a purchased packet, and meet legal, tax, and accounting recordkeeping obligations (which may require retaining payment-related records for several years). You can request deletion of your information at any time (Section 9); we’ll honor that request except where we’re required or permitted to retain specific records by law.

8. Your choices and rights

Regardless of whether California’s CCPA/CPRA formally applies to a business our size, we voluntarily extend the following to anyone who contacts us, as a matter of policy: you may ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct inaccurate information, ask us to delete your information (subject to the legal retention exceptions in Section 7), and ask us not to use your information for any purpose beyond fulfilling a purchase you’ve made. To exercise any of these, email us at the address in Section 9. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these choices.

If you are accessing the Site from outside the United States, please note the Site is intended for Santa Clara County, California property owners, and any information you provide will be processed in the United States.

9. Children’s privacy

The Site is intended for adult property owners (or those authorized to act on an owner’s behalf) and is not directed to, and we do not knowingly collect information from, anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has provided us information, contact us and we’ll delete it.

10. Security

We use reasonable administrative and technical measures to protect the information we collect, including access controls on our database and never handling full payment card numbers ourselves. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

11. Not an appraisal, and not affiliated with the County

This service provides screening estimates and consulting materials only. It is not an appraisal, and no result constitutes an opinion of value under USPAP. We are a private service and are not affiliated with the County of Santa Clara, Google, or Stripe.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Site changes. We’ll revise the “Last updated” date above when we do; material changes will be reflected here before they take effect.

13. Contact us

For any question, correction, deletion request, or other privacy inquiry, email support@appealtaxassessment.com. We’ll respond as promptly as we can.