Privacy Policy

Last updated October 9, 2026 ◦ Retention periods marked with * are read from the settings the site is running with.

PublicGIS is a map of public property records, run from Minnesota. It is free to use, with optional paid plans. This page explains what we collect about the people who use the site and about property owners, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and how to hide your information. Email privacy@publicgis.com with any question or request.

The short version

• We show public property records published by counties and states.
• We do not sell information about the people who use this site. We show no ads and use no ad trackers. We count visits with our own analytics on our own servers, not an outside analytics company.
• We keep what you type into search and Ask AI for 90 days to find and fix searches and questions that fail. Only the site owner can see it.
• The Business plan includes a set number of owner contact lookups a month for approved users. The plan price is not a fee for each record. We do not sell lists, files or bulk copies of property owners' information.
• Payments go through Stripe. Your card details never reach us.
• Protected people, such as judges and police officers, can hide their home at once. So can anyone in danger.
• Owners can stop contact lookups at once, without proof.

Property records

The map shows parcel outlines, addresses and the facts counties publish, such as owner of record, values, taxes and sales. Each parcel names its source and links to the county record. We copy these records from government sites and refresh them on a schedule. When a county changes or removes a record, the next refresh changes or removes it here. Hiding a parcel here does not change the county's own record; the county decides what it publishes.

We never publish Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver license numbers, owner ages, or photos, sketches or floor plans of homes. When a county withholds an owner's name, we also drop that owner's mailing address.

When you open a parcel's answers or ask about it, the site also works out a few facts from these public records: whether the tax bill goes to the property's own address, another address or another state, whether the owner claims a homestead there, how long it has been since the last recorded sale, what kind of owner the name suggests (a person, company, trust, government or nonprofit), how many other parcels in the same county carry the same owner name and mailing address, and estimates of value and rent from public sales, a government house price index and HUD rents. The count of other parcels is shown only to signed-in users, and never as a list. These facts are worked out each time they are asked for; we do not keep them in a file, attach them to your account or sell them as lists. When Ask AI uses them in an answer, that answer is kept with your question for 90 days, as described under Ask AI. Where a county withholds owner names, or a property is protected or hidden, the owner facts are not worked out. They are not a consumer report: our Terms of Use do not allow using them to decide on anyone's credit, insurance, employment or housing.

Everyone who visits

• Our web servers log the time, the page or API path, the result and the size of each request. These request logs leave out your IP address and the search terms or parcel in the address. We keep them for up to 30 days.
• When you search the map or Land Finder, or ask a question, we store what you typed, how the site handled it and what it showed you, so we can see why a search found nothing and fix it. We store it with a random code for your browser tab and a code made with a secret key from your network address and the date, which changes every day. Our own visit analytics also keeps what you typed with the rest of that visit. Before storing it we blank anything that looks like a phone number, email address, payment card number or Social Security number. Only the site owner can see it. We delete the text after 90 days and keep only daily counts. Copies in our backups are gone about three months after that.
• To stop abuse, our servers count requests from each IP address for a few minutes at a time.
• To show the nearest matches first, a map search uses the middle of the map when you are zoomed in on an area. Otherwise it uses your device location if you already let your browser share it with PublicGIS, rounded to about 1 kilometer, or else the town our server guesses from your IP address with a database kept on our server (IP geolocation by DB-IP). Your IP address is not sent anywhere for this. The search record above keeps only the point used.
• When you look at a county we do not cover yet, we count a vote for adding it. The vote stores the county, the rough spot on the map (to about 100 meters), and a code made with a secret key from your IP address, browser and the date. The code changes every day. We do not keep your IP address with the vote.
• Saved shapes and display settings stay in your browser. We never receive them. Saved properties also stay in your browser, unless you are signed in. Then they are stored with your account, as described under Accounts.

Map layers from other servers

Some optional map layers, such as aerial photos, load straight from county, state, federal or Esri servers. When you turn one on, your browser connects to that server, which can see your IP address, browser details and the map area you are viewing. Their own privacy policies apply. The main map, parcels and search come from our own servers. When a map search finds no parcel, address or place, our server sends the words you typed to Esri's place search to look for a landmark with that name. Esri receives the words and the point the search is ordered around from our server, not from your browser, so it does not see your IP address.

Ask AI

• When you ask a question, we send your question and the public records for that parcel to AI providers to write the answer. The records can include the owner's name as the county lists it, and the facts the site works out from them, described under Property records.
• Our providers are Anthropic, which runs Claude models, OpenRouter, which passes the request to an OpenAI model or a Claude model when Claude is slow or unavailable, and Typesafe, which receives only your question, to decide what kind of lookup it is.
• We save your question, the earlier questions it follows up on and the answer we showed for 90 days, as described under Everyone who visits, so we can find questions the site could not answer. Anthropic says it deletes API requests within 30 days and does not train its models on them. OpenRouter says it does not store prompts unless a customer turns that on. OpenAI says it keeps API requests for up to 30 days to check for abuse. OpenAI and Typesafe say they do not train their models on this kind of request.
• Answers are written by AI. They can be wrong. Check anything important with the county.
• To enforce daily question limits, we keep a code made from your network address with a secret key until the end of the day (UTC).
• Please do not put personal details in your question.

Accounts

• If you sign in with Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, we receive your account ID with that company, your name and your email address. We never receive your password for that account. Each sign-in method makes its own account, and we do not link them.
• If you sign in with an email code, we keep your email address and when you first confirmed it. There is no password. To send codes and limit how many an address gets, we keep the address with each code and link for a day after they expire. Codes and links are stored only as one-way hashes.
• For every account we keep when it was created, which version of the Terms of Use you accepted and when, and when you signed in, with the sign-in method and IP address, and on which days you used the site while signed in. While you are signed in we also keep the IP addresses your account used, on which days, and the last time that day each one was used, to protect your account and stop abuse. We delete sign-in times and IP addresses after a year.
• We keep your plan, its status, when it renews or ends, and the customer ID Stripe gives us. Stripe keeps your payment details. Your card number never reaches us.
• We keep the parcels you save, the collections you put them in, which ones you watch, and when you saved them, so you can use them on any device.
• If you share a collection or a selection, we keep the link, its title and, for a selection, its parcel numbers. Anyone with the link sees those parcels as the map shows them to anyone, and never your name, email address, nicknames or watch list. You can stop sharing on the account page. A stopped link is deleted 30 days later.
• We count how many owner searches and reveals you use each day and each month, to apply your plan's limits.
• We send you emails about your account. If you watch parcels, we send one email a day that lists changes to them. You can turn these off on the account page.
• If you apply for access to owner contact information, we also keep your full name, business name, Minnesota real estate license number if you gave one, phone number, intended use, and your statement that you are in the United States. We use this only to decide on your application and to prevent misuse.
• Every reveal is logged with your account, the parcel and its location, the purpose you chose, whether anything was found, and the time. The log never contains the phone numbers or email addresses you saw. Reveal logs are kept for 3 years* and then deleted.
• You can delete your account on the account page. This cancels any paid plan. We erase your sign-in details, name, email address, saved parcels, collections, shared links, watch list, usage counts and access application. We keep the reveal log for 3 years*, as above. We and Stripe keep billing records, such as your Stripe customer ID, plan, invoices and payment dates, as long as tax and accounting rules require. Copies in our backups are gone about three months later.

Owner contact information

• Owner contact information is available only for parcels in MN, and only to approved users on a plan that includes reveals, currently Business. Each plan has a monthly number of reveals. The plan price is not a fee for each record.
• We do not look up or show contact information for owners whose mailing address is in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas or Vermont.
• Phone numbers and email addresses come from a third-party contact data provider (currently Tracerfy). We send it only the property address, and the owner's mailing address from the county record when the property address finds nothing. We never tell it who is asking.
• We store only the matched owner name, phone numbers with their type and Do Not Call flag, email addresses, and the lookup date. We never store dates of birth, ages, relatives, associates, employers, phone carriers, litigation flags, mailing addresses from providers, or death records. Numbers a provider flags as belonging to a litigator are dropped. People a provider reports as deceased are dropped.
• Stored results are encrypted with AES-256-GCM. Results are deleted 90 days after lookup*, and "nothing found" results after 30 days*. Expired results are never shown, and a cleanup job that runs with the scheduled data refresh, normally every six hours, deletes them.
• Only PublicGIS administrators can open stored results, and every time they do it is logged.

Protected people and anyone in danger

Many laws let certain people stop websites from showing their home address. They include New Jersey's Daniel's Law, the federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act for federal judges, Minnesota's laws for judicial officials, and similar laws in other states. Address confidentiality programs such as Minnesota's Safe at Home protect survivors of violence and others.

• Use the protected person request. The whole property is hidden from the map, search, address lists, our API and any contact lookup the moment you send it, before anyone reviews it. We do not ask for proof.
• You can also send the request by email to privacy@publicgis.com, yourself or through an agent or service acting for you. The legal deadline starts when your email reaches us.
• If you are in danger, use Report incorrect or protected information on the parcel and choose Immediate safety concern. The property is hidden at once. You do not have to explain why.
• Parcels whose county record has no owner name, a withheld or redacted owner, or an owner marked confidential, private or Safe at Home are never sent for contact lookups.

How owners can stop contact lookups

Each of these takes effect immediately, without waiting for review. Stored results that match are deleted at once.

• Opt out with your name and property address. Add a phone number or email to hide it everywhere.
• Protected people, such as judges, peace officers, elected officials, Safe at Home participants and their family members, should use the protected person request, which also hides the home. No proof is required.
• Administrators can add suppressions by hand.

An opt-out stops contact lookups only. The county record stays on the map. To take the property off the map, use the protected person request or the safety report above. To keep the property on the map but hide your name from the parcel page and owner search, email us.

For phone numbers and email addresses in these requests we keep only a keyed one-way fingerprint, which lets us recognize the number without storing it. We keep the name, property and request type so the request keeps working. If you give an email address, we send one confirmation to it.

Reports, requests and claims

• Anyone can use "Report wrong or unwanted info" on a parcel page or a contact result. Reports of the wrong person or of harassment stop all lookups for that parcel. A reported number or email is hidden at once. For a harassment report, every user who revealed that parcel in the last 90 days has their access paused until an administrator reviews it. Any user linked to two or more reports is paused automatically.
• Reports are never published. If you leave a way to reach you, we keep it with the report and erase it 30 days* after the report is closed.
• For a protected person request, we keep your name and email only to confirm and answer it, and erase them 30 days* after it is closed. We keep the address, the dates and our decision as the record that we honored it, and to keep the home hidden.
• A claim needs a signed-in account and uses its email address. An account can claim one property at a time, and a claim ends when the county records a new owner. A claim stores the name, email, optional phone, relationship to the property, and choice of whether to share your contact details. We confirm the email with a one-time link and email you a link to change or remove the claim later. If you choose to share them, they are given only after we review the claim, only to users approved for owner contact lookups on that property, in place of other contact data and labelled as submitted by someone claiming the property. Our review does not verify ownership. A claim does not stop contact lookups; use the opt-out for that. Unconfirmed claims are deleted after 2 days.

Who we share information with

We share information only with these service providers, and only to run the site:

• Hosting: our own servers, and a cloud server at Akamai (Linode) that handles web traffic. All are in the United States.
• Email: Resend sends account, confirmation, request and parcel alert emails. Fastmail hosts the privacy@publicgis.com mailbox.
• AI: Anthropic, OpenRouter, OpenAI and Typesafe, for Ask AI, as described above.
• Payments: Stripe processes payments and runs subscriptions. It receives your email address, the plan you choose, and the payment details you give it directly. Stripe's own privacy policy applies to what you give it.
• Sign-in: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, only if you choose to sign in with them. They learn that you signed in to PublicGIS. Their own privacy policies apply.
• Contact data: our contact data provider, which receives property addresses and county mailing addresses only.
• GISFinder: our companion site lists the official offices for a parcel. It receives the parcel's location, never who is looking. When a parcel is hidden, we tell GISFinder so it stops linking to it.

We also share information when the law requires it, such as a court order, or when needed to protect someone from harm. If PublicGIS is ever transferred to a new operator, this policy goes with it.

Selling and sharing

We do not sell or rent information about the people who use this site, and we do not share it for advertising. Owner contact information works differently, as described under Owner contact information: approved users on the Business plan can see it for single parcels, within their plan's monthly limit. Nevada residents can still send an opt-out request to privacy@publicgis.com, and we will confirm it.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

• We do not track you across other websites, and we do not let others track you on our site.
• We treat every visitor the same whether or not your browser sends a Do Not Track signal.
• If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a request to opt out of any sale or sharing of your information, wherever you live. Because we do neither, nothing else changes.

How long we keep things

Your choices and rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what information we have about you, and give you a copy
• correct it
• delete it, including your account. You can also delete your account yourself on the account page.
• give you a list of the specific companies we have shared it with

Email privacy@publicgis.com. We may ask you to confirm your email address, but we never ask for proof to hide a home. We answer within 45 days, and usually much sooner. If we say no, we will tell you why, and you can appeal by replying. If you still disagree, you can contact your state attorney general. We will not treat you differently for using these rights.

Some information cannot be deleted because it comes from public records. We can hide it here, but the county keeps its own record.

Security

We use encryption between your browser and our servers, encrypt stored contact results, limit who can see data, and log administrator access. No system is perfectly secure. If a security breach affects your personal information, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Children

PublicGIS is not meant for children. Accounts and plans are for adults 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If we learn we have, we delete it.

Where your data is

We store and process data in the United States. Owner contact access is only for people in the United States.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. For important changes, we also show a notice on the site and email account holders before the change takes effect.

Contact

Email privacy@publicgis.com for any privacy request or question.

Map ◦ Terms ◦ Privacy ◦ Opt out ◦ Protected person request