What this site does with your information

Where you live, your job, your salary, your household, and what matters to you can be written into the page address so a result can be shared. The same household is also kept in this browser. Change the address and the numbers on that page change. Clear the device data and the site falls back to a default household.

Because those details are part of the address:

• Anyone you share a link with sees the same details.
• The address stays in your browser history, like any other page you visit.
• Like every website, our host keeps a short-lived log of each page request. A log line includes the address requested, the IP address, and the browser type. Those logs are used to keep the service running and to catch abuse. We do not use them to build a profile of visitors.

Reset my inputs, in the settings menu (the cog in the header), removes your inputs from the address. It also clears the browser-side details described next.

Use my location asks the browser for a position only after you tap it. The coordinates stay on your device. The page finds the nearest metro and writes that metro into the address, the same way typing a city does. We do not send the coordinates anywhere. We do not watch your location after that one reading. If you say no, city search still works. The browser may remember which metro that pick resolved to, not the coordinates. That lets the page keep the “estimated” label until you choose a different city or reset your inputs.

A few small values stay in your browser. They are never sent to us. You can see and delete them in your browser's site-data settings.

• Recently viewed cities (up to ten), how many pages you have opened this visit, and how many ads have scrolled into view. These sit in temporary storage for this tab. They disappear when you close the tab. They power the “your shortlist so far” box, and they let us check that ad layouts work. None of it leaves your device.
• Your appearance choice (light, dark, or system) is saved on this device until you change it or clear site data.
• Your household, saved cities, and quiz result stay on this device under one browser key. Saved cities are capped. The compare tray uses the newest of them. None of that leaves the device until you submit the monthly-email form.

Uprootmap itself sets no cookies. The only cookies on the site are set by Google for advertising, described below.

We send anonymous page-view counts and basic speed timings to Vercel, the company that hosts this site. That feed has no cookies, no advertising identifiers, and no way to recognise you from one visit to the next. It tells us which pages are opened, so we can see whether the site is working. It is not used to advertise to you. It is not combined with the details in the page address.

We use Google AdSense to show ads. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.

You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings, and opt out of some other third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.eu. Google explains what it collects and how at How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

Ads load only on the live site at uprootmap.com. Preview and development copies of the site do not load advertising code, and they do not show ads.

If you visit from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, Google's consent message appears before any personalised ad is shown. It is a certified consent management platform operating under the IAB Transparency & Consent Framework. Your choice is stored by Google in your browser. You can change it at any time here:

If you ask for the monthly note, we store your email, the cities you chose to watch, your home city, and whether you confirmed. Salary is stored only if you check the box that says so. Otherwise the note uses city changes and does not include your pay.

The list lives in Upstash Redis, a database hosted for this site. Confirmation, the monthly note, unsubscribe, and delete-my-data emails are sent by Resend. We keep the row until you unsubscribe or delete it. Unsubscribe is one click and does not require an account. Delete removes the row. We do not sell the list.

The note goes out the Saturday after the second-Friday data refresh. It names changes in the cities you watched and the biggest leftover movers that month. The postal address is printed in the email footer once it is configured.

• No Google Analytics. No advertising pixels besides AdSense. No other third-party analytics. The only counts that leave your browser are the anonymous page views Vercel records as our host, described above. The page and ad counts in settings stay in your browser.
• No accounts and no payment processing. The only form that submits to us is the monthly email signup, and only after you check the consent box.
• No social-media buttons, embedded widgets, or tracking pixels.
• No fonts loaded from Google. The typeface is served from our own site.
• No selling or sharing of personal information. We do not hold any to sell.

The figures for the 387 metros come from published public sources. Those include Zillow asking rents, the Census Bureau, HUD, the BLS, the IRS, state tax schedules, and NOAA climate normals. None of it is about individual people. The methodology page lists every source.

We link to the sources above, and to the advertisers Google chooses. Their sites have their own privacy practices. We do not control those.

The site is about salaries, taxes, and rent. It is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from them. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone else either.

If what the site collects changes, this page will change first, and so will the date at the top.

Questions about this policy: hello@uprootmap.com. More about who runs the site is on the about page.