What this site does with your information

Where you live, what you do, your salary, your household and what matters to you are written into the URL of the results, city and comparison pages (for example ?b=chicago-il&o=registered-nurse&s=95000). That is the whole storage mechanism: there is no database and nothing is saved on our side. Change the address and the numbers change; clear it and the site falls back to a default profile.

Because the inputs are part of the address, three things follow:

• Anyone you share a link with sees the same inputs.
• The address is kept in your browser history like any other page you visit.
• Like every website, our host records each page request — the address requested, the requesting IP address and browser type — in short-lived operational logs used to keep the service running and to detect abuse. We do not analyse those logs to profile visitors.

Reset my inputs in the settings menu (the cog in the header) removes your inputs from the address and clears the browser-side state described next.

A few small values are kept by your browser itself and never sent to us. You can see and delete them at any time through your browser's site-data settings.

• Recently viewed cities (up to ten), the number of pages you have opened this visit and the number of ad slots that have scrolled into view. These are in sessionStorage, which is emptied when you close the tab. They power the “your shortlist so far” box and let us check ad layouts work, without any of it leaving your device.
• Your appearance choice (light, dark or system) in localStorage, kept until you change it or clear site data.

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

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 are requested only from the live site at uprootmap.com. Preview and development copies of the site show empty placeholders instead of ads and load no advertising code at all.

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, and your choice is stored by Google in your browser. You can change it at any time here:

• No analytics service — not Google Analytics, not anything else. The engagement counters above stay in your browser.
• No accounts, newsletters, forms that submit to us, or payment processing.
• No social-media buttons, embedded widgets or tracking pixels.
• No requests to Google Fonts: the typeface is served from our own domain.
• No selling or sharing of personal information, because we hold none to sell.

The figures for the 66 metros come from published public datasets — Zillow asking rents, the Census Bureau, HUD, the BLS, the IRS and state tax schedules, and NOAA climate normals. None of it is about individuals. 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, which we do not control.

The site is about salaries, taxes and rent, and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from them — or, given the above, from anyone.

If what the site collects changes — for example if we ever add analytics — this page and the date at the top will change first.

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