Legal
Privacy Policy
The short version: GridScanner collects the minimum we need to run the service — your account details, the business information you give us, and publicly available information about businesses near yours. We don’t sell your data, we don’t share it for advertising, and if you connect your Google Business Profile we read only the listings you manage and use that data only to show it back to you.
1. Who we are
GridScanner (“GridScanner,” “we,” “us”) provides a competitive-awareness dashboard for local businesses at gridscanner.net and its app subdomains. GridScanner is operated by Schubert Group LLC, which, for the purposes of applicable data-protection law, is the controller of the personal information described in this policy. Questions about this policy or your data: hello@gridscanner.net.
2. What we collect
Information you give us
- Account information. When you sign in with Google or create an account with email and password, we receive your name, email address, and (with Google sign-in) profile picture. Authentication is handled by Google Firebase Authentication; we never see or store your password.
- Business information. The details you add to set up the service: your business name, locations and addresses, a short description, search radius, and search terms.
- Team information. Email addresses of teammates you invite, and the roles and location access you assign them.
- Communications. If you email us, we keep the correspondence so we can respond and improve support.
Information about the market around you
- Public business data. To build your briefings, we gather publicly available information about businesses near your locations — ratings, review counts and recent public reviews, opening hours, pricing signals, promotions, and news — through licensed commercial APIs including the Google Maps Platform. This is information about businesses, not about you, and it is the same information any member of the public can see.
Information collected automatically
- Usage and log data. Standard technical logs (IP address, browser type, pages viewed, timestamps, error reports) used for security, debugging, and keeping the service running.
What we do NOT collect
- No advertising identifiers, no cross-site tracking, no data purchased from data brokers, and no payment card numbers (when paid plans launch, payments are processed directly by Stripe).
3. How we use information (and our legal bases)
- To provide the service — run your scheduled checks, build your briefings and standings, operate team access, and send the emails you (and each teammate individually) opt into. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you.
- To operate, secure, troubleshoot, and improve GridScanner — including monitoring for abuse and analyzing aggregate usage. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in running a secure, reliable service.
- To communicate with you — service announcements, responses to your requests, and material changes to terms or this policy. Legal basis: contract performance and legitimate interests.
- With your consent where required — for example, connecting your Google Business Profile. You can withdraw consent at any time. Legal basis: consent.
- To comply with law — where processing is necessary to meet a legal obligation.
We do not sell personal information, do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and do not use it to train third-party advertising or profiling systems. We use your email address only for the product emails you choose and essential service communication.
4. Cookies & similar technologies
We keep this minimal. The only cookies and browser storage GridScanner uses are:
- Authentication (essential). Firebase Authentication stores tokens in your browser so you stay signed in. Without these, the app cannot work.
- Preferences (functional). The app may remember lightweight choices (such as your last viewed business) in your browser’s local storage. This never leaves your device.
We use no advertising cookies, no third-party analytics trackers, and no social-media pixels — which is why you won’t see a cookie-consent banner here. If that ever changes, we will update this policy and ask for consent where required.
5. Google user data
This section covers data GridScanner receives from Google APIs about you and the Google accounts and listings you control.
- Google sign-in. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and profile picture — nothing else — solely to create and secure your account.
- Google Business Profile (upcoming feature). If you choose to connect your Google Business Profile, GridScanner will request read-only access to the performance data of listings you manage — such as impressions, website clicks, calls, and direction requests. We use this data for exactly one purpose: displaying it and its trends back to you and the teammates you have authorized inside your GridScanner dashboard. We never access anyone else’s listing data through your account, never use it for advertising, never sell it, and never use it to develop or improve unrelated products. Human access to this data is limited to what is necessary for security, support you request, or legal compliance. You can disconnect at any time inside GridScanner or by revoking access at myaccount.google.com/permissions, and you may ask us to delete previously synced data (see Section 10).
GridScanner’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
6. How we share information
We share data only with the service providers (processors) that run GridScanner, and only as needed to provide the service:
- Google Cloud Platform / Firebase — hosting, authentication, and databases.
- Resend — delivery of the emails you opt into.
- Stripe — payment processing when paid plans launch (Stripe receives your payment details directly; we never store card numbers).
- Data providers — the licensed APIs we query for public business information receive our queries (e.g., a business name or map area), not your account data.
Each provider is bound by contract to process data only on our instructions. Beyond that, we disclose information only if required by law or legal process, to protect our rights or the safety of our users, or as part of a merger, acquisition, or asset sale (in which case this policy continues to apply and we will notify you). We never disclose to data brokers or advertisers.
7. Data retention
- Account and business information is kept while your account is active.
- Check history and briefings are retained for 12 months, then deleted automatically.
- Technical logs are kept for a short operational window and then rotated out.
- If you delete your business or your account, the associated data is deleted from our production systems, with residual copies in encrypted backups removed on their rotation schedule.
8. Security
All data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest on Google Cloud Platform. Access to production systems follows least-privilege service accounts, our databases are not directly reachable from the internet (the application API is the only data path), and API credentials are stored in a managed secret store. No system is perfectly secure — if we learn of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by law, without undue delay.
9. International data transfers
GridScanner is operated from the United States, and data is processed on Google Cloud infrastructure in the United States. If you use the service from outside the U.S., your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S. Where required (for example, for users in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland), we rely on appropriate safeguards for such transfers, such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses implemented by our processors.
10. Your rights & choices
Everyone, regardless of location:
- Access, correction, export, deletion. Email hello@gridscanner.net and we will act on your request promptly — typically within 30 days. We may need to verify your identity (normally by confirming control of your account email) before acting.
- Email preferences. Every teammate controls their own recap and alert emails in Account settings; every product email includes a way to turn it off.
- Disconnecting Google. Revoke GridScanner’s access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
If you are in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland
You additionally have the rights to object to or restrict processing based on legitimate interests, to withdraw consent at any time (without affecting prior processing), to data portability, and to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. We do not use your personal information for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects.
If you are a California resident
Under the CCPA/CPRA you have the rights to know, correct, and delete the personal information we hold about you, to data portability, and to not be discriminated against for exercising these rights. We do not sell personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of — but you may still submit any request at hello@gridscanner.net, directly or through an authorized agent. In the last 12 months we have collected the categories of information described in Section 2, for the purposes in Section 3, and disclosed them only to the service providers in Section 6.
11. Children
GridScanner is a business tool and is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children; if you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
12. Third-party sites & services
The service links to third-party sites (for example, Google account settings or a competitor’s public website inside a briefing). Their privacy practices are their own; this policy covers only GridScanner.
13. Changes to this policy
If we make material changes, we will update the effective date above and notify account holders by email before the changes take effect. Non-material clarifications may be posted without notice — the current version always lives at gridscanner.net/privacy.
14. Contact
Privacy questions, requests, or complaints: hello@gridscanner.net. We respond to every request.