What we collect, and why it is so little.

What you type into the estimate form. Your phone number, which is required, and optionally your name and a short description of what you want built. That is the entire form. We do not ask for your address, your email or anything financial on this website. If you send us a photo or a plan by text or email afterwards, we hold that too.

What arrives automatically. Like every website, ours sits on a server that records ordinary request logs: IP address, browser and device type, the page requested, and the time. Our host, Vercel, generates these. We use them for security and to keep the site running, not to build a profile of you.

What we do not collect. We do not collect payment details on this site. We do not collect biometric identifiers of any kind, which in Illinois is a category with its own statute and its own consequences. We do not buy information about you from anyone.

Only these things:

• Calling or texting you back about the project you asked us about.
• Preparing and sending your estimate.
• Scheduling the visit and doing the work.
• Keeping our own records, and meeting tax and legal obligations.
• Keeping the website up and defending it against abuse.

We do not use your information for automated decision making, and we do not profile you.

When you give us your number through the form, you are agreeing that we may call or text it about your project. That is the entire point of the form, and the consent language appears directly above the button so it is not a surprise.

We do not run bulk marketing text campaigns. If that ever changes, it would be a separate purpose requiring separate opt in, and we would ask you for it specifically.

A small number of service providers, each doing one job for us, each bound to use the information only for that job:

• Our web host (Vercel), which serves the site, holds the server logs described above, and provides the cookieless page-view counting described below.
• Our email and messaging providers, which carry the notification of your enquiry to us and our reply back to you.
• Suppliers and subcontractors on your specific job, and only the details they need to do it. A cabinet shop building your millwork gets the dimensions and the delivery address. It does not get your enquiry history.
• Our accountant and insurer, where a project record is relevant.

We will also disclose information if the law requires it, such as a valid subpoena, or to protect someone from harm. If our business is ever sold, customer records may transfer with it, and this policy continues to apply to them.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross context behavioural advertising.

This website sets no advertising cookies and carries no Meta pixel, Google tag or similar tracker. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing here to consent to.

We do measure how many people read each page, using Vercel Web Analytics. It is deliberately the boring choice: it sets no cookie, stores no identifier that persists between visits, and cannot follow you to any other website. It tells us that a page was read, not who read it. We use it to find out which of our service pages are actually useful, and for nothing else.

We will not add advertising trackers that follow you around the internet. If we ever change measurement tools, we will name the new one on this page.

Your browser can block or delete cookies at any time. Nothing on this site breaks if you do.

• Enquiries that never became a job: up to two years, then deleted. People do come back a season later with the same project.
• Customer and project records: at least the length of our workmanship warranty, and then as long as tax and limitation periods require, typically seven years.
• Server logs: a short rolling window set by our host, generally weeks rather than months.

Ask us to delete sooner and we will, subject to records we are legally required to keep.

The site is served over HTTPS. Access to enquiry and customer records is limited to the people who need it to do the work. We keep the amount of information we hold deliberately small, which is the most effective security measure available to a business our size. No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach ever affects your information, we will notify you as Illinois law requires.

Write to us at hello@carpenterschicago.com and we will act on any of these, at no charge, within 30 days:

• Tell me what you hold about me.
• Correct something that is wrong.
• Delete it.
• Stop contacting me.

We extend these to everybody who asks, wherever you live, rather than only to residents of states whose laws compel it. If you are a California resident, this covers your rights to know, delete, correct and opt out of sale or sharing under the CCPA as amended; as noted above, we do not sell or share your information, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising any right.

This site is meant for adults hiring a carpenter. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us their information, tell us and we will delete it.

When this policy changes, we change the date at the top. If a change is significant, for example if we start using a tool that collects more than we do today, we will say so plainly on this page rather than quietly editing a sentence.