Privacy

The short version: you can read every page without signing in, without giving a name or address, and without being counted by a tracking tool.

What does the site collect?

Nothing beyond what any web page needs to reach your screen. Your browser asks our web host for a page and the host sends it back; we add no tracking on top of that. There is no analytics script and no advertising code.

There are no cookies set by this site. There are no forms, no comment boxes, no newsletter sign-ups and no accounts, so there is nothing for you to type in and nothing for us to store. The site takes no calls and has no email inbox for reader questions.

How do the videos work?

A few pages include a short video from a city agency or a utility, hosted on YouTube. Until you press play, the player is only a still picture, and nothing is loaded from YouTube. When you press play, the video loads from YouTube in its privacy-enhanced mode, and from that moment YouTube’s own privacy terms apply to that video. If you would rather not connect to YouTube, simply leave the picture alone; every page makes sense without the video.

What about links to other sites?

Pages link out to the agencies they cite, such as HPD, DOB, DEP and 311, to Con Edison and National Grid, and on some pages to one of four businesses run by the same team as this site. When you follow a link you are on that site, under its privacy policy and its cookies, not ours. Lookup tools such as HPDONLINE and ZoLa are city services; what you type into them goes to the city.

Will this change?

If the site ever adds anything that collects information, this page will say so first. More on how the site is made is on how this atlas is made and about.