Privacy policy

Last updated: Nov. 5, 2026

This policy covers https://www.eastmetronews.com and the East Metro News email newsletters.

What we collect

• Your name and email address, if you create a free account or sign up for our newsletters. To sign you in, we email you a link; there's no password. We also use your email to send the newsletters you chose. You can unsubscribe from any email with one click. Accounts are optional; you can read everything without one.
• Your comments. Comments are public and show the name on your account.
• Basic visit data, such as which pages are read and which site sent you here. We use it to understand what readers find useful. We count story reads ourselves, by the hour, with nothing that identifies you, and we use Vercel Web Analytics, which also sets no cookies. Search words are never sent to it.
• Anything you send us, such as a tip, a letter to the editor or a correction request.
• If you pay us, for example to support our reporting, Stripe handles the payment on its own site. Stripe tells us your name, your email address and the amount. We never see your card number.

Likes

When you like a story, your browser keeps a random code so the same browser can't like a story twice. If you're signed in, the like is tied to your account instead, so it shows on all your devices. We store only scrambled (hashed) versions of these codes and of your account's ID, never your email. To stop people from flooding the like button, we also keep a scrambled version of your IP address for one day.

Breaking news alerts

If you turn on alerts in the "Alerts" menu, your browser asks whether to allow notifications from us. Your browser's maker (such as Google, Apple or Mozilla) delivers them. We store only the delivery address your browser gives us, its two security keys and the cities you chose. We don't store your name, your email or your IP address with it. Turn alerts off in the same menu or in your browser's settings, and we delete it.

Your location

The city menu at the top of the site has a "Use my location" option. It asks your browser for your location once, to find which city you're in. That happens on your device, using city boundaries your browser downloads from our site. Your location is not sent to us or stored. Only the name of the city you picked is saved, in your own browser, so the site remembers your choice.

Cookies

If you sign in, we set cookies that keep you signed in, and one that tells our pages to show "Your account" instead of "Sign in." They're used for nothing else. If you don't sign in, we set no cookies. Your city choice, your light or dark setting and your like code are kept in your own browser's storage, not in cookies, and aren't sent to us except the like code when you like a story.

Advertising

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 visits to this site and other sites on the internet.

You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings. You can also opt out of some other vendors' use of cookies for personalized advertising at aboutads.info. Learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Our local sponsors' ads are images and links we place ourselves. They don't use tracking cookies.

Tips and sources

We keep the identity of people who send us tips confidential when they ask us to, to the extent the law allows. Don't send us anything by email that would put you at risk if it were seen by someone else.

Sharing

We don't sell your personal information. We share it only with the services that run the site and the newsletters (Supabase, which stores our data and handles sign-in; Vercel, which hosts the site; Resend, which delivers our email; and Stripe, which handles payments), with advertisers' systems as described above, or when the law requires it.

Children

This site is for a general audience. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Your choices

You can see and change your account, newsletter choices and name at any time from "Your account" at the top of the site. You can ask us to delete your account and everything tied to it, including your comments and likes, with the button on "Your account" or by emailing editor@example.com. We do it within 7 days.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page.