What we collect, and why.

When you book a meeting or send a message, we collect what you type into the form, plus a few details your browser sends along. We use them to set up the meeting or to write back. We also count page views and button presses, to see which pages lead to a meeting.

We don’t sell your information. We do use Google’s tools to see which of our ads lead to a booked meeting, and to show our ads to people who’ve visited this site. The cookies section below says how to turn that off.

Questions, or want something deleted? Write to Jacob at jacob@open-civ.com.

Open·Civ is run by Jacob Ramos through Open Civic Intelligence Ventures LLC, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. This page covers this website, www.open-civ.com.

The booking form asks for your name and email. A phone number, what you need and your website are up to you. You also pick a time and a place: Google Meet, or one of four spots in downtown Saint Paul. If you give a number, you can also ask us to text you about the meeting (see Text messages, below).

When you confirm, the site puts the meeting on Jacob’s Google Calendar with you as a guest, by name and email. Google then emails you the invite, with a Meet link if you picked Google Meet. Your name is in the event title. What you need, your website and your phone number go in the description, so they’re on your copy and on Jacob’s.

Jacob’s copy also carries a private tag. It says the meeting was booked here, which kind of meeting and which services you picked, whether you asked us to text you and, if the link you followed carried it, which button on our site sent you. It also keeps which of our offers or templates you started from, the campaign tags on the link that brought you if it had any (our Google ads carry them, and so do links from some other sites and newsletters), and Google’s click id if you came from one of our Google ads. That’s how we learn which pages and ads lead to real conversations. The tag never shows on your invite.

Jacob also gets an email about each booking, which Resend delivers. It has what you typed into the form, where you’re meeting, which button sent you if we know, whether you asked for texts and, when your visit carried them, the offer or template you started from, the campaign tags and whether you came from one of our Google ads.

After you book, the confirmation page offers a short form to help Jacob prepare. If you fill it in, your answers go onto the calendar invite and to Jacob’s email, which Resend delivers. You can save it again to change them, until the meeting starts.

Your booking, and your answers if you fill in the prep form, also go to Open·Civ’s own app, where Jacob keeps track of everyone who reaches out: your name, email, phone if you gave it, what you need, your website, the meeting, whether you asked for texts, your answers, and the same details about where you came from. The app’s data is stored with Supabase.

Under the phone field, the booking form has a box that says “Text me about this request.” It starts unchecked, it only works once you’ve typed a number, and you can book without it. It asks about texts and nothing else.

If you check it, we record that you said yes, when the site got your booking, the number you gave and which version of the box’s wording you saw. That record goes in the private tag on Jacob’s copy of the calendar event and in Jacob’s email about your booking. If you leave it unchecked, both say no.

The texts are about your request: a reply to your booking, a reminder before we meet, a short follow-up. That’s about 1 to 3 per request, never a marketing list. They go through our messaging provider, which delivers them to your phone company. When you book, you get a text saying so, and a reminder is set up with the provider to arrive about two hours before we meet, never between 9 PM and 8 AM.

Texting can also start another way: if you text our number first, if you say yes when our receptionist asks on a call whether it may text you should the call drop, or if you ask it to text you a link. Either way we keep a record of the number, the time and the call or text it came from.

Msg & data rates may apply. We don’t share or sell your mobile number or your text consent with anyone for their marketing. Reply STOP to any text and you won’t get more. Reply HELP, or email jacob@open-civ.com, for help. The SMS Terms have the details.

Calls and texts to our number, (651) 378-1161, go through Twilio, our phone provider. During office hours, your call rings Jacob in Talkyto, the phone app he answers calls and texts in, which keeps the call history, texts and voicemail.

Outside office hours, you can leave a voicemail. Twilio records it and keeps the recording, and Jacob gets an email about it, which Resend delivers, with your number, the time and the recording. The recording and his email stay until he deletes them.

We don’t share your number for marketing. Ask and Jacob will delete your voicemail, your texts and his emails about them.

The message form asks for your name, your email and a few words about what you need, and lets you pick the services you’re interested in. Messages sent through the site’s form are emailed to Jacob through Resend and kept in Open·Civ’s own app with the bookings. Jacob’s copy also says which page you wrote from and, if it carried one, which button opened the form. It also notes which of our offers or templates you started from, the campaign tags on the link that brought you if it had any, and whether you came from one of our Google ads. The app keeps the same details, and Google’s click id as well.

You get a short email back from Jacob saying your message arrived. To keep the form from being abused, the site counts how many messages come from each IP address, and allows a few an hour. That count is kept in memory for an hour at most, then forgotten.

The booking form, once you pick a time, and the message form use Cloudflare Turnstile, running invisibly, to keep bots out. Most people never see it. As soon as either form opens, your browser loads the check from Cloudflare and sends it details about your browser and device, plus your IP address, even if you never send anything.

When you confirm a booking or send a message, we send Cloudflare the check’s one-time code and your IP address, so it can tell us you passed. This site doesn’t save either one, though the request passes through Vercel’s logs like every request here. What Cloudflare collects and how it uses it is covered by Cloudflare’s Turnstile Privacy Addendum.

The iOS beta has ended, and its sign-up form is gone. If you signed up while it ran, we kept your email, your name and note if you gave them, when you signed up, and which browser and page you used.

Jacob keeps those sign-ups in private files on his own computer, and he has an email about each one in his inbox. Those emails went through a service called Resend, which keeps its own copies on its own schedule. Ask and Jacob will delete yours.

Mail to jacob@open-civ.com lands in Jacob’s inbox, which runs on Google Workspace. We use what you send to write back to you.

This site doesn’t set cookies itself. Google’s tag does: it runs on every page and saves cookies on open-civ.com, with names like _ga and _gcl_au. We also advertise with Google Ads, and that tag is how we learn which ads worked.

We use Vercel Web Analytics to count page views. Vercel says each view can record the page, the site you came from, your approximate location, and your browser, operating system and device type. It also says it uses no third-party cookies and doesn’t tie views to you or your IP address. Vercel Speed Insights also measures how quickly each page loads and responds: it records the page, the timings, and your browser and device type, and Vercel says it sets no cookies.

To count returning visitors and to show the city and region a visit came from, the site keeps a random visitor id in this browser’s storage and, for the session, the city and region your request arrived from. Neither says who you are, and clearing your browser’s site data removes both.

We also use Google Analytics, on every page, to see which pages and buttons lead to a booked meeting. It records the pages you view, the buttons you press into the booking pages and the message form, which parts of a page you scroll to, which services you open, how quickly each page loads, and whether you book a meeting, send a message or fill in the prep form. It tells Google about your visit, including your IP address and browser details.

Our Google Analytics account is linked to Google Ads, so the same tag works for our ads too. Google learns that you visited, which pages you saw and what you did here, along with your IP address and browser details. We use it to count which of our ads lead to a booked meeting or a message, and to show our ads to people who’ve been here, on Google and on other sites. Google uses cookies to do this, and your visit can shape the ads Google shows you.

When you click one of our Google ads, the address you land on carries Google’s click id. Google Ads conversion tracking uses it, through the same Google tag, to record that a booking followed the click. We run these ads in the United States only, where no consent banner is required, so the site doesn’t show one. To opt out, use the controls below: Google’s My Ad Center for personalized ads, and blocking third-party scripts to stop the tag.

To turn it off, Google’s My Ad Center switches off personalized ads, Google’s browser add-on turns off Google Analytics, and blocking third-party scripts stops the tag altogether.

The live skyway map on some of our pages, like the Districts and Proof pages, loads from our skyway map site, spskyway.com. That map uses Google Analytics, which can set cookies and tells Google about your visit to the map. The map’s privacy page explains it and links Google’s opt-out.

A few pages on this site are display screens, not pages for visitors. They, and the template previews in our gallery, load their fonts from Google Fonts, so opening one sends Google your IP address and basic browser details.

Some browsers send a “Do Not Track” signal. There’s no agreed standard for it, so this site works the same either way.

The passport stamps on the wayfinding board are kept in your browser's storage and never sent to us. Clearing your browsing data clears them.

For the length of your visit, the site also keeps the campaign tags, Google’s click id and the offer or template from the addresses of the pages you open, in this tab’s storage, so a booking or message can say which ad, link or page brought you. Closing the tab clears it.

Passive sensing keeps counts, not identities. A phone is linked to a person only if that person opts in through the app.

We don’t sell your information. These services handle it for us so the site can work:

Google, through Google Workspace, runs Jacob’s calendar and email, and sends your invite and any Meet link.

Cloudflare runs the bot check on the booking and message forms, under its Turnstile Privacy Addendum.

Resend sends the emails from the booking form, the message form and the prep form: Jacob’s copies, and the note back when you send a message.

Our messaging provider sends the texts, and only to people who checked the box, texted us first or said yes to texts on a call.

Twilio is that provider. It also runs our phone number: it carries your calls and texts to Talkyto, the phone app Jacob uses to answer them, and records any voicemail you leave outside office hours.

Vercel hosts the site and counts page views. Like any web host, it logs each request, including your IP address and browser type.

Supabase stores Open·Civ’s own app, where bookings and messages are kept.

Google also learns of your visits through Google Analytics and Google Ads, the embedded map and the display-screen pages, as described above. Beyond that, we’d share your information only if the law requires it, to keep someone safe, or if Open·Civ ever changes hands.

We don’t run an automatic deletion schedule, so here’s what actually happens.

A booking stays on Jacob’s calendar as the record of the meeting until he deletes it or you ask us to, and your answer about texts stays with it. Emails you send us, messages from the site’s form, Jacob’s emails about bookings and the old beta sign-ups stay in Jacob’s inbox until we delete them. Bookings and messages in Open·Civ’s own app stay until we delete them.

Vercel’s logs and page-view counts, what Google Analytics and Google Ads record, Cloudflare’s records from the bot check and Resend’s copies of the emails it sends for us are kept on those services’ schedules, not ours.

Twilio keeps its own records of the calls and texts to and from our number, on its schedule. The voicemails left outside office hours stay with Twilio, and Jacob’s emails about them in his inbox, until he deletes them. The call history, texts and voicemail in Talkyto, Jacob’s phone app, stay there until he deletes them.

Email jacob@open-civ.com to ask what we have about you, correct it or have it deleted. We may ask you to confirm it’s you, usually by writing from the address you used. Then we’ll delete what we hold (the calendar event and Jacob’s email about it, the app’s record of you, your emails and messages, and any beta sign-up) and tell you when it’s done, unless the law says we must keep something. If the meeting hasn’t happened yet, deleting it cancels it. We can’t erase what Google, Vercel, Cloudflare and Resend keep in their own records.

To cancel a meeting yourself, decline the invite, and Jacob’s calendar will show it. Your details stay on his calendar until he deletes the event, so email him if you want them gone too.

This site isn’t meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information. If you think a child has sent us something, email us and we’ll delete it.

If we change how we handle information, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.

Questions about any of this go to Jacob Ramos at jacob@open-civ.com. Open Civic Intelligence Ventures LLC, Saint Paul, Minnesota.