Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 1, 2026. Last updated: September 1, 2026.

What StartFL is

StartFL is an independent government-navigation service. It is not a Florida, county, municipal, or federal government agency, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government agency. Official agencies and their source materials remain authoritative.

Information you provide

When you use the public question experience or property lookup, you may voluntarily send a question, an address, or other information you type into the request. StartFL uses that information to answer the request, resolve the relevant jurisdiction, find related government records and workflows, and assemble the service response.

If you include an address or other location detail, the service may process it through its address resolver and related public GIS, zoning, flood, evacuation, parcel, and government portal lookups. Do not submit information that is not needed for the question.

What the current service stores

The production application uses a local SQLite database. For the question service, it stores session records, the messages sent and returned, and structured service packets created from conversations. Those records can include the original question, an address included in it, jurisdiction and parcel details returned by a lookup, and the answer’s supporting workflow or source information.

The application also stores cached results from public GIS and official-page lookups to make the service faster and reduce repeated requests. GIS and official-page caches are pruned by the application after their configured cache window. The current code does not publish a separate automatic deletion schedule for conversation and service-packet records, so do not assume a particular retention period.

StartFL does not currently provide public user accounts or a public dashboard for viewing or deleting question history. The separate agency workspace is passcode-gated and uses an expiring, secure, HTTP-only session cookie when an authorized reviewer accesses it.

Google Analytics 4

StartFL uses Google Analytics 4 with measurement ID G-16SVE8Y0SN to understand aggregate use of the site. Google Analytics may receive its normal technical, device, browser, approximate location, and pseudonymous measurement information, and may use measurement cookies or similar technologies according to Google’s service settings.

The current implementation sends page-view data using the pathname, sanitized page location, and page title. It also sends the following aggregate event data: question entry point and length bucket, answer started/completed/failed with a broad failure stage, jurisdiction resolved or unresolved, and the destination domain for relevant official government-link clicks.

StartFL’s analytics implementation is designed not to send the verbatim government question, street address, email address, phone number, URL query-string contents, or other free-form request text to Google Analytics. In particular, question links may contain a question in the browser URL for the interactive experience, but the analytics page location is reduced to the pathname and analytics event parameters do not contain that question.

Other services that receive request data

To provide the current answer service, the production application sends the question, relevant conversation history, and any generated location context to OpenRouter for the configured AI model. Address and property requests may also be sent as lookup inputs or coordinates to public Pinellas County Enterprise GIS, FEMA, municipal GIS, and government self-service portals used by the application. These services have their own terms and privacy practices.

StartFL has no separate hosted customer database in the application. The current service uses the production server’s local SQLite storage, along with its web server and network, DNS, TLS, and infrastructure providers. Government source websites linked from the site are independent third parties and may collect information when you visit them.

Cookies and similar technologies

The public application does not use localStorage or sessionStorage. Google Analytics may set its standard measurement cookies. The agency workspace may set a necessary HTTP-only authentication cookie after a successful reviewer login. The current public question experience does not require a StartFL account or login cookie.

How information is used and disclosed

StartFL uses submitted information to operate, secure, troubleshoot, improve, and provide the requested government-navigation service, including retrieving relevant public records and sources. It may be disclosed to the AI, analytics, infrastructure, GIS, and government portal services described above when needed for those functions, and when required by law or to protect the service, users, or others.

StartFL does not sell personal information. It is not a government records custodian, and it does not promise that information submitted to a third-party government portal or linked website will be handled under this policy.

Security

The production service uses HTTPS, access controls for its agency workspace, input limits, rate limits, and conservative server-side handling. No internet service can guarantee absolute security. Avoid sending passwords, Social Security numbers, financial credentials, full payment-card information, or other highly sensitive information to StartFL.

Your choices and privacy inquiries

You can choose not to submit optional information, avoid including sensitive details, and use official government sources directly. You may contact [email protected]with a privacy question or request. Please describe the relevant page or session without including unnecessary sensitive information. We may need enough information to understand and verify a request, and some information may need to be retained or disclosed when the law requires it.

Changes to this policy

StartFL may update this policy when the service or its data practices change. The effective date above will identify the current version.