Privacy
What this site keeps, what it does not, and who else your browser talks to while the map is open.
No cookies, no trackers
deedective.com sets no cookies and runs no analytics or advertising script. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing for one to ask about. The only count of visits comes from the server's own access log, below.
Two settings in your browser
The map remembers two choices in your browser's local storage: light or dark theme (dd-theme) and map or satellite view (dd-basemap). They never leave your device. The site also installs a small service worker that caches its own HTML, CSS and JavaScript so a repeat visit paints at once; it caches no map tiles, no search results and no reports. Clearing site data in your browser removes all of it.
What the server logs
The production server writes a standard access log: the time, the address requested, the status code, your IP address, your browser's user agent string and the referring page. Cookies are stripped before the line is written, though the site sets none. The log is rotated at 50 MB and the newest twelve files are kept, so a line lives on the order of months. It is read by a person on the box as a page-view dashboard and is not shared with anyone.
The API also counts requests per IP address in memory to limit how fast one connection can pull data. Those counters are not written anywhere and vanish when the service restarts.
Searches and reports
An address you search, or a point you click, goes to this site's server. For a covered Connecticut town the answer comes from the site's own database. Anywhere else, the server asks federal services on your behalf: the Census geocoder (the address), FEMA, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the USDA soil survey and the FBI crime data service (the point or the police agency). Your IP address is not sent to them; the server makes those calls itself. Answers are held in the server's memory for up to a week and are not written to the database. The "Go to my location" button asks your browser for its position and uses it only to move the map; the position reaches the server only if you then ask for a report at that spot.
The two forms
Asking for a town to be added, or for the full report on an address, stores one row in the site's database: the kind of request, the town, the address, the email you gave (optional when asking for a town), your note, the time it arrived and the time it was handled. No IP address is stored with it. A person reads the list and answers by email if you left one. The database is backed up nightly to cloud storage, so a request is in those copies as well. These rows are kept until they are handled and then stay in the table; there is no automatic deletion yet.
Other servers your browser talks to
The map itself is drawn by your browser, which fetches directly from a short, fixed list of other servers. Each of them sees your IP address and which map squares you looked at, under its own privacy terms, not this site's:
- cdnjs.cloudflare.com: the MapLibre map library and its stylesheet.
- basemaps.cartocdn.com: the street basemap tiles.
- hazards.fema.gov and fwspublicservices.wim.usgs.gov: flood zone and wetland tiles outside the covered towns.
- basemap.nationalmap.gov and imagery.nationalmap.gov: the USGS satellite view and the aerial photo in a report.
The server's security policy allows no other origin, so a page here cannot load anything else. Links out of a report (a town's assessor portal, Zillow, Redfin, LinkedIn, the author's own sites) are ordinary links; following one is leaving this site.
Public records on this site
Every parcel fact shown here is a public record, as the State of Connecticut and the towns publish it: boundaries, assessed values, the owner name on the assessor's card, recorded sales, flood zones and the rest. The site joins those sources at the parcel and adds nothing about any person to them. To ask about a record, write to the author on LinkedIn.
Where the site runs
One server on Google Cloud in the United States holds the database and serves the site over HTTPS. There is no third-party form service, email provider or CDN for the site's own files.