Only the information needed to run the directory.
Anonymous daily usage totals help maintain the directory. No visitor identifier is created for these totals. Community reports and contact messages follow the separate rules below.
No accounts or advertising tracking
Dine Where It Pays has no account system, advertising tracker, bank connection, payment form, or background location tracking. Search, filters, and shareable link state run in your browser and are not included in anonymous usage counts.
Anonymous usage counts
Where enabled, a same-origin script sends a fixed event name when a visible page loads, a restaurant detail is displayed, or an ordering link is clicked. The request contains only the event type, a test-mode flag, and a browser automation hint. It deliberately omits cookies, referrers, restaurant identifiers, page URLs, search terms, location, card information, and visitor identifiers.
The application stores only the Los Angeles calendar date, event type, traffic classification, and a running total. It does not create an analytics cookie, visitor hash, fingerprint, or individual browsing record. Known bots, automation hints, and marked tests are separated from unverified browser events. Unverified does not mean human. Page loads are not unique people, and ordering clicks are not completed purchases.
Cloudflare processes ordinary network metadata to deliver the requests, as described below. The server may inspect an existing country code and automation signals transiently, but does not copy those values into the usage table. Counts are disabled for the EU/EEA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and unknown country codes, and when a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal is present. These exclusions do not establish legal compliance in every jurisdiction.
Each page sends at most 20 events. Each daily event-and-classification total is capped at 2,000; a total at the cap is reported as a lower bound. Daily totals are kept for 30 calendar-day buckets and pruned by the daily cleanup. A delayed cleanup can extend retention; the owner checks cleanup health with the usage reports.
Your usage-count choices
You can disable future anonymous counts on this browser. Only your opt-out preference is saved in local storage; it is not sent to the server. Clearing browser site storage removes this preference. Existing aggregate totals cannot be linked back to you or removed individually. If browser storage is unavailable, anonymous counts stay off.
Checking this browser’s usage-count setting.
Owner and tester controls
Mark this tab before testing the directory. The flag lasts in this tab’s session storage and keeps its events separate from normal traffic. Other tabs are not automatically marked. For all owner browsing on this device, use the opt-out control above instead.
“Near me”
If you tap “Near me”, your browser asks your permission and gives the page your approximate position once. The position is used in your browser to sort the list by distance and to draw a dot on the map. It is not sent to the site’s servers, not stored, and not written into the shareable link. Reloading the page forgets it.
Community reports
When you send a community report, the server stores the restaurant, the outcome you chose (Worked, Unavailable, Ordering issue, or Looked closed), the report date and time, and a SHA-256 hash of a pseudonymous random identifier. It sets that identifier in an HttpOnly cookie for up to one year so duplicate reports from the same browser can be limited. The database never receives your name, IP address, device location, browser fingerprint, or payment information, and there is no free-text field. Reports are scheduled for deletion after 90 days; a daily cleanup may complete within the following 24 hours.
Turnstile verification
Sending a report or a contact message requires a Cloudflare Turnstile check that distinguishes people from automated abuse. Turnstile processes technical information under Cloudflare’s own privacy practices; this site stores only whether the check passed for that one request.
Hosting and map records
Cloudflare may process ordinary technical request data needed to serve and protect the site, such as an IP address, request time, browser information, and requested URL, under Cloudflare’s own terms and privacy practices. When the map view is opened, OpenFreeMap receives ordinary tile requests under its own practices.
Contact form and email
When you send the contact form, the server checks a Cloudflare Turnstile token, then emails your topic, restaurant name, message, and the reply address you chose to give to the site owner’s mailbox through Cloudflare Email Routing. The message is not written to the site’s database. To limit abuse, the database keeps only a hashed pseudonymous identifier (the same HttpOnly cookie used for community reports) and the time of sending for up to 90 days, which caps sending at ten messages a day per browser. Mail sent directly to contact@dinewhereitpays.com is forwarded the same way. Once in the mailbox, messages are ordinary correspondence and are kept as long as needed to answer them.
External pages
Opening a restaurant’s ordering page, a Google Maps or Apple Maps directions link, or a Google or Yelp search leaves Dine Where It Pays. The destination controls its own cookies, data collection, payment flow, and privacy practices.
Your choices
You can browse without ever sending a report or a message, and you can leave the reply address blank. Clearing the site’s cookies removes the pseudonymous identifier; stored reports are not linked to you and expire on their own schedule.
Changes
The contact form is the only free-text submission on the site. This measurement release adds anonymous usage totals as described above. Accounts, background location tracking, or any additional data flow require another policy update before release.