Privacy statement

Where this statement applies

This is the single privacy statement for PriceRaccoon pages and services that link to it, including www.priceraccoon.com and burbank.priceraccoon.com. A feature-specific notice may provide additional detail but does not replace this statement.

What we collect

• Account and security information: your user ID, password hash, recovery-code hash, account role and status, account creation date, saved page-size setting, and security information such as session dates and failed or rate-limited sign-in attempts. Passwords and recovery codes are not stored in readable form.
• Optional email information: you may choose to add an email address. We store the normalized address, whether and when it was verified, your emailed-price-alert choice, hashed verification and password-reset tokens with their expiration times, and the last offer fingerprint and time emailed for each watched item so the same alert is not repeatedly sent. Email is not required to create an account or use the core service. Emailing a Shopping Plan is a one-time action and does not subscribe you to alerts.
• Your saved grocery information: if you use an account, watch-list items, brands, list order, optional alert prices, Shopping Plan items and quantities, and the stores you include or exclude.
• Your temporary guest Shopping Plan: if you are not signed in and add a sale item, its item name, optional brand, quantity, and a browser-generated numeric ID are kept only for the current browser tab and sent to the server when you request a price comparison. The server calculates the plan without saving those items to an account or database.
• Routine technical information: server and security logs may contain an IP address, request time, requested path, response status, and blocked sign-in or recovery attempts.
• Anonymous usage and unique-visitor counts: we keep daily aggregate counts for approved interface actions and separate daily and monthly unique-visitor counts. The application immediately converts the request IP address into keyed one-way hashes that are different for each day and month. It never stores or displays the IP address. Visitor hashes contain no account, session, cookie, click, path, or time and are used only for deduplication within their daily or monthly bucket. Shared networks can count as one visitor and changing networks can count one person more than once.
• Contact and suggestion messages: if you use the central form at www.priceraccoon.com/contact, we receive the category, message text, a fixed source label such as homepage or grocery, whether you requested an emailed copy, and any name or reply email you choose to provide. The form does not accept product, menu-item, Shopping Plan, Watch-list, or research-record context. It does not save messages in a PriceRaccoon database. Messages are delivered to our email inbox and kept there only as long as reasonably needed to review, respond to, and resolve the request.
• Contact-form security information: the contact service temporarily keeps an IP address and attempt times in memory for up to one hour to limit automated abuse. This limiter is separate from grocery and restaurant storage and is cleared when the homepage container restarts.
• Information we do not require: PriceRaccoon does not require your real name, phone number, payment information, or precise location. An email address is optional for both account settings and the contact form.
• Food-help browsing: the food-help page does not ask for or store your ZIP code, precise location, benefit status, EBT number, or resource-selection activity. Its nearby-resource list is prepared in advance using fixed Burbank ZIP codes rather than information supplied by a visitor. If a public resource address contains a city and ZIP conflict, the private collector may send that public address, but no visitor information, to the ArcGIS World Geocoding Service to normalize it before review.
• Savings-directory operations: the public savings page does not ask for or store income, benefit status, eligibility details, ZIP code, precise location, searches, filters, or program selections. A private weekly process records official source IDs, check results, dates, material-change decisions, review actions, version identifiers, and publication outcomes. These operational records contain no visitor, account, session, cookie, IP address, or program-selection information.

Cookies and browser storage

PriceRaccoon uses one strictly necessary sign-in cookie named basketwise_session on the Burbank grocery service. It contains a random session token, not your password or user ID. In production it is encrypted in transit, unavailable to page scripts, restricted to the /groceries route family, and sent only in same-site requests. The server stores only a hash of the token. This cookie is necessary to provide the signed-in grocery service you request.

The sign-in cookie can last up to seven days, but a session expires after 12 hours without activity. Signing out removes the current session. Blocking this cookie prevents signed-in features from working.

For guests, PriceRaccoon uses necessary session storage named priceraccoon-groceries-guest-shopping-plan-v1 to keep Shopping Plan item names, optional brands, quantities, and numeric IDs while the current browser tab remains open. It is not shared with other tabs, is deleted when the tab closes, and is not restored on a later visit. This temporary storage is activated only when you add something to a guest Shopping Plan.

PriceRaccoon stores a strictly necessary first-party cookie named priceraccoon_cookie_preferences_v3 for up to 180 days so your cookie choice applies across PriceRaccoon. It contains only the preference version, category choices, and choice and expiry timestamps. In production it is scoped to .priceraccoon.com, uses same-site restrictions, and is sent only over HTTPS.

The savings page does not read, write, or change cookies or browser storage. Because the cookie-choice cookie is scoped to .priceraccoon.com, a browser that already has it may automatically send it with a request for the savings page. The savings page does not use that cookie for filtering, eligibility, personalization, tracking, or analytics.

If you allow Preferences, a PriceRaccoon service may also store a small priceraccoon-site-tour-v1 marker so its optional tour does not replay automatically and priceraccoon-accessibility-v1 settings for text size, contrast, motion, link underlining, and text spacing. Those optional records remain local to the service where they are used. They are not read or written unless you allow Preferences, and they are removed when you withdraw that permission.

Analytics and advertising browser storage are not used. Anonymous usage and visitor counters do not use cookies or browser storage, and the counting request deliberately omits sign-in credentials. Where EU or UK privacy rules apply, optional preference storage relies on your consent. You can refuse it without losing the core service and withdraw permission at any time through Cookie settings.

California online tracking and browser privacy signals

PriceRaccoon does not sell or share personal information as those terms are used by the California Consumer Privacy Act. We do not use cross-context behavioral advertising, permit third-party advertising trackers on our pages, or build profiles of activity across unrelated websites. Therefore, PriceRaccoon does not provide a “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link.

Global Privacy Control and browser “Do Not Track” signals do not change how PriceRaccoon behaves because every visitor already receives the same no-sale, no-sharing, and no-cross-site-tracking treatment. If these practices change, we will update this statement and the site’s controls, and implement applicable browser-signal handling, before enabling the changed practice.

How we use information

You may browse public deal and store information and build a temporary Shopping Plan without signing in. Temporary plan items are sent to the server only to calculate current sale matches, quantities, store stops, and totals and are not retained there. If you choose to create an account, we use the information above to authenticate it, preserve your preferences, match advertised sales to your list, build saved Shopping Plan recommendations, check price alerts, protect the service from abuse, troubleshoot problems, and maintain the beta service. Anonymous usage and unique-visitor counts help us understand which features are useful without creating individual activity histories or profiles.

If you voluntarily add an email address, we use it only to verify that you control it and, after verification, to provide password-reset links, any price-alert emails you separately enable, and a copy of your current Shopping Plan when you expressly request one. You may update or remove it in Account settings. An administrator may also update another account's optional email for account administration; a changed address must be verified again and emailed alerts are disabled until the account holder opts in again. We do not sell, rent, advertise to, or build marketing profiles from email addresses. Adding an address does not automatically enable price-alert email.

If you use the contact form, we use the submitted information only to review, respond to, and resolve your message, deliver a copy when you expressly request one, and protect the form from abuse. A name and reply email are optional. The source label is limited to homepage, grocery, restaurant, food-help, savings, privacy, or other and is used only to return you to the referring public experience and understand where the message began.

Retailer data and AI processing

Grocery prices, product names, sale terms, price history, and generated weekly recipes are not information about you. The private collection system uses local AI to interpret retailer sale terms and to create weekly recipes from advertised products plus a fixed list of pantry staples. When enabled, OpenAI may process retailer-originated promotion text to separate eligible products. PriceRaccoon does not send user IDs, passwords, session tokens, Watch lists, Shopping Plans, store choices, or alert settings to an AI provider for promotion parsing or recipe generation, and OpenAI response storage is disabled by the application.

Compact WIC labels come only from an exact product-code match against the public California WIC Authorized Product List. “EBT likely” is a conservative estimate based on public SNAP food rules, not a retailer or government checkout guarantee. PriceRaccoon does not collect a user's benefit status, WIC food balance, EBT card information, or purchases. The server periodically downloads the public product list from the State of California without sending account or list information.

When server-side discovery is enabled, PriceRaccoon uses the Brave Search API to find public retailer, restaurant, location, menu, and product source pages. Search requests contain public discovery terms, not account information, Watch lists, Shopping Plans, session information, or contact information. Grocery discovery is controlled separately and is disabled by default.

The private PriceRaccoon collector sends the fixed Burbank ZIP codes 91501, 91502, 91504, 91505, 91506, 91521, 91522, and 91523 to the Feeding America directory to locate public food-assistance resources. It sanitizes and deduplicates those public results, limits them to 10 miles from Burbank City Hall, and creates a reviewed read-only artifact that separates free-food programs from EBT Restaurant Meals Program locations. The collector runs Mondays at 3:00 a.m. Pacific on the private aicompany system after any active grocery collection finishes. A materially changed artifact remains private until the source-terms owner reviews and approves its exact sanitized contents and SHA-256 identity. Every public resource card includes its directory source. The production page reads only the approved artifact and does not send a visitor request, ZIP code, precise location, account information, benefit status, or EBT information to Feeding America.

The Burbank Savings directory displays a reviewed, read-only artifact made from public official program pages. Its search and category filters run only in the visitor's browser and are not saved. Price Raccoon does not ask for or collect a visitor's income, benefit status, eligibility details, ZIP code, precise location, or program selections. A private process checks every listed official source each Monday at 4:00 a.m. Pacific, compares normalized public content with the previously reviewed version, and creates a canonical artifact and SHA-256 manifest. It sends only ordinary server requests for those public pages and never sends visitor or account information. Following an official program link takes the visitor to that provider, whose privacy policy then applies.

When information is disclosed

We disclose information only as needed to operate the service, protect users and the service, comply with law, or respond to valid legal process. The production site is hosted on a managed virtual server, whose provider necessarily processes network requests and stored application data on our behalf. We do not sell or rent personal information, share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, or disclose it for targeted advertising.

When email delivery is enabled, our configured email provider processes the recipient address and message contents to deliver verification, password-reset, opted-in price-alert, user-requested Shopping Plan, and contact-form messages through info@priceraccoon.com. Price-alert messages may contain a watched-item description, target and advertised prices, store name, and retailer link. A requested Shopping Plan message may contain its item names, quantities, matched stores, advertised prices, retailer links, subtotal, and unmatched items. Contact messages contain the submitted category and text, fixed source label, reference number, and any optional name or reply email. We currently use Hostinger Email for this delivery.

Hostinger Email also delivers private savings-directory operational notices to two owner-approved addresses held only in private runtime configuration. These notices contain source identifiers, check outcomes, and review needs, not visitor information. Routine successful no-change checks do not send email.

If you select “Text / share,” your browser or device sends the list to the application or person you choose. PriceRaccoon does not choose the recipient. Following a product, store, assistance-program, or provider-finder link to an external website subjects your visit to that third party’s privacy practices.

Retention

• Account information, saved stores, watch lists, Shopping Plans, and alert settings remain while the account is active or until they are deleted. Self-service account deletion removes these records and signed-in sessions.
• An optional email address, verification status, and emailed-alert choice remain until you remove the address or the account is deleted. Removing the address disables emailed alerts.
• Email verification links are usable for 24 hours and emailed password-reset links for one hour. Their stored hashes and expiration times may remain until replaced, the address is removed, or the account is deleted. Last-emailed alert fingerprints and times remain until the watched item or account is deleted.
• Contact-form messages are not stored in a PriceRaccoon application database. Copies in the informational mailbox remain only as long as reasonably needed to review, respond to, and resolve the message. A user may request deletion through info@priceraccoon.com and should include the form reference when available.
• Contact-form rate-limit records contain only an IP address and attempt times, remain in homepage-server memory for no more than one hour, and are also cleared whenever that container restarts.
• A guest Shopping Plan remains only in session storage for the current browser tab and is deleted when that tab closes.
• Authentication sessions last no more than seven days and expire after 12 hours without activity.
• Advertised price observations are kept in a rolling 90-day history.
• Anonymous action counters are automatically deleted after 400 days. Keyed daily visitor hashes and their daily listings retain the latest 365 days; keyed monthly visitor hashes and monthly listings retain the current month and previous 11 months.
• Approved savings-directory artifacts and manifests retain the latest 52 weekly versions, approximately one year. The separate private savings audit log and administrative notices are retained for one year.
• Approved food-help artifacts and manifests retain the latest 52 versions. Unapproved changed candidates remain private and are not served to visitors.
• Production operational and security logs are rotated automatically. An hourly retention job removes journal entries once they are older than 30 days. Logs may be removed sooner during normal system maintenance.

Your choices and requests

You can change or delete watch-list items, Shopping Plan items and quantities, alert prices, store choices, and several account settings in the application. Providing an email address is optional. You can change or remove it in Account settings at any time; removing it disables emailed alerts and email recovery. You can also permanently delete your account in Account settings after confirming your current password. Self-service deletion removes the account, optional email, signed-in sessions, saved store choices, Watch list, Shopping Plan, and alert settings. Anonymous daily action totals and keyed visitor counts cannot be connected to an account and are not changed by account deletion. You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your account information by contacting info@priceraccoon.com. We may need to verify that the request concerns your account. We will not discriminate against you for making a privacy request.

Security, changes, and contact

PriceRaccoon uses password and recovery-code hashing, hashed email verification and reset tokens, expiring email links, hashed server-side session records, HTTPS in production, access controls, and restricted administrative functions. Administrator interface pages and scripts are delivered only after the server verifies an administrator session. Administrators may assign or remove administrator roles; role changes revoke the affected account's sessions, and the last active administrator cannot be demoted. No system can promise absolute security.

We may change this statement at any time, subject to applicable law, including when the product, our operations, legal requirements, or our service providers change. Changes apply prospectively. We will update the effective date and, when required, provide additional notice or request fresh consent before using previously collected information for a materially different purpose.

Questions, general inquiries, and privacy requests may be sent to info@priceraccoon.com.