Data & Privacy
Privacy Policy
How The Roof Shepherd handles contact information submitted through this website, and what the site's AI assistant does and does not store.
Effective July 27, 2026
Updated July 27, 2026
Data Collection
What we collect and why
- Contact form data onlyThe Roof Shepherd collects the name, phone, email, property address, message, and consent confirmation submitted through the Get Help form. This information is used exclusively to respond to the inquiry and coordinate services. After you submit, an automatic confirmation email is sent to the address you provided so you know your request arrived.
- No sensitive financial dataDo not submit Social Security numbers, financial account details, insurance policy numbers, or claim amounts through the website contact form.
- Technical request dataWhen the form is submitted, the server also records standard technical data: IP address, forwarded IP data, browser identification, referring page, browser language, and submission time. This data is used solely for security, spam prevention, and rate limiting, and is stored outside the public web directory. Rate-limit records are temporary and expire automatically.
- Analytics dataThis site uses standard analytics tools to understand traffic patterns, pages visited, time on page, general geographic region. No personally identifiable information is included in analytics data.
- No data sharingNo personal data collected through this site is sold, rented, or shared with third parties for marketing purposes. Form submissions are delivered by email through Google Workspace, and site analytics are provided by Google Analytics; both act as service providers, not marketing recipients.
Your Rights
How your information is protected
Data use
Information submitted through website forms is used only for communication directly related to the request. The Roof Shepherd does not operate email marketing lists, does not sell contact data, and does not share form submissions with advertisers.
Data retention
Contact information submitted through the Get Help form is retained only as long as necessary to fulfill the service request. You may request deletion of information you submitted through the form by contacting info@theroofshepherd.com. Assistant conversations are handled separately and are described below.
AI Assistant
The AI assistant on this site
- What it isThis site offers an AI assistant that answers general roofing questions and helps you decide whether an inspection makes sense. It is an educational tool. It is not a roof inspection, not a diagnosis, not an estimate, and not legal, insurance, or engineering advice. It cannot determine what your insurance policy covers.
- Answers are drawn from this websiteThe assistant answers from approved written material published on this site, together with a set of reviewed roofing guidance. Where it does not have approved information, it is designed to say so and direct you to speak with a person rather than guess.
- What is removed before anything is storedBefore a conversation is written to our records, an automatic process removes email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, unit numbers, policy, claim and account numbers, and card-style number sequences. This removal is automatic and pattern-based. It is thorough but not perfect: it cannot reliably detect a personal name typed into open text. Please do not type names, account numbers, policy documents, or financial details into the assistant.
- What is kept, and for how longConversation text, after the removal described above, is kept for up to 30 days and then deleted. A short record of questions the assistant could not answer is kept for up to 60 days so the site can be improved. Anonymous counts, such as how often a particular guidance topic was useful, contain no conversation text and may be kept indefinitely. Records of recurring question themes are removed after 365 days without recurrence.
- Deletion requests for assistant conversationsWe want to be straightforward about a limitation. Assistant conversations are not stored against your name, email, or account, and the session reference is a one-way hash that cannot be reversed. Because of that, we have no way to locate a specific person's past conversations in order to delete them on request. The tradeoff is deliberate: the records are not linked to you in the first place. Information you submit through the Get Help form is different, is linked to your request, and can be deleted on request.
- Processing by our AI providerTo generate a reply, your message is sent to Anthropic, our AI provider, and processed under their commercial terms. Anthropic does not use commercial API traffic to train its models. Their handling is governed by their own published policies.
- Rate limiting and abuse preventionTo prevent abuse, the assistant records a one-way hash of your IP address combined with a value that changes daily. The original IP address is not stored, and the hash cannot be reversed to recover it. These records expire automatically.
- EmergenciesDo not use the assistant to report an emergency. For fire, structural collapse, electrical hazards, or immediate danger, contact emergency services or your utility first. For an active roof leak, call or text 512-575-5052.
Newsletter
The Field Notes newsletter
- What we store when you sign upIf you sign up for our email newsletter, we store your email address, the page where you signed up, the date you signed up, and the date you confirmed. That is the whole record. We use double opt-in: nothing is ever sent until you click the confirmation link we email you, and we send about one email a month.
- No tracking, on purposeOur newsletter contains no tracking pixels and no click tracking. We do not know whether you opened an email or what you clicked, and we prefer it that way. If that ever changes, this policy will say so first.
- Unsubscribing is one click and immediateEvery email includes a one-click unsubscribe that works instantly, with no login and no questions. When you unsubscribe, we keep a minimal suppression record, your address and the date, so our systems can guarantee we never email you again. Routine database backups may retain removed addresses for a limited period until backup rotation clears them.
- Emailing yourself an article is not a subscriptionAsking the website to email you a single article does not subscribe you to anything. We send the article once and do not store that address.
- Withdrawing consentTo withdraw consent or ask us to delete your information, use the unsubscribe link in any email or contact us at info@theroofshepherd.com.
Contact
Questions about this policy
For questions about how your information is handled, contact The Roof Shepherd directly at info@theroofshepherd.com or by phone at 512-575-5052. This policy may be updated periodically; the current version is always available at this URL.
Next Step