Legal

Privacy Policy

This policy describes what Cronk Companies LLC ("Cronk Companies," "I," or "me") collects through the website at cronkcompanies.com and in the course of providing consulting, software development and systems integration services (together, the "Services"), and what happens to it. It is written to be read, so it says exactly what the site does rather than what a site might do.

1. What this website collects

The site has no accounts, no cookies and no advertising. It collects information in four places:

• The contact form. Your name, email address, company (if you give it) and message are sent to my business mailbox as an email, through Microsoft 365. So that I can tell a person from a spam bot, the email also carries the IP address the message came from, an approximate location derived from it (country and city), the browser's identifying string, and how long the form was open before it was sent. Nothing from the form is stored anywhere other than that mailbox.
• The free email check (/check). The web address you type is sent to a small program on the site's host, which looks up that domain's public DNS records and returns what it finds. The domain is not stored, logged by me, or passed to the visitor counting described below; the only thing counted is that a check ran and whether the result was good, mixed or bad.
• The first look (/first-look). Your answers live in the address bar of your own browser and nowhere else. The page that produces the result is entirely in your browser; no answer is sent to any server.
• Visitor counting. The site uses Vercel Web Analytics, which is cookieless and sets no persistent identifier on your device. It records the page path viewed (with anything after "?" removed first, so a checked domain or a set of first-look answers is never included), the referring site, country, device type and browser, and a handful of named events: a check ran, a first look was shown, a contact message was sent. It is not used for advertising and does not follow you to other sites.

Separately, the host (Vercel) keeps ordinary request logs, including IP addresses and requested URLs, for a short period for security and operations, as any web host does.

2. What I collect when we work together

• Contact and billing information. Names, email addresses, phone numbers, company details and the details of your project, to communicate, invoice and deliver the Services.
• Payment information. Payments are processed by Intuit QuickBooks Payments and Wise. I never see or store full card numbers; that information is handled by the payment processor.
• Client project data. Systems are built inside your own Microsoft 365 subscription or cloud account, so your operational data stays in your accounts under your control. Where I process it in the course of the work, that is governed by the engagement agreement and its data protection addendum, and it is used only to deliver the Services. Your data is never used to train an AI model, mine or anyone else's.

3. How information is used

• To respond to inquiries and provide proposals.
• To deliver, maintain and improve the Services.
• To invoice and process payments.
• To communicate about projects, scheduling and account matters.
• To keep the site and the Services secure.
• To comply with legal obligations and enforce agreements.

4. How information is shared

I do not sell personal information. It is shared only with:

• Service providers that run the business: Microsoft (email, documents and the systems described above), Vercel (website hosting and visitor counting), Intuit and Wise (payments), each bound by its own terms and confidentiality obligations.
• Legal and safety recipients when required by law, regulation or legal process, or to protect the rights, property or safety of Cronk Companies, its clients or others.

5. Security

Every account in the organization requires phishing-resistant two-factor sign-in; machine credentials live in a key vault with expiry dates and audit logging, or are avoided entirely in favor of workload identities; and client work lives in the client's own accounts. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and I cannot guarantee absolute security, but this is the standard I hold myself to and the one I set up for clients. Security disclosures: see security.txt.

6. Retention

Contact-form emails are kept in the mailbox for as long as they are relevant to a conversation or an engagement, and deleted on request. Billing records are kept as long as tax and accounting law requires. Client project data is retained and disposed of as the engagement agreement says, and in any case stays in the client's own accounts.

7. Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct or delete personal information I hold about you, or to object to certain processing. To make a request, email justin@cronkcompanies.com. Because the site sets no cookies and the visitor counting stores no identifier, there is nothing to opt out of on the site itself.

8. Third-party links and services

The site links to other services (the client portal, LinkedIn, payment processors). Their use of your information is governed by their own privacy policies. The client portal at portal.cronkcompanies.com is a separate application that signs you in with your Microsoft account and is covered by the engagement agreement.

9. Children

The Services are directed to businesses and are not intended for anyone under 18. I do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

10. Changes

When this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above changes with it. Material changes will be communicated where appropriate.

11. Contact

Cronk Companies LLC
Minnesota, USA
Email: justin@cronkcompanies.com