Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

The BLACQList (“we,” “our,” or “us”) operates the platform at theblacqlist.com, a directory and discovery platform that centers Black-owned businesses across the United States, along with Ally businesses that support them. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit or use our platform. Questions about this policy can be directed to privacy@theblacqlist.com.

2. Information We Collect

Information you provide directly

• Account registration information (name, email address, password)
• Business listing information (business name, description, address, photos, hours, contact details) when you create or claim a listing
• Receipt and spend data when you submit receipts through the community spend feature
• Reviews and community content you submit
• Communications you send to us through email or support channels

Information from a website you give us

If you own a business and give us a link to your business website or link-in-bio page, we read that public page when you ask. We look for things you've already published there, like your business name, description, phone number, email, address, hours, social links, and photos. See “Bringing in your website” in Section 3.

Information collected automatically

When you use the platform, we automatically collect:

• Log data (browser type, operating system, referring URLs, pages visited, time and date of your visit). Your IP address is used transiently to deliver and secure the service and, where recorded for analytics, is stored only in irreversible hashed form. We do not retain your raw IP address
• Usage data (search queries, listings viewed, saves, clicks on calls-to-action), stored in anonymized form
• Device information (device type, screen resolution)
• Session authentication tokens managed through cookies (see our Cookie Policy)

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Create and maintain your account and business listings
• Fill in your business page draft from a public web page you point us to, when you ask
• Offer optional AI writing help to business owners (see “AI writing help” below)
• Read a receipt photo for you, only when you tick “Read my receipt for me” (see “Reading your receipt” below)
• Process and verify business claim submissions
• Display business listing content to visitors searching the platform
• Send transactional emails you have requested (account verification, claim status updates, password reset)
• Generate anonymized community spend data for public display on the Circulation Map
• Provide analytics to business owners about their listing performance (page views, saves, CTA clicks, all anonymized at the user level)
• Detect, investigate, and prevent fraudulent or unauthorized activity
• Improve platform performance and features
• Comply with applicable legal obligations

We do not use your information for behavioral advertising, sell your data to data brokers, or share your information with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

Bringing in your website (business owners only)

When you add a business, you can give us a link to your business website or link-in-bio page instead of typing everything.

We read the public page you give us once, when you ask. Nothing is copied that you don't pick.

• We read the page the way a visitor's browser would. We follow the site's robots.txt rules, we don't log in, and we don't use cookies.
• What we find shows up in your draft so you can check it, change it, or remove it. Only what you save becomes part of your page.
• Photos are copied to our storage only if you pick them. Before we save a photo, we remove its location data (like GPS) and other hidden details stored in the file.
• We note which website a page was set up from, so our team can spot a page set up from someone else's site.
• We don't keep a copy of the web page itself.

AI writing help (business owners only)

If you use our writing help when you set up or manage a business page, we send some of your business information to Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude AI model, so it can suggest drafts. Drafts can include a tagline, an About section, a search title and description, and a category for your business.

What we send: your business name, your city, category names, and the words you type or bring in from your website to describe your business. Before we send those words, we cut them to 500 characters and take out anything that looks like an email address, a phone number, or a street address, along with your name. If your name is part of your business name, it stays in the business name. Our filter can miss things, so leave out anything you don't want shared. For a page that's already live, the writing help can also use your current tagline and About text, and simple totals like how many people viewed your page in the last 30 days. It never gets anything about who those people are.

What we never add: we don't attach your account name, your email address, your phone number, your street address, your password or login details, or your receipts to what we send.

You decide what's used. Nothing an AI writes goes on your page until you choose to use it. You can edit a draft, ask for another, or skip it. AI drafts can be wrong, so read them before you use them.

What Anthropic does with it: Anthropic handles this information for us as a service provider, under a contract that limits what it can do with it. You can read Anthropic's privacy policy.

What we keep: a record that a draft was requested (which tool, when, and how much text, by count only). We don't keep the text we send. Drafts you don't use during page setup aren't saved. Suggestions on your owner dashboard are saved to your account so you can review them, stop working after 7 days, and are deleted if the listing is deleted.

It's optional. You can set up and run your page without it.

The home page guide and Cue, our AI assistant. If you type what you need into the guide on our home page, or ask Cue (the Ask Cue button on our pages), we send those words to Anthropic so its AI can search our listings and write Cue's reply in its own words. Cue only looks up what anyone can already see on our site (such as businesses, cities, categories, ratings and hours). Every business card Cue shows comes from those results, and we check that its reply doesn't name a business on our site that it didn't find. As the reply is written, we take out any links, email addresses and phone numbers, and we check it again before it's done. AI can still get things wrong, so check the details on the business's page. With Cue, we also send your last few messages and Cue's replies, so a follow-up like “what about DJs?” makes sense. Before we send anything, we take out anything that looks like an email address, a phone number, a street address, or a link. Cue also knows which public page you're on. We send the page's address, and we look up only what that page already shows anyone (for a business page: its name, kind of business, city, rating, and which details it lists), so Cue can help on that page. On a search results page, that includes the words you searched for. If you name a place we don't cover yet, we may look up just that place name on OpenStreetMap to find our nearest city. We keep that lookup for up to a week so we don't ask twice. It holds only the place name, not who asked. Your conversation stays in your browser tab and clears when you close the tab or tap Clear chat. We don't save what you type or what Cue writes back, and we don't link it to you or your account. We only keep a record that the guide or Cue was used (when, whether it worked, and how much AI it used). If you tap Near me or ask for something near you, your browser rounds your location to about a city block before sending it, and we use it only to find and sort results near you. If you send another message right after a Near me answer, we ask your browser for your location again for that message. We don't send your location to Anthropic and we don't save it. If you'd rather not use AI, our Search page works without it.

Reading your receipt (only if you ask)

When you add a receipt, you can tick “Read my receipt for me.” The box starts unticked. Only if you tick it, we send that receipt photo to Anthropic so it can read the business name, the total and the date, and fill them in for you. If you don't tick it, the photo isn't sent to Anthropic.

What we send: the receipt photo, made smaller, with its location data (like GPS) and other hidden details in the file taken out. A receipt can show other things, like a card's last four digits or a cashier's name, and those are part of the photo we send. We don't attach your name, your email address or your account details.

What comes back: the business name, total and date fill in your form, marked “From your photo”, and you can change any of them before you add the receipt. We may also use a phone number or ZIP code printed on the receipt to find the business in our listings. We don't show those to you or save them. A read can be wrong, so check each field.

What we keep: a record that a read was asked for (when, by which account, and whether it worked), so we can limit how many reads each person gets. We don't keep what Anthropic read. The receipt itself is kept the same way as any receipt you add (see Section 4).

It's optional. You can always type the details in yourself. Anthropic handles the photo for us as a service provider, under the same contract described above under “AI writing help.”

4. Receipt and Spend Data

Receipt uploads are stored privately and are never displayed publicly or shared with third parties beyond what is required for our platform to operate. We use receipt data solely to:

• Verify the transaction and match it to a listed business
• Read the business, total and date off your photo, only when you ask (see “Reading your receipt”)
• Generate anonymized, aggregated community spend totals (e.g., “$X tracked through the community this month”)
• Display personal spend summaries to you in your account

Individual receipt data (amounts, dates, specific businesses visited) is visible only to you. Aggregated data shown publicly contains no personally identifiable information and cannot be traced back to any individual.

The choice about community aggregation belongs to each receipt individually. You make it when you submit the receipt, and you may change it from Account → Receipts for as long as that receipt is still awaiting review. Once a reviewer approves a receipt, its choice is fixed, because the amount has by then been included in the totals.

There is no account-wide setting, and no automated way to withdraw spend that has already been counted. If you need spend removed after approval, contact us at privacy@theblacqlist.com and we will process the request by hand.

5. Information Sharing

We do not sell your personal information. We share information only in the following circumstances:

• Service providers: We share information with companies that help us operate the platform (see Section 6 for the full list). These providers access your information only to perform services on our behalf and are contractually obligated to protect it.
• Business listing content you make public: When you create a listing, the business name, description, address, photos, hours, and contact information you submit are displayed publicly on the platform and may be indexed by search engines. This is the intended purpose of a business listing.
• Legal compliance: We may disclose information when required by law, court order, or government request, or when we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of The BLACQList, our users, or the public.
• Business transfers: If The BLACQList is acquired, merged, or its assets are transferred, user information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify registered users by email of any such change in ownership.

6. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate the platform. Each processes data according to their own privacy policies, which we link below.

On some forms, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that you're a person and not a bot. To do this, Cloudflare's script runs in your browser and Cloudflare receives technical information like your IP address and details about your browser and device. We only get back a pass or fail answer.

7. Data Retention

We retain your account data and personal information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account:

• Your profile and personal information will be deleted within 30 days
• Business listings you own may be retained in an anonymized or unclaimed state for the benefit of the directory (you may request full removal)
• Anonymized analytics data and aggregated spend totals that have already been incorporated into community statistics will not be retroactively removed
• When you bring in your website, we don't keep a copy of the page. We keep only what you save to your page, plus a note of which website it came from.
• For AI writing help, we keep a record that a draft was requested, without the text. If you delete your account, your name is removed from those records.
• For receipt reading, we keep a record that a read was asked for, without what was read. If you delete your account, your name is removed from those records.
• We may retain certain records longer when required by law, for fraud prevention, or for legitimate business purposes such as resolving disputes

8. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correction: Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data
• Deletion: Delete your account and personal data yourself from Account → Settings, or request deletion by email
• Opt-out of aggregation: Choose, for each receipt you submit, whether it is included in community aggregate totals — changeable from Account → Receipts until that receipt is approved (see Section 4)
• Portability: Request a copy of your data; we will provide it in a structured, machine-readable format where technically feasible
• Complaint: Lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority in your jurisdiction

California residents (CCPA): You have the right to know what personal information we collect, the right to delete it, and the right to opt out of its sale. We do not sell personal information. To exercise your rights, contact us at privacy@theblacqlist.com.

To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@theblacqlist.com with the subject line “Privacy Request.” We will respond within 30 days.

9. Security

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your information, including:

• Encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS) for all platform traffic
• Row-level security policies on our database that restrict data access by user identity
• Access controls limiting staff access to personal data on a need-to-know basis
• Error monitoring to detect and respond to security incidents

No method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we use commercially reasonable measures to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal requirements, or for other operational reasons. We will notify registered users of material changes by email at least 14 days before they take effect. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page reflects when the most recent revision was made.

Your continued use of the platform after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Privacy Policy.

11. Contact Us

For privacy questions, rights requests, or concerns about how we handle your information:

Email: privacy@theblacqlist.com

The BLACQList, operated by The BLACQList, LLC
3133 Maple Dr NE, Ste 240 #1130
Atlanta, GA 30305