Privacy Policy
House 2 Home (“H2H”, “we”, “us”) is an online advertising platform operated by Citizen Journal (LOQL LLC) that advertises local real estate agents and their agencies and displays homes for sale across McPherson, Hutchinson, and central Kansas. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you visit our website at h2h.citizenjournal.us, how we use it, and the choices you have.
H2H advertises agents, and lists rentals posted by local landlords. It is not a multiple listing service (MLS), and it does not represent buyers, sellers, or renters. This policy covers our public website. It does not cover the practices of the real estate agents, agencies, landlords, or third-party services you may interact with through the site, who handle your information under their own policies.
Information we collect
Information you provide directly
Browsing listings requires no account and no personal information. Two optional forms exist: our email-alert signup, and, on some rental listings, a form for sending a message to that landlord. Both are described below.
- Contacting an agent or landlord directly. When you use a “Call” or “Email” link on a listing, your phone or email app contacts that agent, agency, or landlord directly. Those messages do not pass through H2H, and the recipient’s handling of them is governed by their own practices.
- Rental inquiries. Some rental listings carry a form for messaging the landlord. We collect the name, email address, phone number, and message you enter, and — if you tell us — the month you hope to move and whether you have a cat or a dog. We email them to that landlord so they can reply. Your email address becomes the reply address on that message, so the landlord keeps their own copy in their own mailbox, which we cannot remove. Our copy is kept for a limited time; see Data retention below.
- Contacting Citizen Journal. The “Contact” link goes to Citizen Journal’s website (cjus.me/contact), which is governed by Citizen Journal’s own privacy practices.
- Email alerts. You can optionally subscribe to email alerts — to watch a listing, follow an agent, or receive a city’s new-listing and open-house alerts. We collect the email address you enter and, if you choose to provide it, your name. Alerts use a confirmed (double) opt-in, and every alert email includes a one-click unsubscribe. When you follow an agent, your email address (and name, if provided) may be shared with that agent so they can follow up with you.
- Portal accounts. Real estate agents, agencies, and landlords who list with us are given portal accounts by an administrator. For those users we process account information such as name, business email address, business phone number, a profile photo (headshot), and login credentials. Agent, agency, and landlord names and business contact details may be displayed publicly alongside listings as part of the advertising service.
Information collected automatically
- Usage and analytics data. We use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use the site (for example, pages viewed, approximate location derived from IP, device and browser type, and the site that referred you). Google sets its own cookies and processes this data as described in Google’s privacy policy.
- Technical and security data. Like most websites, our hosting and content- delivery providers automatically receive technical information with each request, including your IP address, browser user-agent, and the pages requested. We use this information — and short-lived counters derived from your IP address — to operate the site reliably and to protect it against abuse (for example, rate-limiting and brute-force login protection).
- Maps and imagery. Our property maps load map tiles, aerial imagery, and building-footprint data from third-party providers. When your browser loads those map resources, those providers receive your IP address as a normal part of serving the imagery.
Listing data
Property listings shown on the site are sourced from the multiple listing service via MLS GRID and are displayed for advertising purposes. Listing records may include the listing agent’s name, the listing office, and related property details.
Cookies and similar technologies
We use a small number of cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies — used to keep the site secure and functioning (for example, a session cookie and a cross-site-request-forgery protection cookie). These are set only as needed, such as when an advertiser signs in, or when a page shows you a form.
- Analytics cookies — set by Google Analytics to measure site usage, as described above.
You can control or block cookies through your browser settings, and you can opt out of Google Analytics using Google’s opt-out browser add-on. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may affect how parts of the site work.
How we use information
- To operate, maintain, and display listings and agent advertising on the site.
- To measure and improve how the site is used.
- To keep the site secure and prevent abuse, fraud, and unauthorized access.
- To communicate with portal-account holders about their accounts and their listings — for example, account invitations, password-reset emails, and reminders that a rental listing needs reconfirming or has come down, which are sent through our email provider.
- To pass a rental inquiry to the landlord whose listing you messaged.
- To comply with legal obligations and enforce the rules of the site.
How information is shared
We do not sell your personal information. Apart from the two cases named first below — the agent you follow, and the landlord you message — we share information only with service providers who process it on our behalf, and only as needed to run the site:
- An agent you follow. If you subscribe to follow an agent, your email address (and name, if you gave one) may be shared with that agent so they can follow up with you.
- The landlord you contact. If you send a message through a rental listing’s inquiry form, that landlord receives what you entered. They are an independent recipient, not our service provider: what they do with it is governed by their own practices, not this policy.
- Google Analytics (Google LLC) — website analytics.
- Cloudflare — content delivery, security, and media (image) storage.
- Render — application and database hosting.
- Amazon Web Services (SES) — delivery of account, password-reset, email-alert, rental-inquiry, and landlord listing-reminder messages.
- MLS GRID — the source of the listing data we display.
- Map and imagery providers — OpenFreeMap, U.S. Geological Survey / U.S. Department of Agriculture aerial imagery, and Overture Maps building data.
We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of H2H, our users, or the public.
Data retention
We keep advertiser-account information for as long as the account is active and as needed for legitimate business and legal purposes. Analytics data is retained according to our provider’s retention settings. Everything else is deleted, or stripped of personal details, automatically on the schedule below.
- Rental inquiries. If you message a landlord through a rental listing, we keep your name, email address, phone number, and message for 180 days, after which they are permanently blanked from our records. A record that an inquiry was made, with no personal details left in it, is kept for as long as we operate the rentals service.
- Security and audit records. Records of administrative actions are kept for about 13 months, and the originating IP address is removed after 90 days. The same schedule covers a record that someone sent a message through a rental listing’s inquiry form: we keep the fact that it happened, and the IP address it came from, on that schedule — and none of what the message said. Sign-in records are kept for 90 days. Records of refused sign-in attempts are kept for about 13 months, with the IP address removed after 90 days.
- Email alert records. Delivery records, and whether a message was opened or clicked, are kept for 90 days. Other alert history is kept for 12 months. The IP address recorded when you signed up is removed after 90 days.
- Proof of consent. The record that you confirmed a subscription — and that you later unsubscribed — is kept for as long as we operate the alert service. It is how we can show we had your permission to email you, and that we stopped when you asked.
- Do-not-email list. If an address bounces or reports our email as spam, we keep that address on a suppression list indefinitely. That record exists so that we never email it again; deleting it would cause the very thing it prevents.
Deletions take effect in our live systems on the day they are due. We also keep encrypted backups on a short rolling window of about 35 days, so a deleted record can remain in a backup for up to that long before it ages out.
How we protect information
We use industry-standard safeguards, including encryption of traffic in transit (HTTPS), secure-only cookies, two-factor authentication for administrative access, login rate-limiting, and brute-force lockout protection. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Your choices and rights
You can opt out of analytics as described above. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, or delete personal information we hold about you, or to object to certain processing. To make a request, contact us using the details below; we may need to verify your identity before responding.
Children’s privacy
The site is intended for a general, adult audience and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date above. Significant changes will be reflected on this page.
Contact us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how your information is handled, contact us through cjus.me/contact.