Privacy
Industrial Welders is a directory. There is no login, no account, and no session. The application itself sets no cookies. The only cookies you can encounter here come from Google Analytics, and only on a deployment where it has been turned on.
What this application never does
- Accounts / login None. There is nothing to sign up for.
- Its own cookies None. No session cookie, no CSRF token cookie, no first-party tracking cookie of any kind.
- ZIP search Stores nothing. The ZIP-code search boxes are plain GET requests: the ZIP you type appears in the URL, is used to look up nearby listings, and is not stored.
Correction & claim forms
The correction form and claim form are the two exceptions to "nothing persists": each stores what you submit in our database, staged for manual review. Nothing you submit through either form publishes automatically or appears anywhere on the site.
- What we collect Correction form: which listing, what's wrong, the correct value, an optional evidence URL, and your email (used only to follow up). Claim form: the shop, a business email and phone, your requested updates, and up to five photos if you attach any.
- Your IP address Hashed, not stored raw, and used only to rate-limit and detect abusive submission patterns.
- Cookies Still none. Both forms submit as a plain POST with no session and no cookie of any kind; spam is filtered with a hidden honeypot field and a minimum-fill-time check instead.
- Claim-form photos Stored privately, never on a public URL, until a reviewer acts on the claim.
Analytics
Some deployments of this site run Google Analytics 4 to measure traffic. When it is on, Google sets its own cookies (for example _ga and _ga_*) to distinguish visitors, and records page views plus clicks on outbound links to schools and welding shops (an outbound_click event carrying the destination domain and the page type). IP addresses are anonymized before Google processes them. No name, email, or phone number is collected through analytics.
Use the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on to block this on any site, including this one. Most browsers also let you block third-party cookies directly in their privacy settings.
What does happen server-side
Like any web server, ours logs requests (IP address, requested URL, timestamp, user agent) for operational purposes: diagnosing errors and abuse, the same baseline logging any web host performs. These logs are not used to build a profile of you, are not sold, and are not shared with advertisers.
Maps
State, metro, shop, and program pages that show a map load map tiles from OpenStreetMap at the moment you view the page (see methodology). That is a standard, non-tracking image request for the map area shown. The site never sends your location anywhere; a map only plots the fixed coordinates of the listings on that page.
Outbound links
Links to a school's or shop's own website route through a first-party redirect on this domain so we can see which listings get clicked. The destination is always the business's own site, exactly as shown on the page.
Questions
Email [email protected] with any privacy question.