Privacy Policy

Folia is a tool for studying a piece of land: what the terrain, soil, climate, and water are like, and what might grow well there. To do that well, we need very little about you. This page explains what we hold, why, and what you can do about it, in plain language.

If anything here is unclear, email us at [email protected] and we will explain.

The short version

• The only personal detail we ever need is your email address, and only if you want to save your work, get occasional updates, or send us a note. You can look around and analyze a property without an account.
• When you study a property, we send only its map coordinates to the public data services we rely on. We never tell them who you are. They don't get your name, your email, or anything else about you.
• We don't sell your information, and we don't use it to advertise to you anywhere.
• We lean on a few well-known companies to run the site (for hosting, sign-in, email, error monitoring, and anonymous product analytics), and nothing more.

The rest is the detail behind those points.

Who runs Folia

Folia is operated by Will Sykora, doing business as Folia, a sole proprietor based in Maryland. "Folia," "we," and "us" mean that operator. You can reach us anytime at [email protected].

What we hold and why

Things you give us:

• Your email address, if you sign in to save your work, subscribe to updates, or send feedback. Signing in works through a one-time link we email you, so there's no password for us to store or for anyone to steal.
• The properties you save. If you save a property so you can come back to it, we keep what we need to load it again: its location on the map (the outline you see, stored as coordinates), its rough acreage, the public parcel record it's tied to, the address you searched (only if you chose to save it), anything you drew on the map, your answers to the intake questions, and the analysis we generated for it.
• Feedback you send, including your message and, if you share it, your email so we can write back.

Things we notice automatically:

• Anonymous usage stats. We measure which pages get used and whether the site is fast, using privacy-friendly, aggregate web analytics (Vercel Web Analytics). This is cookieless, is not tied to your identity, and is not used to build advertising profiles or track you across other websites. It is used to improve Folia, not to identify you.
• A rough sense of where interest is coming from. We keep simple, anonymous tallies of how many analyses happen in broad areas (by state, and by wide map cells). These are counts, not people. They aren't linked to you or your account.
• Standard technical logs, the kind every website's host keeps (things like IP address, browser type, and timestamps) to keep the site running, secure, and debuggable.

About location: the location we handle is the land you're researching, not you. It comes from an address you type or a boundary you draw. We are not following your device around.

What we never touch: we don't collect payment or bank details, because the site is free and we don't take payments. We don't hand any personal information to the outside data services described below. And we don't knowingly collect anything from people under 18.

Why we use it

Plainly: to run the tool, save and reload your work, email you the sign-in link and any updates you asked for, reply when you reach out, understand overall demand so we can make Folia better, keep the site secure and working, and meet our legal obligations.

Who we share it with

We don't sell your information, and we don't share it to advertise to you. The only sharing that happens is this:

The companies that help us run Folia. They only handle what they need to do their job, and they're bound by their own privacy and security commitments:

• When the law requires it, such as a valid legal request, or when we genuinely need to in order to protect people's safety or rights.
• If Folia is ever sold or transferred, your information could move with it. If that happens, we'll require the new owner to honor this policy or we'll let you know if anything material changes.

Sharing a property with someone

If we offer a feature that lets you share a saved property by a link, only the people you send that link to can open it, and you can revoke the link at any time to cut off further access. When you share, you are choosing to show that content to whoever holds the link, so share only with people you trust. We don't make your saved work public, and we don't share it with anyone except as described in this policy.

Why the data services never learn who you are

When you study a property, Folia asks a set of public mapping, terrain, soil, climate, and hazard services to describe the land. Every one of those requests carries only geographic information, like coordinates or a map area, plus ordinary query details. None of them carry your name, your email, your account, or anything else about you. There is simply no personal information in those requests to give away.

These are independent organizations, and what they do with the requests they receive is up to their own terms and privacy practices. They currently include, among others, the U.S. Geological Survey (elevation and water), the USDA (soil, imagery, and land cover), FEMA (flood zones), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state agencies (wetlands), the U.S. Forest Service (wildfire hazard), PRISM and RCC-ACIS (climate), and state and federal parcel and address services.

Cookies

We keep this simple:

• Sign-in cookies. If you sign in, we set the cookies needed to keep you signed in safely. Without them, accounts and saved work wouldn't function. For security, they're tied to the specific site you signed in on.
• Analytics. Our usage stats are cookieless and anonymous, as described above.

We don't use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies at all.

How long we keep things

• Your saved properties and account stay until you delete them or ask us to close your account.
• Analysis results may be cached to keep the site fast, for stretches that depend on how quickly the underlying data changes (terrain for months, soil and climate for longer). These caches are tied to places, not to you.
• Feedback, signups, and search-miss notices arrive by email and are kept as long as our email records and ordinary record-keeping call for.
• The anonymous stats and tallies we keep on an ongoing basis, since there's no personal information in them.

We may keep something longer if the law requires it or we need it to resolve a dispute or enforce our agreements.

How we protect it

We take reasonable, sensible measures: everything travels over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), sign-in is passwordless, your saved properties are walled off to your account so that one account cannot read or change another account's work, and we build on reputable infrastructure. No system is perfectly secure, so we can't promise absolute safety, but we don't cut corners.

If a data breach ever affects your personal information, we will notify you and any authorities as required by applicable law.

Your choices

Your information is yours to control:

• See, fix, export, or delete it. You can delete saved properties, download a copy of everything we hold for you, and permanently close your account, all right from your account page. Anything else, or if you'd rather we handle it, email [email protected] and we'll take care of it.
• Email preferences. Unsubscribe from updates anytime with the link in the email, or just ask us. We'll still send the essential things, like your sign-in link, while you have an account.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights: to know what we hold, to correct or delete it, to get a copy, and to opt out of the sale of personal information or targeted advertising. Here's the thing: Folia doesn't sell your information and doesn't use it for targeted advertising, so there's nothing to opt out of. To exercise any right, email [email protected]. We won't treat you differently for asking, and we'll confirm the request using your account email before we act on it.

Children

Folia is for adults. It isn't meant for anyone under 18, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you think someone under 18 has given us information, email [email protected] and we'll delete it.

If you're outside the United States

Folia is run from the United States and built for a U.S. audience. If you use it from elsewhere, your information will be handled here in the U.S., where privacy laws may differ from those where you live.

Changes to this policy

We'll update this page as Folia grows. When we change something meaningful, we'll update the date at the top and, when it matters, tell you more directly. If you keep using Folia after an update, that means you're okay with the new version.

Reach us

Questions, requests, or concerns, anytime:

Email: [email protected]