What we store

What we collect when you use the comparison

Your zip code and your usage figures travel in the URL so that a comparison can be bookmarked and shared. The zip you type is also written on the anonymous counter so we can tell Houston from Dallas. It is not an account, and it cannot be joined to you across days.

We do record that a comparison happened, as a counter. Those rows contain the page, the event type, a one-way visitor hash, the zip you typed if you ran a comparison, and — when the browser sent one — the hostname of the site you arrived from (chatgpt.com, not the search you typed there). Never an IP address, never a full URL, never a usage profile tied to a name.

How we count visitors without tracking them

We run no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no Hotjar, no advertising network and no third-party analytics or advertising tag of any kind. Looking up a meter is the one case where we send something you typed to another company, and only then, as described below.

To know roughly how many people used the site rather than how many times it was loaded, we store a one-way hash of your IP address and browser string, salted with a secret that is regenerated every day. Within one day the hash distinguishes one visitor from another. Across days it does not: the same person is a different hash tomorrow, and once the salt has rotated the old hashes cannot be traced back to any address at all, by us or by anybody who obtained the database.

We keep those counters for about thirteen months so that this August can be compared with last August, then they are deleted automatically.

Cookies

We set none. There is no consent banner on this site because there is nothing to consent to. Your browser may keep its own cache, which is between you and your browser.

Contract reminders

If you ask for a reminder we store exactly four things:

• your email address;
• the date your contract ends;
• your zip code;
• twelve monthly usage figures.

No name, no postal address, no phone number, no password. That record exists to send one email about a month before your contract ends, and for nothing else. It is never sold, never rented, and never handed to an electricity retailer.

Every reminder email carries a one-click unsubscribe link that works without logging in. Unsubscribing stops the email immediately. To have the record deleted rather than switched off, email hello@billtruth.co and we will remove it.

Reminder emails are delivered by Resend, which necessarily sees the address and the message in order to deliver it. That is the only third party that ever sees your email address.

When you click through to a retailer

Links to electricity retailers go through /api/go on this site so that we can count the click and, where an affiliate program is in place, attach a tracking identifier. That identifier is a hash of the plan, your zip and the day — it contains nothing about you and cannot be reversed into anything about you.

Once you land on a retailer’s site you are subject to their privacy policy, which is nothing like this one. Retailers do set advertising cookies, and any account you open there is entirely between you and them. We are not told whether you signed up, only, in aggregate and much later, how many people did.

Checking a renewal offer

If you upload or paste an Electricity Facts Label on Check your renewal offer, that document is read to produce a private comparison and then discarded. It is never stored, never added to our plan catalog, and never listed on a sitemap or results page. We keep only the same anonymous counter we keep for any other page — that a check happened, not the label.

Looking up a house

If you use This house, Price this house, or See my house, the street address you type is sent from our server to a partner that maintains an ERCOT meter directory, so we can find the meter and a twelve-month usage profile for it. We do not store the street address, do not put it in the comparison URL, and do not write it to the anonymous counter. We keep only the same kind of counter we keep for any other comparison: that a lookup happened, whether it found a meter, whether the meter was on a switch hold, and the zip that came back with it.

That partner necessarily sees the address in order to look it up. We do not receive interval meter reads from Smart Meter Texas this way. The profile we get back is an estimate for that meter, not your last twelve months of billed kilowatt hours. Actual interval data stays on the Meter data tab and never leaves your browser.

Uploading meter data

If you upload a Smart Meter Texas or Green Button export, that file is read in your browser. It is not uploaded to us, not stored, and not transmitted anywhere. Only the twelve monthly totals derived from it are used, and only in the page you are looking at.

The public API and the embed

/api/v1 is public and unauthenticated. A request carries a zip and a usage figure, the same things a comparison URL already carries. We do not issue keys and we do not log those calls as personal records. When someone clicks a plan inside an embed on another site, the click still goes through /api/go; we store the embedding hostname (apartments.example, not the page they were on) so we can see which partners send people, and nothing about the person who clicked.

Server logs and security

Our web server keeps ordinary access logs — address, path, timestamp, user agent — for a short period so that abuse and errors can be investigated. The database is a single file on a server we control, backed up encrypted. We are a small operation and we are not going to pretend to certifications we do not have.

Children

This site is about paying electricity bills and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect anything from anyone under 13.

Your rights

Texas residents have rights under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act to know what is held about them, to have it corrected or deleted, and to opt out of its sale. We hold almost nothing and sell none of it, but the rights apply regardless: email hello@billtruth.co and we will answer within thirty days.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what we store or who sees it, the date at the top changes and anyone with an active reminder is told by email before it takes effect.

Contact

BillTruth
hello@billtruth.co
Bill Truth, 12436 FM 1960 Rd W Unit 1447, Houston, TX 77065

Terms of use · How we count