Who this covers
River Forest Referrals is a neighbor-shared directory of local vendors serving River Forest, Illinois. This Privacy Policy covers information collected through the website at riverforestreferrals.com, including the "Text Me This" SMS feature.
Mobile phone numbers & SMS
We do not sell, rent, share, or otherwise disclose your mobile phone number to any third party. Your number is used solely to deliver the one text message you asked for and is not stored for marketing, resold to data brokers, or handed to advertisers.
- Purpose: When you tap "Text Me This" on a vendor card and enter your mobile number, we send you one SMS containing that vendor's name, phone number, and a short line about the referral. That is the only use.
- Frequency: One message per request. Every message is user-initiated by you tapping "Text Me This" and confirming — we do not send unsolicited messages, marketing, promotions, or follow-ups.
- Delivery partner: Message delivery is handled by Twilio (our SMS carrier). Twilio processes the number solely to transmit the message, subject to Twilio's privacy terms.
- Retention: We do not retain your mobile number after the message is queued for delivery. The number is not saved to any user profile, contact list, or persistent record on our servers.
- Cost: Message and data rates may apply — check with your mobile carrier. River Forest Referrals does not charge you for the text.
- Opt out: Reply STOP to any message from us and no further messages will be sent to that number. Since we only send one message per user-initiated request, opting out mainly serves as an explicit stop-all record with our SMS carrier.
- Help: Reply HELP for a short instructional response. You can also reach us at the email listed on the Terms of Service page.
Other information we may collect
- Vendor submissions: When a resident submits a vendor recommendation, we collect the vendor's business name, phone number, category, optional contact-person name and business hours, and the submitting resident's first and last name (for the "referred by" attribution). Nothing else about the resident is required.
- Banner ad applications: Advertisers who apply for a sidebar banner ad submit a business name, contact email, and banner image. This information is used only to review the application and, if approved, run the ad.
- Server logs: Our hosting provider (Cloudflare) records standard web-server logs (IP address, timestamp, requested URL, user-agent string) for the purpose of operating the site and preventing abuse. These logs are not associated with your name or phone number.
- No advertising trackers: The site does not use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or any similar cross-site tracking script.
Cookies
We do not set marketing cookies. The only client-side storage the site uses is a small amount of localStorage to remember your last-selected category filter — this stays on your device and is never transmitted to the server.
Children
This site is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Changes to this policy
If we materially change how phone numbers or other user information is handled, we will update this page and change the "last updated" date at the top. There is no user account to notify — the current version of this page is the authoritative one.
Contact
Questions about this policy or how your information is handled: espdist@gmail.com.