Privacy Policy

Information We Collect

When you contact us or ask about business or commercial towing through this website, we collect the details you choose to share so we can respond and help. This website may also hold information from quote requests submitted through earlier versions of the website, and if public quote-request functionality is offered again in the future, the same kinds of information may apply. Depending on the request, that may include:

• Your name and the contact details you provide, such as phone number and email address.
• Vehicle or job details, such as vehicle year, make, model, color, or a description of what needs to be moved.
• Pickup and drop-off information, such as the general location of the vehicle and where it needs to go.
• Any notes or description you add about your situation.
• Optional location or GPS information, only if you choose to share it to help describe where you are.

You do not have to provide every detail, but the more accurate the information, the better we can understand and respond to your request.

How We Use Your Information

We use the information you provide to:

• Respond to your questions, messages, and business or commercial requests.
• Communicate with you about towing and roadside assistance by phone, text, or email.
• Understand the details of a job so we can determine how we may be able to help.
• Keep records of requests and communications for our own business operations.
• Improve how we operate and how this website serves the people who contact us.

How We Communicate With You

If you contact us or submit a request, we may follow up by phone call, text message, or email using the contact details you provide, in order to respond to your request and coordinate service. If you no longer wish to be contacted about a request, let us know and we will honor that.

Where Your Request Information Is Stored

Business and commercial inquiries, and other contact or request records submitted through this website, are stored in the website's WordPress administration area so we can review and respond to them. Records from quote requests submitted through earlier versions of this website may also remain stored there. Access to that area is limited to the business.

Third-Party Services

To run this website and respond to requests, we rely on a small number of third-party services. Depending on how you use the site and the details of your request, these may include:

• Website hosting, which stores and serves this website.
• Email delivery, used to send and receive messages related to your request.
• The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) vehicle lookup service, which may be used to help interpret vehicle details such as a VIN.
• OpenStreetMap Nominatim, which may be used to translate location or GPS information into a readable address when you choose to share your location.
• Google Maps and Google Places services, which the website may use to help you search for, complete, or verify a pickup or drop-off address, and to provide map or location functionality. When you use these address features, the location or address information you enter or select may be processed by Google to provide address suggestions and mapping. Google's handling of that information is governed by Google's own terms and privacy policies.
• Google Business Profile and Google sign-in, used only on the business/administrative side to help the owner manage the company's Google reviews and business listing. This is separate from the address and mapping features above.
• Google, for website analytics and tag management — Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager — which help us understand how this website is used and how it performs.
• Microsoft, for Microsoft Clarity, which shows us how visitors interact with pages through session replay and heatmaps.

Some of the vehicle-lookup and location features described above relate to request functionality that is not currently offered on the public website. They may apply to information collected through earlier versions of this website, or if similar request functionality is offered again in the future.

If in the future we use Google or similar mapping services to estimate the distance or route between a pickup and drop-off location, that information is used only for our own internal review and coordination of a request. It is not shown to you as automatic or final pricing, and it is not a guaranteed arrival or response time.

The analytics and session replay tools are described in more detail below, under "Website Analytics and Session Replay," together with the choices you have about them under "Your Privacy Choices."

Cookies and Similar Technologies

A cookie is a small piece of information a website asks your browser to save. This website uses cookies and similar browser storage in two ways:

• A necessary consent cookie, set by this website itself and named "slt_consent." It records the privacy choice you make here so we do not have to ask again on every page. It holds three things: which version of our privacy choices you were shown, whether you allowed optional analytics, and the date you chose. It does not hold your name, phone number, email address, or anything about a towing request.
• Optional analytics cookies and similar technologies, used only if you allow optional analytics. These belong to the analytics tools described below and help those tools measure how the site is used.

The consent cookie is written once you make a choice — including when you choose to reject optional analytics, because declining is itself a choice we need to remember. Your choice is kept in your own browser on the device you are using. We do not store a copy of it on our servers, and the consent system does not record your name, phone number, email address, IP address, or any visitor or account identifier.

If you clear your browser's cookies, or use a different browser or device, you will be asked again. We also ask again periodically, and if our privacy choices change in a way that means the earlier answer no longer fits.

Website Analytics and Session Replay

With your permission, we use a small set of measurement tools to understand how this website is used and where it can be improved. These tools are:

• Google Analytics 4, which measures general site usage and performance — for example which pages are viewed, how visitors reach the site, and how the site behaves on different devices.
• Google Tag Manager, which we use as the control layer that loads and manages the measurement tools listed here. It is a tag-management tool rather than an analytics report of its own.
• Microsoft Clarity, a session replay and heatmap tool. It shows us how visitors interact with a page — where people scroll, what they click or tap, and where a page seems to be confusing. Clarity can produce a playback of general on-page activity such as movement, scrolling, and clicks, so we can see how a page behaved rather than who was using it.

These tools are loaded through Google Tag Manager rather than being built into the website's own code. Microsoft Clarity is set to its balanced masking option, which is intended to mask sensitive on-page content such as what is typed into form fields. Microsoft Clarity is also configured to exclude the business's designated internal IP address from its own recordings. Clarity is connected to our Google Analytics measurement so the two views of site usage can be compared.

We do not intentionally send the details of a towing, roadside, or business request — your name, phone number, email address, vehicle details, or the notes you write — to these analytics tools. What they receive is general technical and usage information such as browser and device type, pages viewed, approximate general location derived from internet connection information, and on-page interaction. Each of these companies handles the information it receives under its own privacy policy.

Your Privacy Choices

On your first visit, this website shows a short privacy notice asking how you would like optional analytics handled. There are two groups:

• Necessary — required for the site to work properly and to remember the privacy choice you make. These are always active and cannot be switched off through the privacy controls.
• Analytics — optional, and covers the analytics tools described above: Google Analytics 4 and Microsoft Clarity. This stays off unless you choose to allow it.

There is no advertising or marketing category on this website. We do not ask you to consent to advertising or personalized advertising through these tools, because we do not do that here.

The notice offers three choices, presented with equal weight:

• Accept all — allow optional analytics in addition to what is necessary.
• Reject non-essential — decline optional analytics. Your choice is recorded and passed to the measurement tools as your instruction not to use optional analytics. Nothing about the website itself changes: the pages, the phone number, and your ability to contact us all work exactly the same.
• Manage preferences — open the preferences panel and set the optional analytics switch yourself before saving.

Changing or Withdrawing Your Choice

You can change your mind at any time. A "Privacy Settings" control sits in the footer at the bottom of every page. Selecting it reopens the same preferences panel, where you can allow optional analytics if you declined before, or switch it off to withdraw permission you gave earlier. Changing the choice is meant to be as easy as making it.

A change applies going forward. Your updated choice is saved immediately. If you allow optional analytics, the measurement tools may begin on the page you are currently viewing. If you withdraw analytics permission, the updated instruction is applied immediately; it does not reach back into a tool that already ran on the page you are looking at now, so the next page you load is the clean starting point, with optional analytics blocked.

Changing your choice here also does not by itself erase information that was already collected while an earlier choice was in effect. If you would like us to look into information related to you, contact us using the details on this website and we will do what we reasonably can, subject to any records we need to keep.

We Do Not Sell Your Personal Information

We do not sell your personal information. We share information only as needed to provide and coordinate the service you asked about, to operate this website through the services described above, or where required by law.

Data Retention

We keep request and communication records for as long as they are useful for responding to you and for our ordinary business and record-keeping needs, and then remove or archive them as appropriate. If you would like us to remove information related to your request, you can contact us and we will do our best to help, subject to any records we need to keep.

Security

We take reasonable steps to protect the information handled through this website and our business systems. No website or method of transmitting or storing information can be completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute security, but we work to handle your information carefully.

Children's Privacy

This website and our services are intended for adults arranging towing or roadside assistance. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as our business or this website changes. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date shown above. If a change materially affects the optional analytics choice described above, we may ask you to make that choice again rather than carry your earlier answer forward.

Contact Us About Privacy

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or about the information we hold related to your request, please contact Silver Lining Towing & Recovery using the phone, text, or email details provided on this website.