Privacy

Privacy Policy

APR•St TAMMANY uses submitted information to review tips, verify details, respond to messages, and publish community updates when appropriate.

Information You Submit

When you send a tip, photo, video, audio file, document, event detail, or message, APR may receive your name, contact details, message content, location details, and any files you choose to provide.

Tip submissions may include many common image, video, audio, and document formats. Submitted files and related details are stored for private APR review and may be used to verify local coverage.

Missing-Person Submissions

A missing-person submission may include reporter contact information, relationship to the missing person, photographs, last-seen information, physical descriptions, police agency and case information, detective or officer contact information, and police-report documentation. Submissions remain private unless APR verifies the case and deliberately publishes an approved public listing.

Police documents, case numbers, detective or officer details, reporter contact information, verification notes, and information marked private are available only to authorized APR administrators and are not included in public listings. When APR marks a case located, the public listing is reduced to the person's first name, selected photograph, located status, and status-update time. The complete record may remain privately archived for verification, auditing, or reopening an incorrectly closed case.

How Information Is Used

Submitted information may be used to verify reports, contact you for follow-up, prepare local updates, improve community coverage, and review material for possible posting.

Automated screening may reject advertising, repeated submissions, excessive links, rapid submissions, and unsafe file types.

Business Advertising and Referrals

When a business creates an APR advertiser account, APR stores the owner or representative name, account email and phone, verified physical business address, login credentials in hashed form, campaign content, visibility choices, billing identifiers supplied by Stripe, subscription status, invoices, support messages, and advertising analytics needed to operate and secure the service. APR does not receive or store complete payment-card numbers.

Each advertiser may receive a unique referral link. APR records which advertiser referred a new business, whether the referred campaign is pending or active, and whether a credit was earned or rejected. The referring advertiser may see the referred business name and limited referral status. Private owner names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, payment details, and account credentials are not shared through the referral dashboard. APR administrators may review referral records and account details to operate the program, provide support, and detect fraud or duplicate accounts.

Public Posts

Information, images, or video submitted to APR may be published if it is relevant to community events, local highlights, public submissions, or parishwide interest. Personal contact information is not intentionally published unless you clearly request it or it is already public.

By submitting tips, photos, videos, audio, documents, or other materials to APR, you understand that APR may review, verify, edit, archive, publish, broadcast, distribute, and otherwise use those submitted materials for APR reporting and community coverage without payment or compensation to the sender.

APR Accounts and Live Comments

To post in APR live chat, you create an APR account with a public username, private email address, and password. APR emails a one-time code to verify the address. Your username and comments are public. Your email address remains private and is used for verification, sign-in recovery, account security, and important account messages.

Passwords are stored as one-way password hashes, not readable passwords. APR stores protected sign-in tokens so you can remain signed in. The same APR account may support additional APR community features in the future, but APR is not currently providing a social network.

Public registration cannot create names representing APR, police, fire, EMS, government, public agencies, departments, or public-information officers. After APR verifies authorization, an APR administrator may create an official account and email a temporary password to the approved official address. The user must replace it immediately. Approved official accounts display a verified shield.

APR stores a protected sign-in token on your device and maintains limited records needed to enforce slow mode, prevent duplicate or abusive posts, process reports, block abusive users, and honor your hidden-commenter choices. You can delete your APR account from the comment controls in the app. Deletion removes your account contact information, sign-in credentials, live comments, and associated moderation reports.

Site Analytics

APR uses first-party analytics to count pageviews, estimate daily visitors, measure article readership and Share Article button use, and understand general traffic sources and device types. The analytics dashboard does not store raw IP addresses, names, email addresses, or precise locations.

A random browser identifier is stored on your device and converted to a one-way hash for visitor estimates. APR does not sell analytics information.

The /app download link counts visits and redirects to Apple or Google before opening the store. A short-lived random cookie helps filter rapid repeated requests; only a one-way hash is temporarily retained for this check. The report stores daily aggregate counts, not IP addresses, raw browser identifiers, or confirmed installations. Known automated previews are filtered, and counts are best-effort.

APR may also let readers mark articles with a thumbs up or thumbs down. Reaction counts are public. APR stores a one-way hashed browser identifier with the vote so the same browser can update its reaction without repeatedly increasing the count.

Meta Pixel and Social Advertising

APR may use Meta Pixel or similar tools from Meta/Facebook to understand visits from Facebook and Instagram, measure article traffic, measure ad or boosted-post performance, and improve future outreach. Meta may use cookies, device identifiers, browser details, page URLs, referral information, and similar data under Meta's own privacy policies.

APR may receive aggregated reporting from Meta, but APR does not receive your private Facebook password, payment-card information, or private messages through the pixel.

Affiliate Links

APR may publish affiliate links to products or services that may be useful for storm preparation, road safety, home security, power outages, local events, and everyday community needs. APR may earn a commission from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

When you click an affiliate link, the retailer or affiliate network may use cookies, referral identifiers, device information, or similar technology to recognize that the visit came from APR and to calculate commissions. Those companies process information under their own privacy policies. APR may receive aggregate referral, order, or commission reports, but APR does not process or store your payment-card information for purchases made on third-party websites.

Product information, prices, availability, promotions, and external privacy practices are controlled by third parties and may change without notice. Review the retailer's current product details, terms, and privacy policy before providing information or completing a purchase.

APR Merchandise Store

APR links to an APR-branded Printful Quick Store for physical merchandise. When you open the store, Printful and its service providers may collect the contact, payment, order, and shipping information needed to complete and support your purchase under Printful's privacy policy.

Checkout and payment take place on Printful's secure service. The APR website and APR St. Tammany app do not receive or store your complete payment-card information. APR may receive order and payout information made available to the Quick Store owner.

Security and Spam Protection

APR may use security tools such as Cloudflare Turnstile, Google reCAPTCHA, rate limits, and automated checks to reduce spam, unsafe uploads, and advertising submissions.

APR St. Tammany App

If you enable app notifications, APR stores an Apple or Firebase device notification token and your alert preferences so requested news, weather, live-stream, road, community, and APR Update alerts can be delivered. You may change notification choices in the app or device settings.

The app may create random first-party identifiers to measure article and update views, live-stream viewers and reactions, sponsor impressions, directory searches, profile opens, and outbound link clicks. These identifiers are not used to track you across other companies' apps or websites, and APR does not sell this information.

If you allow location access, the app uses your location while it is open to identify your current town and select the nearest supported weather forecast. For weather notifications, the app rounds the location to an approximate one-kilometer point and sends that coarse point and selected weather town to APR with the device notification token so APR can determine whether an official NWS warning area includes the device.

For town-specific news and missing-person notifications, updated apps also send the town identified from the device location, its approximate accuracy, and the time the location was measured. APR keeps the latest reported point, not a history of your movements. Alerts use your last known town between updates without a 30-minute expiration; a manually selected weather town is not used as your location. Your saved town may be outdated until a new report arrives, and this feature does not guarantee real-time tracking or delivery of every alert.

APR does not receive an exact address or use continuous GPS tracking for this feature. Location refreshes while the app is open. On supported iPhones you can optionally enable background town updates and grant Always location access so iOS can report significant movement when APR is not open. Background updates depend on your device settings, connectivity, and iOS scheduling and are not guaranteed. Temporary location or network failures retain your last known town. A reported location outside a supported town clears town targeting. Turning off location permission clears the saved town when the app next runs and successfully syncs with APR; disabling background updates alone keeps the last known town and foreground updates. You can also turn off individual notification categories. St. Tammany Parish alerts can still reach users without location access, subject to their notification settings.

Weather Information

APR weather pages and weather-related posts may use public information from official sources such as the National Weather Service, NOAA, the National Hurricane Center, and the Weather Prediction Center. APR•St TAMMANY is not a meteorologist and does not issue official forecasts, warnings, evacuation orders, or emergency instructions.

Users should make weather and public-safety decisions only from current instructions issued by local government officials, emergency management, law enforcement, the National Weather Service, and other authorized public agencies. APR weather information is supplemental community information and must not replace official guidance.

Third-Party Platforms

This site links to Printful, retailers, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, email providers, and other external services. Opening or using those services may allow the third party to collect information according to its own privacy policy and technology. APR does not control third-party websites, accounts, cookies, data practices, security, purchases, or content.

APR Admin App

APR Admin is a restricted newsroom and operations application for authorized APR St. Tammany personnel. It is not intended for general public access. The app sends an authentication token and the device name to APR servers to maintain a secure session. If notifications are enabled, APR also stores the Apple Push Notification service device token needed to deliver administrative alerts.

Authorized users may create or edit articles, updates, events, advertiser information, and related photos or videos through the app. This content is stored on APR servers so the requested publishing and administrative functions can operate. APR also records administrative actions, timestamps, and limited security information such as the connecting IP address in an audit log used to protect the live publishing system.

APR Admin does not use advertising identifiers, does not track administrators across other companies' apps or websites, and does not sell administrator information. Authentication, device, notification, user-content, and audit information is used only for app functionality, security, support, and authorized APR operations.

Authorized APR administrators can review live comments and reports, pause commenting, edit moderation filters, remove comments, and block or restore live-chat users.

Apple App Review access uses a separate, expiring demonstration account. That account can access only fictional review records and cannot read or change live APR tips, articles, events, advertising records, analytics, notification recipients, or operational controls.

Authorized administrators may request removal of an administrative device registration or related account information by emailing apr@aprsttammany.com.

Contact

Questions about privacy can be sent to apr@aprsttammany.com.