Privacy policy

What this covers

This policy explains what information HearthLoan (“we”) collects when you visit hearthloan.com, how it is used, and the choices you have. HearthLoan is an independent publisher of educational tools and articles. We are not a lender, broker, or mortgage originator, and we do not collect loan applications.

The calculators run in your browser

Every number you type into a HearthLoan calculator — your balance, rate, home value, credit score, closing-cost overrides — is processed locally in your browser. It is not transmitted to us and we never see it or store it on a server.

• Share links. If you use a “share” or “copy link” feature, the calculator encodes your inputs into the URL so you can send that link to someone. That happens on your device and is initiated by you. If you open a shared link, those values populate the calculator locally — they are not sent to us.
• Saved state. If a tool remembers your last inputs between visits, it stores them in your browser's own local storage on your device. You can clear this at any time through your browser settings.

What we do receive

Because the site is delivered over the internet, some standard technical information reaches our infrastructure providers:

• Server and security logs. Our content delivery and security provider (Cloudflare) processes standard request data — IP address, browser/user-agent, date and time, and the page requested — to deliver the site, block abuse, and keep it available. These logs are retained for a limited period for security and operational purposes.
• Email you send us. If you email one of our addresses (for example a correction or a question), we receive whatever you include in that message and use it only to respond.

We do not collect names, phone numbers, or financial details unless you volunteer them in an email to us.

Advertising and analytics

We do not run advertising networks, third-party analytics (such as Google Analytics), remarketing pixels, or session-recording tools on this site. We do not build advertising profiles and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone.

Third parties that receive technical data

To serve the site we rely on a small number of infrastructure providers. Loading our pages necessarily shares your IP address with them:

• Cloudflare, Inc. — content delivery network, DNS, and security. See Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• Google Fonts — our typefaces are served from Google's font CDN (fonts.googleapis.com / fonts.gstatic.com), which receives your IP address to deliver the font files. See Google's privacy policy.

Articles may link to outside sources (government agencies, industry bodies, our data sources). Once you follow a link off HearthLoan, the destination site's own privacy policy governs.

Cookies

HearthLoan does not set advertising or tracking cookies. Our infrastructure providers may set strictly necessary cookies used for security (for example, to identify abusive traffic). You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings without losing access to the calculators.

Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live — including under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA) and the EU/UK GDPR — you may have the right to access, correct, or delete personal information a business holds about you, and to opt out of its sale. Because we do not maintain accounts, do not sell data, and hold essentially no personal information beyond limited security logs, most of these requests will not apply. If you have emailed us and want that correspondence deleted, write to us and we will remove it.

Children

HearthLoan is a general-audience site about mortgage refinancing and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle data — for example, if we ever add privacy-respecting analytics — we will update this page and change the “Last reviewed” date above before that change takes effect.

Contact

Questions about privacy: [email protected]. General contact details are on our contact page.