Privacy

What we collect

If you run the free score, we receive the URL you paste so we can fetch that page’s public HTML. We also keep a short-lived, in-memory count of requests keyed by IP address so the scan endpoint cannot be flooded. That rate-limit record is not a lead list and expires within a minute.

The score form does not ask for a name or email. We do not store the URL after the response is sent. We do not email the score.

How the scan works

The scan fetches the public HTML of the URL you provide, scores on-page signals, and returns a number from 1 to 100 in the page. It does not log in, does not follow you around the web, and does not query ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini on your behalf. We refuse private and local addresses.

How we use it

The URL is used only to compute and return that score. We do not sell personal data. We do not use submitted URLs to train a public model.

Paid work

The free score is on the homepage at /#scan. The paid Citation audit ($500) and other roster jobs are sold from /services — the paid audit is /services#audit. If you email us, we use that message to reply. We do not collect name or email through the score form.

Independent publishers

Some services involve pitching a story to The Carolina Wire, an independent local publisher. FirstCite is not that publisher. If a pitch proceeds, the publisher receives the facts you authorize us to share. Their privacy practices are their own.

Retention

We do not persist score-form submissions. In-memory rate-limit counts expire within minutes. Email you send to [email protected] is kept as long as needed to reply or as required by law.