Privacy
Last updated: August 29, 2026
ChiWardBoard is a static site that publishes public city records. There is no account system, no login, no payment mechanism of any kind, and no advertising. Here is exactly what happens to information when you use it.
What we collect
- Nothing that identifies you, on our side. The site has no database, no server code of its own, and no way to store anything you do here. It is HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a handful of public data files.
- No cookies for tracking. The site sets no cookies at all. It does not use localStorage, sessionStorage, or IndexedDB.
- No accounts and no payments. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to buy.
“Use my location”
- If you press the location button, your browser asks your permission and hands your coordinates to the page.
- Those coordinates are not sent to any server. They are compared against the ward boundary file already downloaded to your browser, using a point-in-polygon check that runs on your device. The result is a ward number.
- We verified this in the code that ships with this site: the coordinate is read once and passed only to that local function. It is never placed in a network request, a URL, or a log.
- Nothing about your location is stored, even locally. Reload the page and it is gone.
The address box
- An address you type stays on your device. It is not sent to us, to the City of Chicago, or to anyone else.
- The site downloads a block-to-ward index, built ahead of time from public 311 records, the same way it downloads the map. Your address is matched against that index by code running in your browser, and the result is a ward number.
- Nothing about the address is stored, even locally. Reload the page and it is gone.
- Because the index is built from blocks that have at least one public 311 record, an address on a block nobody has ever called about will not be found. The location button and the map are there for that case.
Analytics
- We count visits with Vercel Web Analytics. Each page loads our host’s analytics script, which reports the page you viewed, the page that referred you, and coarse device and location categories (browser, device type, country) to Vercel. That is the second of the two scripts the site loads; the first is our own chart and table code.
- It is cookieless and does not follow you. The script sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. Visitors are counted by a short-lived hash rather than a persistent identifier, so it cannot recognise you across days or across other sites. We see aggregate counts, not individual people. (Vercel also keeps ordinary server logs, described below, as every host does.)
- Server logs exist regardless. Like every website, requests reach a hosting provider (Vercel) that records standard technical information such as IP address, user agent, and the page requested, in order to serve the page. Google Fonts receives a similar request because the site loads a typeface from it.
Where the data comes from
Every figure on the board is computed from the City of Chicago’s public 311 Service Requests dataset and the city’s 2023 ward boundaries. These are public records about service requests, published by the city. We do not add anything to them and we do not collect anything about the people who read them.
ChiWardBoard is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or speaking for the City of Chicago.
Questions, corrections, removal requests
Write to after.hours.builder@gmail.com. That includes anything you believe we have gotten wrong, and any request concerning a record that appears through this site. Note that the underlying records are published by the City of Chicago, so removing something at the source is the city’s decision, not ours - but tell us and we will point you to the right place and correct anything on our end.