Data use & terms

Updated September 8, 2026.

Search data

Street suggestions and address searches send street, city, state and ZIP to the US Census geocoder. ZIP autofill sends only the ZIP to Zippopotam.us. Apartment or suite details stay out of Census and BroadbandNow requests. Opening a Google Maps link sends the displayed address, including any entered unit, to Google. Provider searches also send the matched address and coordinates to BroadbandNow. After an address lookup, satellite screening sends coordinates to USGS 3DEP or, when connected, Google Maps Elevation, and to the USGS lidar project index. Where supported public lidar is available, the browser retrieves nearby point-cloud tiles from the public AWS dataset to screen objects. This runs after provider results appear. Provider Finder does not save address searches, suggestions, unit details, satellite checks, or elevation results in its database or browser storage.

Public ZIP results may be cached for 24 hours, with a dated fallback for up to seven days. Owner-entered sales phone numbers are stored until the owner changes them. Hosting and external service providers may process technical request information under their own policies.

Optional customer photos are opened locally for rep review; they are not uploaded or automatically interpreted. Photos clear when their check is closed. Lidar samples, proposed-mount coordinates and view observations remain only in memory for the current address search and clear on a new search or page close/reload. None are written to a database or browser storage.

Rep Quick Help & paused AI

September 21, 2026: the chatbot is paused. Quick Help uses the existing reviewed references without loading a language model. Searches and selections stay in page memory. The following model details describe the retained, inactive AI implementation.

The AI is available without sign-in. Owner administration and private team answers require authorized accounts; account emails are stored for that access. Optional model files download from Hugging Face and MLC’s public model library and may remain in the browser cache. AI inference runs on the rep’s device; no prompts are sent to a paid AI API or counted against ChatGPT message usage. Chats remain in page memory and clear when the page is closed or reloaded. Avoid entering customer personal or payment information.

Missing-answer tracking stores only a provider, topic, home/business context, count and date. Exact question text and customer addresses are not submitted to that tracker. The owner can view common topics and add reviewed knowledge with source links. Reviewed answers remain private unless the owner marks them available without sign-in. Private answers require approved team access and are not included in public TV PDFs.

External services

Provider images can load from their source websites or Google’s website-icon service. The ZIP geography map is supplied by OpenStreetMap. External links and services have their own terms and privacy practices.

Google-backed features are subject to the Google Maps / Google Earth Additional Terms of Service and Google Privacy Policy. See also Census privacy information, BroadbandNow privacy information and USGS privacy information.

Using the results

Coverage records and terrain screening are preliminary research. They do not establish provider availability, installation approval, pricing, beam assignment or a safe mounting position. Terrain checks use approximate address coordinates and sampled ground elevations. A bounded lidar sample can flag nearby objects, but may miss thin branches, recent construction, tree growth and unsampled areas. Collection dates are separate from retrieval dates. Rep-entered mount coordinates and reported view checks are not independently verified. The complete sky view, interference, weather and mounting safety are not assessed. Low obstruction risk describes a reported current view check, not an installation-success probability.

Confirm service and mounting details with the provider or installer before ordering or installing equipment. Reference satellite positions are not precision dish-alignment instructions. Provider names and logos identify their respective services; Provider Finder is an independent comparison tool.