Privacy Policy

Effective date: July 30, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Tillman Allen Greer LLC, doing business as Story Road ("Story Road," "we," "us," or "our"), collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information through Guide to Gwinnett, guidetogwinnett.com, and the websites, publications, awards programs, directories, newsletters, events, and related services we operate (collectively, the "Services"). Guide to Gwinnett is a brand operated by Story Road. Story Road is the entity responsible for the personal information described in this Policy.

This Policy is a notice of our privacy practices. Additional notices may be provided when information is collected. Any consent requested for marketing, text messages, cookies, or another specific use is separate from this Policy.

1. Information We Collect

We collect information that you provide directly, information collected automatically when you use the Services, and information from service providers, business partners, public sources, and other third parties.

Information you provide

Contact information, such as name, email address, mailing address, phone number, company name, job title, and other business contact details.
Account and directory listing information, such as username, password, profile details, business description, category selections, photos, logos, hours, website URL, social media links, service areas, and other listing content.
Voting and nomination information, such as your email address, ballot selections, nomination submissions, verification status, token activity, timestamps, IP address, device/browser information, and related fraud-prevention signals.
Payment and order information, such as items purchased, billing and shipping details, invoice details, customer service history, and transaction status. Payment card information is processed by our payment processors and is not stored by us in full card-number form.
Communications with us, including customer support requests, emails, form submissions, survey responses, sales conversations, and feedback.
Marketing preferences, such as newsletter subscriptions, opt-outs, consent records, and communication preferences.
Any other information you choose to provide through forms, uploads, messages, listings, reviews, comments, submissions, or other interactive features.

Information collected automatically

Device and usage information, such as IP address, browser type, device type, operating system, referring URL, pages viewed, links clicked, search terms, timestamps, approximate location, and session activity.
Cookies, pixels, local storage, and similar technologies used for site functionality, analytics, security, advertising, personalization, and measurement.
Email engagement data, such as whether a message was delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, or unsubscribed.
Location-related information when you choose to use location-aware features or when approximate location is inferred from IP address.

Information from third parties

Business listing, directory, category, review, demographic, and public-source information from data providers, public websites, search engines, maps providers, social networks, and similar sources.
Customer, lead, transaction, attribution, and communication records from CRM, payment, email, analytics, advertising, enrichment, and operational service providers.
Information from other users, such as nominations, recommendations, reviews, votes, comments, and referrals.

2. How We Use Information

We use information for the following purposes:

To provide, operate, maintain, personalize, and improve the Services.
To create, manage, display, verify, update, and administer directory listings, member accounts, advertising, awards programs, publications, and related features.
To administer nominations, voting, ballot verification, vote confirmation, editorial and integrity review, winner selection, fraud detection, fraud prevention, eligibility checks, and awards-program communications.
To send transactional messages, including vote-confirmation emails, account notices, order confirmations, receipts, invoices, support responses, deadline notices, and administrative updates.
To send newsletters, promotional messages, sales outreach, advertising opportunities, awards program updates, and other marketing communications, subject to applicable law and your opt-out choices.
To process purchases, subscriptions, renewals, billing, collections, fulfillment, shipping, customer service, and related business operations.
To analyze audience behavior, site performance, campaign performance, voting trends, market demographics, customer interests, and the effectiveness of our content, products, advertising, and awards programs.
To protect the Services, our users, our customers, our business, and the public from abuse, spam, fraud, security incidents, unauthorized access, scraping, automated activity, and other harmful or unlawful behavior.
To comply with law, enforce our terms and policies, resolve disputes, preserve evidence, respond to legal requests, and protect our rights and the rights of others.
For any other purpose disclosed at the time information is collected or with your consent.

3. Awards Program Voting and Nominations

When you nominate or vote for a business, we may collect and use your email address and related technical information to verify your ballot, prevent duplicate or fraudulent voting, communicate about your nomination or vote, administer the awards program, and analyze results. We may store voting records, vote tokens, confirmation status, IP addresses, timestamps, user agent data, category selections, nominated businesses, and related integrity signals.

We may use automated and manual review processes to identify suspicious or anomalous activity, duplicate submissions, bulk or automated voting, abuse of the Services, or violations of our Terms. We may investigate, discount, or disregard votes or nominations when we have a good-faith, reasonable basis to believe they are unreliable or inconsistent with the integrity of the awards program, even if the source or intent of the activity cannot be conclusively determined.

Submitting a nomination or vote does not subscribe you to marketing. We use voter contact information for marketing only when you separately opt in for communications from the specifically identified brand. We do not use voter contact information to market unrelated Story Road brands unless you separately opt in to those communications.

We do not disclose individual voters' identities, contact information, or ballot choices to nominees, winners, advertisers, sponsors, or directory members. We may publish or disclose aggregated or de-identified results that do not reasonably identify an individual voter.

4. Directory Listings, Public Content, and User Submissions

Some information submitted to the Services is intended for public display, including business listings, profiles, photos, logos, descriptions, categories, reviews, comments, stories, nominations when clearly designated for publication, winner information, and other published content. Public information may be viewed, collected, indexed, cached, copied, or used by others, including search engines and artificial intelligence systems. Ballots, voter contact information, private messages, account credentials, non-public files, and payment information are not treated as public content merely because they were submitted through the Services.

5. Cookies, Analytics, Advertising, and Similar Technologies

We and our service providers may use cookies, pixels, tags, scripts, software development kits, local storage, and similar technologies to operate the Services, keep you signed in, remember preferences, measure performance, analyze traffic, personalize content, prevent fraud, deliver or measure advertising, and understand email engagement.

Depending on the Service and its configuration, providers may include:

Cloudflare for content delivery, performance, security, and abuse prevention;
Google reCAPTCHA for security and fraud prevention and ipgeolocation.io for IP-based approximate location, routing, and integrity controls;
Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta, and HubSpot for analytics, advertising, attribution, customer relationship management, and measurement;
Stripe for payment processing and subscription administration;
MailerLite, Mailgun, HubSpot, and Twilio for newsletters, transactional messages, and consented marketing communications; and
Google Maps, YouTube, and similar providers for maps, video, and other embedded content.

These providers may receive information such as IP address, device and browser information, cookie or advertising identifiers, referring and viewed pages, interactions, approximate location, and information you submit directly through an integrated feature. Their independent use of information is governed by their own privacy notices.

Our Services may include categories and pages concerning healthcare providers. Analytics and advertising technologies operating on those pages may receive device and browsing information, including page URLs, categories, or interactions that could reveal sensitive interests. A visit, search, or vote does not necessarily indicate that the visitor has a particular health condition, and we do not request diagnosis or treatment information as part of ordinary directory browsing or awards voting.

You may use the "Your Privacy Choices" link in the site footer to submit privacy requests or opt-out requests. Some cookie and advertising preferences may also be managed through browser settings or tools we make available on the applicable Service.

Where required by applicable law, we will honor legally recognized opt-out preference signals when our systems are configured to receive and process them.

Some browsers offer a "Do Not Track" setting. Because there is no uniform standard for traditional Do Not Track signals, we do not respond to them unless required by law.

We may share information as described below:

With service providers that help us operate the Services, including website, infrastructure, database, cloud storage, CRM, payment, email, newsletter, SMS, analytics, advertising, security, fraud-prevention, customer-support, order-fulfillment, shipping, and professional-services providers.
With payment processors and order-management providers to process transactions, issue receipts, manage subscriptions, fulfill orders, prevent fraud, and provide billing support.
With email, newsletter, CRM, and messaging providers to send communications you requested or consented to receive, manage opt-outs, measure engagement, and maintain customer records.
With analytics and advertising providers to measure use of the Services, attribute campaigns, and deliver or measure advertising, subject to your choices and applicable law.
With business partners when reasonably necessary to provide a service you requested, administer a disclosed promotion, or fulfill an order, but not to provide them with individual voter identities or ballots for their own marketing.
With the public when information is submitted for publication or display, such as directory listings, award results, public comments, reviews, stories, nominations, and similar content.
With law enforcement, courts, regulators, counsel, or other parties when we believe disclosure is required or appropriate to comply with law, respond to legal process, enforce our rights, protect safety, prevent fraud, or investigate misuse of the Services.
In connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, bankruptcy, sale of assets, or transfer of all or part of our business.
With your consent or at your direction.

We may share aggregated, de-identified, or anonymized information that does not reasonably identify you, including audience trends, voting totals, category performance, traffic statistics, and market insights.

7. Marketing Communications and Opt-Out Choices

We send brand-specific email marketing when you separately opt in or when otherwise permitted by applicable law. You may opt out by using the unsubscribe link in the message or by contacting us. Opting out of promotional communications does not prevent us from sending transactional, relationship, legal, security, vote-confirmation, order, account, or administrative messages.

We send marketing text messages only when we have obtained the consent required by applicable law. Consent to receive marketing texts is not a condition of purchase and applies only to the brand identified when consent is requested. Message frequency varies, and message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out or HELP for help. We may still send non-marketing texts you separately request or that are otherwise permitted by law.

8. Your Privacy Choices and Rights

Depending on where you live and subject to applicable exceptions, you may have the right to:

Confirm whether we process your personal information and request access to it;
Request correction or deletion of personal information;
Obtain a portable copy of certain personal information;
Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, targeted advertising, or certain profiling;
Limit certain uses or disclosures of sensitive personal information where applicable; and
Appeal our decision regarding a privacy request.

To make a privacy request, use the Your Privacy Choices control or contact us using the information below. Please identify the brand and email address associated with your request. We may need to verify your identity and your relationship to the information before fulfilling a request. An authorized agent may submit a request where permitted by law, but we may require proof of authorization and identity verification.

If we deny your request, you may appeal by replying to our decision or contacting us with the subject line "Privacy Appeal." We will not discriminate against you for exercising legally protected privacy rights.

9. State Privacy Notices

Certain U.S. state privacy laws require additional disclosures. During the preceding twelve months, we may have collected the categories of personal information described above, including identifiers, customer records, commercial information, internet or electronic network activity, approximate geolocation data, professional or employment-related information, user-generated content, and inferences. We obtain this information from you, your device, service providers, business partners, public sources, and other users. We use and disclose those categories for the business and commercial purposes described in this Policy.

We do not sell personal information in exchange for money. Our use of advertising, analytics, pixels, cookies, or similar technologies may be considered a "sale," "share," or "targeted advertising" activity under certain state laws, even when no money is exchanged. Where required, you may opt out through our Your Privacy Choices control. Where required by applicable law, we will honor legally recognized opt-out preference signals when our systems are configured to receive and process them.

We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of individuals under 18 for targeted advertising. We do not offer financial incentives in exchange for personal information unless we provide a separate notice describing the material terms.

10. Data Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for using the Services securely.

11. Data Retention

We retain information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, subject to legal holds, active disputes, investigations, and legal requirements. Our general retention periods are:

Identifiable ballots, voter email addresses, IP addresses, device data, and related voting-integrity signals: We retain identifiable voting records for as long as reasonably necessary to administer the awards program, protect program integrity, resolve disputes, comply with law, and preserve appropriate historical records.
Account and non-public directory records: while the account is active and generally up to three years after closure;
Orders, invoices, and accounting records: generally seven years;
Contract, subscription-consent, renewal, and cancellation records: generally six years after the relationship ends;
Marketing-consent records: while consent remains active and for a reasonable period afterward; minimal suppression records may be retained as long as needed to honor an opt-out; and
Published award results, public directory content, and aggregated or de-identified statistics: potentially indefinitely as part of our historical and editorial record.

We may delete information sooner when it is no longer needed or retain it longer where reasonably necessary to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims, comply with law, investigate abuse, or preserve evidence.

12. Children's Privacy

The public portions of the Services are intended for a general audience. Voting, nominations, account creation, listing claims, purchases, and other interactive submissions are intended only for individuals who are at least 18 years old. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 through those features. Please do not submit a minor's personal information unless you are authorized to do so and have obtained any consent required by law. If you believe a minor has provided personal information to us, please contact us so we can investigate and take appropriate action.

13. Third-Party Links and Services

The Services may link to or integrate with third-party websites, platforms, payment processors, social networks, advertisers, maps, embedded media, or other services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties. Your use of third-party services is governed by their own terms and privacy policies.

14. International Users

The Services are operated in the United States and are intended primarily for users located in the United States. If you access the Services from outside the United States, you understand that information may be transferred to, stored in, and processed in the United States and other jurisdictions where our service providers operate.

15. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version with a revised effective date and provide any additional notice required by applicable law. Material changes apply prospectively unless otherwise permitted by law.

16. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:

Guide to Gwinnett
Email: directory@guidetogwinnett.com
Mailing Address: PO Box 1269, Buford, GA 30515

Legal operator and entity responsible for personal information: Tillman Allen Greer LLC d/b/a Story Road.