Privacy Policy

You can read the whole site without giving us your name or your email address.

We count visits with our own system, with no cookies and no outside analytics company. You can turn the counting off for your device with one switch in section 4.

If you give us your email address, on the Thursday email form, the contact page, the submit page or the venue page, we use it only for the reason you gave it to us. We do not sell it, rent it or trade it. Section 7 says what would happen if the business itself were ever sold.

The Thursday email has not started yet. When it does, you will get one confirmation email first, and nothing else until you confirm.

You can ask us to correct or delete anything we hold about you through our contact page.

This policy is part of our Terms of Use. Where the two say different things about your personal information, this policy wins.

The Keys Local is a guide to venues, events, live music and happy hours in the Florida Keys. It is published and operated by Optiwork LLC, a Massachusetts limited liability company, at the address above. "The Keys Local" is a trade name of Optiwork LLC. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Optiwork LLC. The "Powered by Optiwork" line at the bottom of every page means the same company builds and runs the software behind this site, including the system that receives what you send us.

This policy covers thekeyslocal.com and the Thursday email we will send to subscribers.

It does not cover the venues, events or performers we write about, and it does not cover any other website you reach by clicking a link on our pages. Once you leave our site, the privacy policy of wherever you land is the one that applies.

There are no accounts, logins, passwords or paid subscriptions on this site. There is nothing to sign into, and we do not take payments.

This policy describes what the site does on the date at the top. Where something is planned but not running, we say so.

• Our forms are connected. What you type on the contact, submit, venue and Thursday email forms reaches us and is stored, as section 3 describes.
• The Thursday email is not sending yet. No issue has been sent. Section 5 says what happens to the addresses we have collected so far and what will happen when it starts.
• We count visits ourselves, with no cookies. No outside analytics service runs on the site, so there is no cookie notice. Section 4 explains what we count and how to turn it off.
• We count page views and a handful of actions ourselves, in our own system, without cookies. Section 3(b) explains it.
• The site loads no fonts, scripts or images from anyone else. Our typefaces are served from our own site. The only company your browser contacts automatically is our hosting provider, which serves the site. If you tap a link to a venue's website or to directions, you leave our site.

(a) What you give us on a form

There are four forms where you can type something in, plus one button that sends us a signal. Each one is separate and has its own purpose.

The Thursday email signup. This appears on most pages and on the Thursday email page. We collect your email address, and we record which page and which form you used so we know what brought you in. There is no name field.

The contact page, at /contact/. For questions, corrections, notes about your venue, and requests about your information. We collect your name, your email address and your message.

The submit page, at /submit/. For sending us a venue, an event, a happy hour, a tip or a correction. We collect the place name, the island, what you are adding, your email address, and, if you fill them in, a link and any notes you write.

The venue page, at /for-venues/. For venue owners and managers. We collect the venue name, the island, your name, your email address, and, if you fill them in, a phone number, which of the interest boxes you tick, and any notes you write.

The "Claim this page" button on a venue page. This takes no typing. Tapping it tells us which venue page you were on, which island it is on, and that someone wants to claim it. It does not send us your name or your email address. To actually start a conversation about a venue, use the venue page form.

What you write in a notes or message field may become part of a published listing, in our words or in yours, if it is a tip or a correction. Please do not put anything in there that you would not want on a public page, including other people's personal details.

Every form also carries a hidden field that a person never sees and never fills in. Automated spam tools fill in every field, so if it comes back filled in we reject the submission. It collects nothing about you.

(b) What we collect automatically

Our own visit counting. We record what happens on the site so we can see which islands, venues and pages people actually use. Specifically:

• Page views. The address of the page you visited, what kind of page it is, and, on a venue or event page, which venue and which island.
• Actions on a page. Tapping "Get directions", clicking through to a venue's own website, or to where a listing came from (such as a venue's Facebook post or its Google listing), and which site you went to, tapping a venue's phone number where one is shown, tapping "Claim this page" or the link about getting featured, adding an event to your calendar, tapping share, and using the island and time finder.
• A visit identifier. A random identifier made in your browser so we can tell that several actions came from the same visit. It is not a cookie, it is not linked to your name or your email address, and it is erased when you close the tab.

These records are sent without cookies and without any login attached. They go to our own system, not to Google. We do not build a profile of you, we do not follow you to other websites, and we do not use any of this to target advertising, because we do not run advertising.

If you turn counting off with the switch in section 4, this counting stops, and the visit identifier is removed.

Where a visit came from. On the first page you open in a visit, our counter also records the address of the page that linked to us (a search engine, a social app or another site), without any search text, and any campaign labels carried in the link. Section 4 covers it.

IP addresses. The system that receives our forms and our visit counting keeps a short-lived counter per IP address, so one source cannot flood it. Each counter lasts one minute for visit counting and ten minutes for forms, and the expired record is cleared automatically within about two days. We do not use IP addresses to identify you or to work out where you live. The counter only needs to know that two requests came from the same place.

Technical logs. The site itself is a set of pages served through Amazon Web Services, and we have not switched on request logging for the servers that deliver those pages. The system that receives forms and visit counting writes technical logs so we can keep it running and diagnose problems. Those logs can include your IP address and the time of a request. Section 9 says how long we keep them.

(c) What is stored in your browser

Cookies. This site sets no cookies. What it keeps in your browser is listed just below, and none of it is a cookie.

Other browser storage. These are not cookies. They stay in your browser and are set by our own site:

• Your choice to stop counting (cookie-consent), when you have used the switch in section 4, so the counter stays off on this device.
• The island you picked (tkl-island), so the site remembers it as you move between pages. The stored choice stays in your browser; the moment you pick an island is counted, as section 4 describes.
• When you last visited (tkl-island-seen), so we can ask whether you are still on the same island after a month away.
• The visit identifier (tkl_cid) described in section 3(b). It is sent with each counted action and is erased when you close the tab.
• Two flags our own team uses to mark their own devices as internal traffic, so our visits do not count. They are only set if you open a special address, which no page links to.

You can clear all of these at any time from your browser's settings. The only cost is that the site will forget your island and your choice about counting.

(d) Information about venues, businesses and performers that we gather from public sources

Most of what The Keys Local publishes is not information anyone typed into a form. It is information that venues, promoters and performers have already published in public: their own websites, their published calendars, their posted schedules, and images such as flyers and weekly lineup graphics.

We collect that material with software and by hand, and software pulls the facts out of it and publishes what matches the venue's own page under rules a person set. People check its work against the venues' own pages. Our Terms of Use describe that process.

Most of what we gather this way is business information: a venue's name, its island, its website, its happy hour times, its events. Some of it is also information about identifiable people, and we treat that seriously. Section 8 sets out what we publish about people and how to get it corrected or taken down.

We do not use Google Analytics or any outside analytics service, and the site sets no analytics cookies, so there is no cookie notice.

Our own counter records each page view: the page, the island, the venue when the page is about one, and, on the first page of a visit, where the visit came from, such as a search engine or a social link, without any search text. It also records the taps that matter to the venues we list: directions, calls, venue links, calendar saves, shares, and the buttons that ask about listing a venue. It keeps a short-lived visit number in your browser tab that is gone when you close the tab, and it never records your name, your email address, your precise location or anything you type into a form. The numbers go to our own systems and to no one else.

To turn it off, use the switch below. It stops the counting on this device and removes the visit number. The choice is kept on this device until you change it; the same switch turns counting back on.

We use no other analytics product, no advertising pixel, no social media pixel, no session recording tool and no heatmap tool.

Links you tap. Tapping "Get directions" opens Google Maps in a new tab with the venue's name and location filled in. We do not embed a map on our pages, so nothing goes to Google Maps unless you tap the button. When you click through to a venue's own website, we add a short label to the web address, the kind most sites use, so the venue can see in its own statistics that the visit came from The Keys Local. The label names us, not you. The social links in our footer are ordinary links: there are no social media embeds, like buttons or pixels anywhere on the site.

We do not use any outside spam-checking service. Our anti-spam measures are the hidden form field described in section 3(a) and the per-address counters described in section 3(b).

Status today. The Thursday email has not started, and no issue has been sent. We are collecting addresses ahead of the first issue.

How signup will work. We use a confirmation step. When you enter your address, we send you one email asking you to confirm. You are only on the list once you click the link in it, and nothing else is sent until you do. If you do not confirm within 30 days, we delete the address.

If you signed up before the confirmation step existed, including on our early launch page, we hold your address and send you one confirmation email when the Thursday email begins. Nothing is sent to you until you confirm, and if you do not confirm within 30 days of that email, we delete the address.

What you get. One email a week, on Thursday, and no other marketing email. The only other emails you would get from us as a subscriber are the confirmation email above, a message about your own subscription, or a notice about this policy or our Terms of Use.

Unsubscribing. Every issue will carry a one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom. It will work from any issue, at any time, with no login. We remove you right away.

After you unsubscribe. We keep your email address on a suppression list so that we do not email you again by mistake. That is what makes an unsubscribe permanent. If you would rather we deleted the address outright, ask us on the contact page and we will. Be aware that if we delete it outright, we have no record that you asked us not to email you, so if that address is entered again on one of our forms it would get a confirmation email again.

Clicks, not opens. We count which links in an issue get clicked, so we know which venues and events readers care about. We do not track whether you opened an issue.

One list, not several. We note which island you asked about and which form you used, and we do not run a separate list.

Email delivery. The Thursday email and the confirmation email will be sent through Amazon Web Services, which processes your email address on our behalf in order to send them. Every issue will carry our postal address, as the law requires.

We use each thing for the reason it was collected, and not for other reasons.

Three promises the site already makes, restated here so they are binding in this policy too:

• If you write to us on the contact page, we use your name and email only to reply to you. Sending a message does not sign you up for the Thursday email or anything else.
• If you send us a tip or a correction, we will not add you to anything. Your email address is stored as a contact record in our own system so the person handling it can reply to you. It is not added to the Thursday email list, and it is not used for marketing. If you want the Thursday email, ask for it separately, on one of the email forms.
• If you send us a venue inquiry, there is no auto signup and no sales sequence. We read it and reply about your venue, and we only email you about your venue.

Where it lands. Everything you send on a form lands in the contact and review systems that Optiwork LLC runs for The Keys Local, hosted on Amazon Web Services in the United States. Your email address, and your name where you gave it, are kept as a contact record. Contact messages, submissions and venue inquiries arrive as items in a review queue for a person to work through. Nothing automated replies to you, adds you to a list, scores you, looks you up elsewhere or shares your details.

Software that helps us with messages. We use software tools, run for us by outside providers, to help sort the messages you send us and to help draft our replies. A person reads your message and decides what we send back. We give those providers your message only so they can do that job. We do not use your messages to train those tools.

We do not make automated decisions about you. We are not deciding anything about individual visitors, so there is nothing for software to decide.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not rent it, trade it, or share it with anyone for their own marketing. We do not share it for targeted advertising. We have no advertising technology on this site, no ad network and no data broker relationship. No affiliate link on this site earns us a commission today. If one ever does, we say so on the page, as our editorial standards page explains.

Your information reaches other hands in only these ways:

• Our hosting and infrastructure provider. The website and the systems that hold what you send us run on Amazon Web Services, in the United States, and the Thursday email will be sent through it too.
• Our software providers. The tools that help us sort messages and draft replies, as section 6 describes, receive the messages you send us only for that job.
• Professional advisers, such as our lawyers or accountants, where they need to see something to advise us.
• When the law requires it, or where we need to protect someone's safety or our own legal rights.
• If the business changes hands. If The Keys Local is ever sold or merged, information we hold could transfer to the new owner as part of the business. The new owner must keep the same privacy promises we have made here. We would tell subscribers before that happened, and you could unsubscribe first.

Most of our listings describe businesses. Some of them name individuals, and that is personal information even when it came from a public source.

Performers. We publish pages for musicians and performers who appear at the venues we list. Our performer pages and performer list carry the person's professional name, the kind of act, the venues and islands they play, and their upcoming listed shows. It comes from the same public sources as everything else: venue calendars, posted schedules and flyers. We do not publish a performer's home address, personal phone number or personal email address, and we do not publish photographs of performers.

Venue people. Where a venue's public information includes a person's name, for example an owner trading under their own name, that name may appear in our listing.

Anything we publish is public. Search engines and the automated systems behind answer and search services can read it, which we allow on purpose, because being findable is the point of a guide. That means a performer page can be read and reused by systems we do not control.

If you are one of these people and you want something changed or removed, tell us on the contact page. You can ask us to correct a detail, ask us to stop listing you by name, or raise any other objection.

• If you are an individual and you ask us to stop publishing your name, we will do it. We may still list the event without naming you.
• For a business listing, we look at every removal request, and we remove content that is wrong, that we do not have the right to publish, or where there is a good reason. We do not promise in advance to remove an accurate listing of a public business on request, because the guide would stop being useful if any listed business could delete itself out of it. We do commit to reading the request, taking it seriously, and telling you what we decided.

Where the information is wrong, we fix it, and where a venue's own site or social post disagrees with us, the venue is right and we fix it.

We will not use a performer's name or likeness to advertise the guide, the Thursday email, or any paid placement.

These are the periods we are setting. Some of them are carried out by hand today rather than by an automatic process, and where that is so we say it.

The two-year, 90-day and 12-month periods above are not yet enforced by an automatic process; until they are, we delete on that schedule by hand and on request. The 30-day rule for unconfirmed signups begins with the Thursday email.

We take reasonable steps to protect the information we hold, appropriate to what it actually is. The whole site is served over an encrypted connection. Access to the system that holds messages, submissions and subscriber addresses is limited to those who need it to run The Keys Local.

We are deliberately not going to claim more than that. We do not hold payment card details, and we do not hold passwords. We do not ask for anything the law treats as sensitive, such as health, financial or biometric information. If you type something of that kind into a notes or message field, we do not use it for anything beyond answering you. We have not been audited or certified against any security standard, and we are not going to imply that we have. No way of sending or storing information is completely secure.

If we determine that a security incident has affected your personal information, we will notify you and any regulator where the law requires it, within the time the law sets. We may have to delay that notice if law enforcement asks us to.

The Keys Local is a guide to bars, restaurants and venues, plus their happy hours, live music and events. It is not directed to children. Our Terms of Use set a minimum age of 13 for using the site, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13.

If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, tell us on the contact page and we will delete it.

These apply to everyone who uses the site, wherever you live.

• Turn off visit counting. Use the switch in section 4. It stops counting on this device.
• Unsubscribe from the Thursday email. One click, from any issue, once the email is running.
• Ask us what we hold about you. Use the contact page.
• Ask us to correct it. Same page.
• Ask us to delete it. Same page. If you are a subscriber, tell us whether you want the suppression list entry kept or removed. See section 5.
• Ask us to correct or remove a listing about a venue, an event or a performer. Same page. Corrections to a listing can also go through the submit page.
• Clear what we store in your browser at any time, from your browser settings. Section 3(c) lists it.

Confirming it is you. Before we act on a request about your information, we may need you to confirm you control the email address it relates to. That is to stop someone else asking on your behalf.

What we cannot find. We cannot connect our own page view and action counts to you, because they carry no name, no email address and no lasting identifier. That means we cannot find yours to show you or to delete. It also means nobody else can.

We will respond to these requests. Our contact page says we reply within two business days, and we hold ourselves to that. If you have not heard back and think we have missed you, send it again.

We will not charge you for making a request, and we will not treat you differently because you made one.

Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track. We do not currently detect or act on browser signals of this kind. What such a signal usually switches off is the sale or sharing of personal information for advertising, and we do not do either of those things. If we ever add anything that a signal like that would apply to, we will honor it and say so here.

Whether or not California's privacy law applies to a guide this small, here is what is true, and the choices in section 12 are yours regardless.

We have never sold personal information, and we have never shared personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, which are defined terms in that law. We do not sell or share personal information at all, including the personal information of anyone under 16.

We do not ask for, and do not intentionally collect, sensitive personal information as that law defines it. If you send it to us in a message field, we do not use it for anything beyond answering you.

Section 3 describes the categories of personal information we collect, and section 7 says who receives it.

Several states have privacy laws with rights of access, correction, deletion and opt out. Rather than publish a state-by-state table that will be out of date within a year, we offer the same core choices to everyone, in section 12. Florida residents have exactly the same choices as everyone else. If your state gives you a right we have not listed and you want to use it, tell us on the contact page and say so.

We are not asserting that European or UK data protection law applies to us, and we are not claiming to run a compliance program under it. This section is here because plenty of visitors to the Keys come from there and deserve a straight answer.

The Keys Local is a guide to one part of Florida. It is written in English, there is nothing on it to buy, and it is aimed at people who are in the Keys or coming to the Keys. We do not target visitors in Europe or the UK, and we do not profile them or track them across other websites.

If you are in the EEA or the UK and you use the site anyway:

• Your information is stored in the United States, where our hosting is.
• If you subscribe to the Thursday email, you do that by asking for it and confirming it, and you can withdraw at any time with the one-click unsubscribe.
• Our own visit counter runs by default, with no cookies; you can turn it off on this device with the switch in section 4.
• Everything else we do with information, described in section 6, we do because it is necessary to run and improve a small guide, to answer you when you write to us, and to keep the forms free of spam.
• The choices in section 12 are available to you, including the right to object to what we do with your information and the right to ask for a copy of what you gave us.
• If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.
• We have not appointed a European representative or a data protection officer.

If we change something material, we will change the date at the top and say what changed.

We will not apply a material change to information you have already given us unless you agree to it first. New practices apply going forward only. Where we cannot reach you, the older promise continues to govern the information you gave us under it.

Before any material change takes effect we will post a notice on the site. Once the Thursday email is running, the next issue will carry the notice too, so subscribers see it without us sending an extra email.

For privacy questions, requests about your information, corrections to a listing, an event, a venue or a performer page, security problems, and anything else in this policy, use our contact page. A person reads every message.

By post:

Optiwork LLC (The Keys Local)
867 Boylston Street, 5th Floor, #2112
Boston, MA 02116