What LeadForge stores, sends, and never collects.

Summary

• There is no sign-up, no login and no profile. LeadForge does not ask for your name, e-mail address or payment details.
• Saved leads and recent searches are stored in your browser, not on a server.
• LeadForge itself does not set cookies and does not use browser local storage for tracking.
• Searches are relayed to a public OpenStreetMap service; map tiles are fetched by your browser from a public tile host.
• Google AdSense is loaded on the four guide articles only, and Google may use cookies there. It is not loaded on this policy, on the terms or contact pages, on the guides index, or anywhere in the application workspace.

Part 1 — The LeadForge application

Saved leads and search history

When you save businesses, they are written to IndexedDB in your browser under the database name leadforge. The store holds up to 200 saved records and your five most recent searches, including the results those searches returned. This data is never transmitted to LeadForge servers, is not synchronised between your devices, and is not readable by us.

You can delete all of it at any time using Clear my local data on the About page, or by clearing site data for this domain in your browser settings. Clearing it is immediate, permanent and unrecoverable — export anything you want to keep first.

Business searches

Running a search sends the search parameters to LeadForge’s own API: country code, the identifier of the selected city, the chosen business types, the radius, the coordinates of the search centre and the maximum number of results. The server uses those parameters to build a geographically bounded query and sends it to a public Overpass API endpoint operated by the OpenStreetMap community. That third-party service receives the query and the coordinates; it does not receive anything identifying you beyond the network request itself, which originates from the LeadForge server.

Overpass responses are cached in memory on the server for a short period, keyed by a hash of the query text. The cache is shared across identical queries and holds no user identifier.

City lookup and geolocation

City suggestions are served from a city index bundled with the application; typing a city name sends only the text you typed and the selected country to LeadForge’s own endpoint. If you press Use my current location, your browser asks for your permission first, and the coordinates it returns are sent to that same endpoint to find the nearest city in the local index. Those coordinates are used to answer the request and are not stored. Location access is optional; declining it leaves every other feature working.

Contact discovery

Contact discovery runs only when you ask for it on specific listings. The selected records are sent to LeadForge’s API, and the server — not your browser — fetches the business website’s public homepage and at most one same-site contact or about page, identifying itself as LeadForge contact discovery. It extracts publicly visible e-mail addresses, telephone links and social profile links, and returns them to your browser. The business website sees a request from the LeadForge server, not from your IP address. The fetched pages are not retained on the server after the response.

Imported CSV files

CSV import is handled entirely in your browser. The file is read locally and parsed into the result list; it is never uploaded to LeadForge or to any third party. Exports work the same way in reverse: CSV and GeoJSON files are generated in the browser and saved directly by it.

Server logs and rate limiting

The API applies per-instance rate limits so that public data services are not overloaded. To do that it keeps a short-lived, in-memory record derived from the requesting IP address, which expires automatically and is not written to a database. When a search fails, an error message is logged without request contents. As with any hosted website, the hosting provider processes standard request data such as IP address, user agent and requested URL in order to deliver the site.

Analytics

This site includes Vercel Analytics, which records aggregate page-view and performance data about visits. It is provided by the site’s hosting platform and is used to understand traffic volume, not to build advertising profiles. If you deploy your own copy of LeadForge from the public source, you can remove it.

Part 2 — Advertising and Google

Parts of this site are supported by advertising. The Google AdSense loader is included only on the four articles listed on the guides index — the index page itself carries no advertising. It is deliberately absent from this privacy policy, from the terms and contact pages, and from the entire application workspace — the search screen, result lists, map views, saved lists, import and export flows and error states.

Where advertising is served, the following applies:

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to this website or other websites.
• Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to this site and/or other sites on the Internet.
• Personalised advertising may be used where it is permitted and where the visitor has given any consent required in their location.
• Users may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. Opting out of personalisation does not remove advertising; it changes how ads are selected.
• Visitors can also opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info, and can review Google’s handling of data in its advertising partner-site policy.
• If additional third-party ad networks are configured on this site in future, they may likewise set or read cookies in your browser when their ads are served.

Consent requirements differ by location. In regions where consent is required before advertising cookies may be set — including the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland — you may be shown a consent message before ads are served, and your response to it determines whether personalised advertising is used. Declining personalisation does not remove advertising; non-personalised ads may still be shown.

Advertising is not required to use the LeadForge workspace. Searching, mapping, saving, importing and exporting all happen on pages that never load an advertising script. If you never open the guides, no advertising code runs in your browser on this site.

Data we do not have

Because there is no account system, LeadForge cannot link activity to a person, cannot restore your saved list if you clear it, and has nothing to export or delete on request beyond what is already under your control in your own browser. Requests about advertising or analytics data held by Google or by the hosting platform have to be made to those providers, since we do not hold it.

Third parties involved in serving this site

• OpenStreetMap / Overpass API — receives the bounded business queries sent by the LeadForge server.
• OpenFreeMap — serves map tiles and styles directly to your browser, so it receives your IP address and the tiles you request while you use the map.
• Business websites — fetched by the LeadForge server, only for listings you select for contact discovery.
• Vercel — hosts the site and provides the analytics described above.
• Google AdSense — serves advertising on the four guide articles only.

Attribution and licensing for the data sources is set out on the data and attribution page.

Children

LeadForge is a business tool and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect information from anyone, since it collects no personal information at all through the application itself.

Changes to this policy

If the way the application handles data changes — a new data source, a change in analytics, a change in how advertising is served — this page is updated and the date at the top changes with it. Because LeadForge is open source, the corresponding code change is visible in the public repository history.

Questions

Questions about this policy, or about how a particular feature handles data, can be raised as an issue in the public repository. See the contact page for the right channel, including the private route for security reports. Please do not include personal information in a public issue.

This document explains how the software behaves. It is not legal advice, and it does not determine your obligations when you contact the businesses you find — those are covered in the terms of use and in Responsible business outreach.