LEGAL · EFFECTIVE JULY 31, 2026
Privacy Policy
This page says exactly what we collect on Franchise Watch Desk, why, where it lives, and how to get it deleted — no boilerplate you have to reverse-engineer against the actual forms. If something here doesn't match what you see on the site, the site is wrong and we want to hear about it (contact at the bottom).
Who this is
Franchise Watch Desk is operated by Don Drummond. This policy covers franchisewatchdesk.com and every page under it. It does not cover third-party sites we link to — franchisor sites, court-record portals, SBA/EDGAR/EDD data sources, or Cal.com's own booking pages — each of those runs its own privacy policy.
What we collect
Name, email, and whatever you fill in around them — for the buyer-side form: brand(s) you're weighing, capital range, timeline, financing method, and free-text notes; for the operator-side form: business name, unit count, years operating, revenue range, and free-text notes. Every field except name and email is optional.
Google Analytics 4 and Vercel Analytics both run on every page: which pages you view, referring site, approximate location derived from IP (city/region level, not precise), device and browser type. Vercel Analytics is cookieless. GA4 sets its own cookies — see “Cookies” below.
No payment information (nothing on this site charges you). No government ID. No precise geolocation. We don't buy or append third-party data to what you submit.
How it's stored
Form submissions are written straight to Vercel Blob storage as individual records — there's no customer database, CRM, or spreadsheet they get copied into. Each record gets an unguessable random URL; listing or reading them back requires a private access token that only we hold. We retrieve leads periodically to respond to them. There's no automatic expiry today — a record is retained until we delete it, which we'll do on request (see below) or once it's no longer useful to either of us.
Who else sees it
If you book the free 30-minute call, the details you submitted are shared with the CPA running that session, solely to prepare for it. They're bound to keep it confidential the same way we are.
If you book through the embedded scheduler, Cal.com processes your name, email, and chosen time to run the booking. That's governed by Cal.com's own privacy policy, not this one — we don't control what they do with it.
The code has an optional path to email a copy of new leads to us via Resend, a transactional email API. It's inactive by default (unset until we turn it on) and, when active, only relays the lead we already stored — Resend doesn't get anything beyond that.
We do not sell data. We do not share your intake-form answers with franchisors, brokers, advertisers, or data brokers. There is no ad-retargeting pixel on this site.
Cookies
Google Analytics 4 sets cookies to distinguish returning visitors and measure usage; you can block them site-wide with a browser extension like Google's Analytics opt-out add-on or your browser's cookie settings, and the site works identically either way. Vercel Analytics does not use cookies. If you book a call through the embedded scheduler, Cal.com may set its own cookies inside that iframe — that's their mechanism, not ours.
Why we use it
- ▸ To respond to your inquiry and, if you book one, prep for your free CPA session.
- ▸ To understand which pages and rankings are actually useful, so we build more of what works.
- ▸ To catch and drop spam submissions (a hidden honeypot field, invisible to real users, flags bots).
- ▸ Never for advertising, retargeting, or resale — there is no monetization path that touches your data today.
Your choices
Email the address below and we will, within a reasonable time: tell you what we have on file for you, correct it, or delete it. There's no account or login on this site, so verification is simply matching the email address you submitted with — there's nothing more sensitive on file to protect with a heavier process. This applies regardless of which state or country you're writing from; we don't gate rights behind a specific privacy law's jurisdiction.
Children
This site is about franchise investment and business operations. It isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor submitted information to us, email us and we'll remove it.
Security
Submissions travel over HTTPS and land in access-controlled storage behind a private token — the same infrastructure (Vercel) that serves the site itself. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute protection, but we're not layering extra risk on top of a reputable host's own security posture.
Changes to this policy
If what we collect or how we use it changes, this page changes with it and the effective date at the top updates. We won't narrow your rights retroactively without telling you.
Contact
[email protected] — for data requests, corrections, or anything else on this page. See also the Terms of Use and the Methodology page for how the site's own data (about franchise brands, not you) is sourced and corrected.