Privacy Policy

This site, atxwingfest.com, is run for Austin Chicken Wing Festival, produced by Jesse Island Productions. When this policy says “we” or “us,” that's who it means.

Legal entity and mailing address: [CLIENT TO SUPPLY: registered business name and mailing address].

Analytics, only if you say yes.

We use Google Analytics 4 to count page views and see which pages people find useful. It does not load until you press “Accept” on the cookie banner. Choose “Essential Only” and the Google Analytics script is never added to the page, so no analytics cookies are set and no data is sent to Google. If you accept, Google Analytics collects your approximate location (city level, derived from your IP address), device and browser type, the pages you visit, and how you arrived at the site.

We also use Vercel Analytics, which measures page views without cookies and without building a profile of you. It runs for everyone because there is nothing to consent to.

Things you type in.

If you join the email list we collect your email address. If you apply to compete, vend, sponsor, or volunteer, we collect the contact name, email, phone number, business or team name, a description, and any website or social links you choose to give us. We use that to run the festival and to reply to you.

People's Choice voting, on festival day.

Voting is geo-locked to the venue so it can't be brigaded from a couch. When you vote we ask your browser for your location and record your latitude and longitude, the accuracy figure your device reports, your browser's user agent, a random voting cookie, a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address, and a scrambled device signature. The hashed values let us spot duplicate votes without storing your actual IP. Your browser will ask permission before sharing location, and you can say no — you just won't be able to vote.

Server logs.

Our host records standard request logs, and we rate-limit form submissions using your IP address, to keep bots out.

• Cookie consent preference — stored in your browser so we stop asking. This is stored in local storage, not a cookie, and never leaves your device.
• Google Analytics (_ga, _ga_*) — only after you accept. Set by Google, typically expiring after two years.
• Voting (acwf_voter) — a random ID that stops one person voting twice. Set only if you use the voting page.
• Festival staff login (acwf_admin_session) — only ever set for our own admin area. Regular visitors never get it.

We do not run advertising pixels. There is no Meta pixel, no TikTok pixel, and no Google Ads tag on this site.

We use a small number of vendors to actually run the site. They process data on our behalf; we don't sell your information to anyone.

• Google (Analytics) — website analytics, only with your consent.
• Vercel — hosting and cookieless analytics.
• Neon — the database that stores applications and votes.
• Resend — sends our confirmation emails and holds the email list.
• Upstash — rate limiting that keeps bots off our forms.
• Ticketbud — our ticket seller. Buying a ticket takes you to Ticketbud's own site, where their privacy policy applies, not ours.

• Say no to analytics. Choose “Essential Only” on the cookie banner. To change your mind later, clear this site's data in your browser settings and the banner will ask again.
• Block Google Analytics everywhere with Google's browser opt-out add-on.
• Leave the email list. Every email we send has an unsubscribe link, or email us and we'll take you off.
• Ask what we have, or ask us to delete it. Email us using the address below and we'll sort it out. Texas residents have specific rights under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, and we'll honor requests from anyone who asks, wherever you live.

Applications and email-list entries are kept for [CLIENT TO SUPPLY: retention period for applications and email list, e.g. “three years”]. Voting records are kept only long enough to verify the People's Choice results and are then reduced to anonymous totals. Google Analytics data is retained according to the setting on our Google Analytics property.

The festival is family-friendly, but this website is not aimed at children under 13 and we don't knowingly collect their information. If you believe your child sent us something, email us and we'll delete it.

If we change how we handle data, we'll update this page and the date at the top. Big changes get called out on the site.

Questions, corrections, or deletion requests go to acwfmedia@gmail.com. [CLIENT TO SUPPLY: confirm this is the right address for privacy requests, or provide a dedicated one]