Privacy Policy

This policy explains what LFW collects when you visit LFW.com or use our tools, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. We keep this deliberately plain.

LFW is operated by LFW.com LLC, a Virginia limited liability company doing business as LFW (“LFW,” “we,” “us”). This policy covers our public website, the free audit, the reports we send, and the client portal (together, the “Services”).

It does not cover the separate written agreement we sign with retainer clients, which governs how we handle a client’s own systems and data.

What we collect

Information you give us

• The free audit. The domain you enter, and, if you ask for the full report, your email address, so we can run the audit and send you the results.
• Contact and booking. Your name, email, and anything you write when you contact us or book a call. We use these to reply to you and arrange the conversation. Separately, analytics can count that a form was started or submitted without collecting its contents. A contact message does not put you on a mailing list.
• Newsletter sign-ups. If you subscribe to the LFW Weekly Recap or other LFW emails, your email address, which list you joined, when you subscribed, confirmed and unsubscribed, and, if you signed up from a benchmark scorecard, the sector you picked. We use these to send only the emails you asked for and to honor an unsubscribe.
• Newsletter consent record. To show when and how you agreed, we keep a record of each sign-up, confirmation and unsubscribe: the time, the page and language of the form, the words it showed you, your browser’s description of itself (its user agent) and a keyed hash of your IP address. The IP address itself is not stored; we can only check whether a given address matches the hash. We use this record only to prove your consent, which data protection laws such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation require us to be able to do.
• Invitations. When you respond to an invitation, we store your response, availability, optional dietary and accessibility needs, and any notes you choose to provide so the organizer can confirm the arrangements.
• The client portal. If you’re a client, your name and email, the requests and messages you submit, and any files you attach.

Public information reviewed by the free audit

The free audit itself looks only at information that is already public about a domain: the same things any visitor or standard tool can see. It does not attempt to access private systems, and it does not require you to give us access to yours.

Information we collect automatically

• Private link visits. When you open a private link we’ve shared with you, we record the time, your IP address, your browser and device type, and the page that referred you. We use this information to operate and secure the link and understand whether shared materials have been opened.
• Email link clicks. Links in our emails, such as the LFW Weekly Recap, are unique to each recipient. When you click one, we record which email and which link you clicked, and when, and whether the click came from a browser or from an automated mail scanner. We do not record your IP address or device for this, and our emails contain no tracking images.
• Page views. We count visits to our public pages using our own first-party analytics: the page you viewed, the site that referred you, an approximate location (country, and where available region or city, computed by our security provider from your IP address, which we do not store), and a one-way hashed identifier derived from your IP address and browser (used to estimate unique visitors). The raw IP address and browser details are not stored, and the identifier is salted with the date, so it cannot be linked across days or reversed. This is cookieless and stays on our servers; we don’t use Google Analytics, and we don’t track you across other sites.
• Page engagement. The same first-party analytics records how long a page stayed open, how far it was scrolled, which of our buttons and links were used, and the width of the browser window rounded to 10 pixels, so we can tell whether pages work on phones. These are tied to the page view, not to you.
• Page performance. The same first-party analytics measures how quickly each page loaded and responded during the visit: Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift), first paint, server response, and load time. With these timings we keep a device class and the browser and operating-system family, such as Chrome on Windows, but not the browser details themselves.
• Security and delivery logs. Our servers and our security provider record IP addresses and basic request details to keep the Services running, prevent abuse, and rate-limit automated traffic.
• Cookies and preferences. Functional cookies keep you signed in and protect forms. When a homepage test is running, two more are set: one remembers which version you were shown, and one counts you once in the test. When you save an optional-service preference, we also store a privacy receipt and your choices for up to 90 days. Advertising identifiers are used only when advertising integrations are active and your applicable privacy settings permit them.

One place for your privacy choices

Open privacy choices to see the optional services currently enabled on this website and change your preferences. Advertising, optional analytics, and Replay have separate controls. Required website functions and the first-party page-view measurement described above are separate.

Our Tag Manager supports Meta, LinkedIn, and Google Ads, but an available integration is not automatically active. The preference panel lists active services. When advertising is enabled and permitted, approved page views and accepted conversions may be sent to the selected provider, using browser or server delivery. Matching can include advertising click identifiers and, where specifically enabled and permitted, normalized, hashed email addresses. Hashing is not anonymization. We do not send contact messages or arbitrary form contents through these integrations.

Optional tracking respects Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track. Replay is turned off on LFW.com as of October 6, 2026. If it is ever turned back on, it captures nothing you type and nothing that identifies you, and you can turn it off in privacy choices. Advertising defaults depend on the reviewed regional policy and a trustworthy location signal; when location is unknown, advertising requires an affirmative choice. You can opt out at any time. Changing a choice stops future eligible delivery; it cannot recall information a provider has already received.

We retain minimized conversion-delivery diagnostics for 30 days and privacy receipts for up to 90 days. Consented advertising click identifiers may be stored in a first-party cookie for up to 30 days. Provider retention is governed by the relevant provider's policies. Client installations have their own controller, configuration, and privacy notice.

Replay on our public website

Replay is off. We turned it off on October 6, 2026: nobody is recorded and no notice appears. We may turn it back on. If we do, we will update this policy first, ask before recording wherever the law where you are requires consent, and keep it off when your browser sends a privacy signal. The rest of this section describes how it worked while it ran and how the recordings made before then are kept.

Replay records how our public marketing pages are used so we can find what is confusing or broken: page paths, navigation order, timing, scrolling, pointer movements, clicks, and whether a form was started, ran into an error, or was completed. We do not record what you type. Form fields, the site search box, and every other place you can enter text are excluded before anything leaves your browser, not blurred afterward.

From September 21 to October 6, 2026, who was recorded depended on where you were. In the United States, under the regional policy we reviewed, Replay was on by default for a random sample of visits, about one in five, with no dialog. In California, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and other places where the rule is to ask first, Replay stayed off unless you turned it on in privacy choices. Anywhere, a browser privacy signal (Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track) keeps it off, and “Reject optional” in privacy choices turns it off and is remembered.

A recording is anonymous by construction. A random visit identifier lives in your browser’s session storage for the current tab so pages from one visit play back as one journey; it is not a cookie, it does not survive the tab, and we do not join it to your contact details, a client account, our page-view analytics, or your activity on other sites. Your IP address is not stored with a recording.

Recording fragments with private content removed can also be held in that tab’s session storage so a page change does not discard them. They are removed after delivery or when you stop Replay. Undelivered fragments are eligible for retry for up to 15 minutes; expired fragments are removed the next time Replay runs in the tab.

Published text on LFW.com can remain readable when it matches a separately verified public copy of the page. This includes static form labels and buttons. Other text is masked.

Form controls, entered values (including search), editable areas, private results and messages, and elements marked private are excluded. Form milestones contain no field values or error messages.

Approved images and fonts hosted by LFW can appear in playback; other assets, embedded frames, and media are excluded. Replay does not record the client portal, admin, login pages, or private links shared with recipients.

Choose “Reject optional” in privacy choices to decline, or “Stop optional Replay” to stop a recording in progress. We remember that preference, when local storage is available, for up to 90 days, including in other tabs on the same browser. Clearing your browser storage removes the preference.

If your browser blocks storage, we cannot reliably remember a preference across tabs or page loads. A diagnostic link can display the notice again for testing, but cannot grant permission to record.

A recording ends after 30 minutes without interaction or two hours from the start of the visit. Closing the tab normally clears its session storage; some browsers can restore it when reopening a tab. The same expiry limits still apply.

If you previously agreed to playback with all text masked, we ask you to opt in again before recording with readable public content. Earlier masked recordings stay masked.

Our ordinary analytics counts notice displays, choices to allow or decline, privacy-link clicks, and observed page exits without a notice interaction. These consent event counts are not joined to a visitor identifier or Replay recording. An unanswered notice is not treated as a decline, and diagnostic offers are counted separately.

Replay respects Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals. Recordings are stored on LFW’s server and available only through authorized access. A recording is a timeline of anonymous interaction events, not a video. LFW.com recordings are kept for up to one year, and the stored set is capped, so older recordings are removed sooner once the cap is reached.

Stopping recording prevents further collection but does not delete recordings already received. Contact us about deletion using the details below.

Why we use it

• To run the free audit and send you the report you asked for.
• To respond to you, schedule calls, and provide the Services.
• To operate and secure the site: preventing abuse, debugging, and rate-limiting.
• To improve public pages and forms using interaction measurements and optional Replay.
• To understand whether materials shared through private links have been opened.
• To send you service messages and, only if you subscribe to it, the newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time.
• To meet our legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising or to build profiles about you.

Who we share it with

We share information only with the service providers that help us run LFW, and only as needed. Today those are:

• Hetzner: hosting for our servers and database.
• Cloudflare: content delivery and security. It processes IP addresses and request data to protect the site.
• Google Workspace: our email and calendar. Contact messages and booking requests land in our Google mailbox, replies go out through it, and calendar invitations for booked calls are created there.
• Amazon Web Services (Amazon SES): sending our email, such as sign-in links, audit reports, receipts and the LFW Weekly Recap; it receives the email address and the contents of messages we send you, and tells us when a message bounces or is marked as spam.
• OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX Super Intelligence: AI-assisted research, drafting, software development, and administrative work. These tools act as assistants to LFW. Depending on the task, they may process relevant client and prospective-client information, including names, contact details, communications, project requirements, and notes about our working relationship. LFW remains responsible for the work and decisions made with their assistance.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect our rights or safety, or in connection with a sale or transfer of the business. We’ll update this list as our providers change.

How long we keep it

We keep information for as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected, and then delete or de-identify it.

Scan results and report-visit logs are kept while they’re useful for the outreach or engagement they relate to; contact messages and portal records are kept for the life of the relationship and a reasonable period after.

Email link clicks are deleted 13 months after the click. When you unsubscribe, we keep your email address and the date you left, so we never mail you again by mistake.

The IP hash and browser description in a newsletter consent record are deleted 3 years after you unsubscribe, or 30 days after a sign-up that was never confirmed. The rest of the record (what you agreed to, when, and when you left) stays with your unsubscribe record.

We keep our own aggregate website analytics (page-view and visitor counts) indefinitely, to understand long-term trends. You can ask us to delete your information sooner (see below).

Replay recordings are unavailable after their retention period and are removed during collection or review. On an idle system, physical cleanup occurs the next time Replay runs. Encrypted or access-controlled backups may retain earlier copies until those backups expire.

Your choices and rights

If you are a Virginia resident, the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act gives you the right to confirm whether we process your personal data, to access it, to correct it, to delete it, to obtain a portable copy, and to opt out of the sale of your data or targeted advertising. We do not sell personal information for money. Where advertising integrations are active, use privacy choices to opt out. We extend these same choices to everyone, wherever you live.

If you are in the European Union, the United Kingdom or Switzerland

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR and Swiss data protection law give you rights over your personal data. LFW.com LLC is the controller of the personal data described in this policy.

The legal basis for each use:

• The newsletter. Your consent, given when you confirm by email (Article 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time with the unsubscribe link in every email. Withdrawing does not affect emails already sent.
• The newsletter consent record. Our legitimate interest in being able to show that you consented, which the GDPR requires of us (Articles 6(1)(f) and 7(1)).
• The free audit, reports you ask for, contact, booking and the client portal. Taking the steps you ask for before a contract, or performing a contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)). Where neither applies, our legitimate interest in answering you (Article 6(1)(f)).
• Security logs, rate limiting and our first-party page-view analytics. Our legitimate interest in keeping the Services secure and working and in understanding how our pages are used (Article 6(1)(f)).
• Optional analytics, advertising and Replay. Your consent, where the law where you are requires it, given and withdrawn in privacy choices.
• Legal obligations. Tax and accounting records and responses to lawful requests (Article 6(1)(c)).

You have the right to access, correct and delete your personal data, to restrict its use, to object to any use based on our legitimate interests, to receive it in a portable format, and to withdraw consent at any time. We answer these requests within one month.

You also have the right to complain to the data protection authority where you live or work.

To exercise any of these, email hello@lfw.com. We’ll respond within 45 days. If we decline a request, you may appeal by replying to our response, and we’ll reconsider and explain our decision.

To stop non-essential email from us, use the opt-out in the message or email us. We can’t remove the essential cookies without breaking login, but you can clear or block cookies in your browser.

Security

We take reasonable measures to protect the information we hold: encrypted connections, access controls, and login by one-time link rather than stored passwords. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, so we can’t guarantee absolute security.

Children

The Services are for businesses and organizations and are not directed to children. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we’ll delete it.

Where your information is handled

LFW is based in the United States, and we process information in the United States and in the facilities of the providers listed above. If you contact us from outside the U.S., you’re sending your information to the U.S.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Services change. When we do, we’ll revise the “last updated” date above, and for significant changes we’ll do more to let you know. Previous versions stay published and are listed below.

Previous versions

• In effect October 22, 2026 to November 3, 2026. What changed after it: SpaceX Super Intelligence (formerly xAI) joined OpenAI and Anthropic in the list of AI assistants that may process client and prospective-client information.
• In effect October 19, 2026 to October 22, 2026. What changed after it: The policy now describes the consent record kept for newsletter sign-ups, including a keyed hash of the IP address, and when its IP hash and browser details are deleted.
• In effect October 18, 2026 to October 19, 2026. What changed after it: The policy now lists what a newsletter sign-up stores, and email link clicks are deleted after 13 months.
• In effect October 17, 2026 to October 18, 2026. What changed after it: Links in LFW emails became unique to each recipient, and the policy now says what a click records.
• In effect October 6, 2026 to October 17, 2026. What changed after it: Amazon SES replaced Resend as the service that sends LFW's email, including the LFW Weekly Recap.
• In effect October 5, 2026 to October 6, 2026. What changed after it: Replay turned off on LFW.com; the Replay section now describes how it worked while it ran, and retention says the stored set is capped.
• In effect September 25, 2026 to October 5, 2026. What changed after it: The next version measures page performance with LFW's own first-party analytics instead of Cloudflare Web Analytics, and drops Cloudflare's analytics beacon and its retention terms.
• In effect September 15, 2026 to September 25, 2026. What changed after it: The next version adds page engagement (time on page, scroll depth, button and link use, window width rounded to 10 pixels) and says a running homepage test sets two cookies, not one.
• In effect September 13, 2026 to September 15, 2026. What changed after it: The next version turns Replay on by default for about one in five US visits (California, the EU and the UK still ask first), keeps recordings one year instead of 14 days, and adds Cloudflare field performance measurement.
• In effect September 11, 2026 to September 13, 2026. What changed after it: The next version adds the privacy choices panel, optional Replay, advertising integrations through our Tag Manager, OpenAI and Anthropic as AI assistants, and a section on what the free audit reviews.
• In effect September 8, 2026 to September 11, 2026. What changed after it: The next version covers responses to private meal invitations and adds lunch links to the private links whose visits are logged.
• In effect September 5, 2026 to September 8, 2026. What changed after it: The next version names Cloudflare Web Analytics, whose browser beacon collects page-view and performance measurements.
• In effect August 16, 2026 to September 5, 2026. What changed after it: The next version adds invitations: opening an invitation link is logged the same way as opening a report.
• In effect August 15, 2026 to August 16, 2026. What changed after it: The next version adds approximate location to page views, adds Google Workspace for mail and calendar, removes Anthropic spam screening, and limits marketing email to a newsletter you subscribe to.
• In effect July 18, 2026 to August 15, 2026. What changed after it: The next version names the operator as LFW.com LLC, doing business as LFW, instead of Wevia LLC.
• In effect July 16, 2026 to July 17, 2026. What changed after it: The next change restored the July 15 text, which counts page views with LFW's own cookieless analytics instead of Google Analytics 4.
• In effect July 15, 2026 to July 18, 2026. What changed after it: The July 16 version switched page views to Google Analytics 4 for a day. The July 18 version names Wevia LLC as the operator, stores a salted one-way hash instead of the IP address for visitor counts, and lists Anthropic spam screening instead of Google Fonts.