Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 31, 2026

Restoration Answers (restorationanswers.com) is operated by Sam Arora, sole proprietor, publishing under the Lumen & Ink studio name (“we”). We respect your privacy. This is a plain-English summary of what we do and don't collect.

What we collect

• Our homeowner tools collect nothing personal. The cost calculator, insurance estimator and triage checklist run entirely in your browser. The values you enter are not sent to us, stored, or sold. (The one place on this site that does collect personal data is the claim form used by restoration companies — see If you are a restoration company below.)
• Standard server logs. Like every website, our server records basic request data (IP address, browser type, page requested, timestamp) for security and reliability. These logs are not used to identify you. Server logs are deleted within about 15 days.
• Analytics. We use Google Analytics 4 (measurement ID G-CPG04711XX) with IP anonymization to understand aggregate traffic. Google sets cookies and receives page-view, device and truncated-IP data under its own privacy policy; you can block this with browser settings or Google's opt-out add-on. We also keep first-party daily counts — how many times each page was viewed, and how many times a call or CTA button on it was tapped — stored as totals against the page path, with no cookie, no identifier and nothing that ties a count to a person, and never the values you type into our tools. Readers in the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland are sent Google Consent Mode defaults of denied for analytics and advertising storage, so no analytics cookie is set for them.

Sponsorship & affiliate disclosure

No page on this site is sponsored today, so no page lists a restoration number. If a page here lists a restoration number, one local company pays us a flat monthly sponsorship for that page's call slot — never a fee per call, and never anything from you. If a page carries no number, nobody paid to be there.

Here is exactly how a sponsored number works, because it matters for your privacy: some city pages display one local restoration company's own phone number. That company pays a flat monthly sponsorship for the slot — never a fee per call. The call goes directly to them. It does not pass through us. We do not route it, record it, log it, or receive any information about it, and we have no call reporting of any kind — no times, no durations, no regions, no recordings, no caller IDs. We could not show you or anyone else a list of calls, because no such list exists on our side. You never pay us anything, and you are always free to call any company directly instead.

Separately, we participate in the Amazon Associates programme: where we link to products (for example, prevention equipment) we may earn a commission on a qualifying purchase, at no extra cost to you. These disclosures are provided in accordance with FTC guidance.

If you are a restoration company

The claim form at /water-damage/claim is the one place on this site that collects personal data, and it is worth being exact about it.

• What we collect. Only what you type into that form: your city, company name, contact name, the number we call you back on, the number you want published on the page, your email address (optional), your state contractor licence number, the state that issued it, and which plan you selected. Nothing else — no tracking profile, no purchased data, no enrichment from third parties.
• Why. To call you back about a city slot, and — before any number goes live — to satisfy state contractor-advertising law (California B&P §7030.5 requires the licence number in advertising; Texas and Louisiana licence mold remediation separately).
• What becomes public. If your slot activates, two of these fields are printed publicly on your city page: the number you asked us to publish, and your licence number. Your callback number, your email and your contact name are never published.
• Who sees the rest. Only the site's operator. Details you submit are emailed once a day to him so an enquiry is not missed; no one else receives them, and nothing is sold, rented or shared with any other company, network or lead broker.
• Technical detail. We store a truncated form of your network address (the first three octets only, e.g. 157.49.161.0) as a coarse anti-abuse signal. We read it from our own web server rather than from any header your browser can set, so it is your actual network and not a value someone else can put there. We do not store your full IP address against a claim, and we delete even the truncated form 30 days after you submit. That deletion is done by a job that runs every night on our server, so it does not depend on anyone remembering to do it.
• How long. We keep a claim row until you ask us to delete it, or until we close the enquiry. There is no automatic expiry on the row itself, so if you want it gone, ask. The one exception is the truncated network address described above, which is deleted automatically after 30 days.

Your choices & rights

We do not sell personal information. If you are a California (CCPA/CPRA) or EU/UK (GDPR) resident, you have rights to access or request deletion of any personal data we may hold. From homeowners we hold none; from restoration companies we hold only what you typed into the claim form, as listed above.

To exercise any right, or for any privacy question, use the form at /water-damage/claim and write “privacy request” in the Company field — it posts straight into our records and does not depend on mail working. Please do not email us: our inbound mailbox is currently rejecting mail at the server, so anything sent to hello@restorationanswers.com bounces and is never received by anybody. We would rather say that plainly than leave you writing into a hole.

Children

This site is intended for adults dealing with home emergencies and is not directed to children under 13.

See also our Terms of Use and About page.