McAllen Garage Sales - Privacy Policy

Last Updated: September 14, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how McAllen Garage Sales ("we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, shares, and protects information when you use mcallengaragesales.com and its associated services (the "Service").

This policy should be read alongside our Terms of Service. By using the Service, you agree to the practices described here. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

1. The Short Version

We think you should be able to understand this without reading all of it, so here is the summary:

• We do not sell your personal information for money. We never have — though personalized ads may count as "sharing" under some state laws; see section 12 for how to opt out.
• Garage sale listings are public. They originate from City of McAllen permit records, which are public records, and the sale address appears on a public map.
• You do not need an account to browse. An account is only needed to save listings, manage your own sale, or use chat.
• We use Google Analytics to understand general site usage, and a bot-protection service to keep the site available.
• We display advertising through Google AdSense, which may use cookies to personalize and measure the ads you see. We do not use social media advertising pixels.
• You can change your cookie choices at any time using the "Cookie Settings" link in our footer.
• Our own usage analytics are anonymized and stay with us. We track what's being used and what's breaking so we can fix it — nothing more.

2. Information You Give Us

Account Information

If you create an account, we collect your email address, a display name, and optionally your first and last name. Passwords are stored only as a salted cryptographic hash — we cannot read your password.

If you sign up or sign in using Google, Microsoft, or Facebook, we receive your email address and basic profile name from that provider in order to create or link your account. We do not receive your password from them, and we do not post to those accounts or read your contacts.

Listing Information

Garage sale listings on this site originate primarily from garage sale permits issued by the City of McAllen, which are public records. A listing may include the permit number, the sale address, the scheduled dates and times, and a link to the permit document.

If you claim or manage a listing, we also store any title, description, schedule changes, and photographs you add. Please do not upload photographs that show people, license plates, house numbers, or anything else you do not want publicly visible.

Saved Listings and Groups

If you save listings or organize them into route groups, we store those selections and their names so we can show them back to you.

Messages and Comments

If you use the chat or listing feed features, the content of those messages is stored so conversations persist. If you leave a comment on a blog post, the comment content and any name or email address you choose to provide are stored by our self-hosted comment system, along with the IP address the comment was submitted from (used for spam prevention). Comments are publicly visible.

Email and Support

If you subscribe to updates, we store your email address for that purpose. If you contact us for support, we keep that correspondence so we can respond and follow up.

3. Information Collected Automatically

When you use the Service, we and our service providers automatically collect:

• Your IP address
• Your browser type and user agent string
• The pages you visit on this site and the page that referred you
• A randomly generated session identifier
• Timestamps of the above

We use this for site analytics, security and abuse prevention, and diagnosing errors. Where we record an event tied to an account action, we deliberately mask email addresses before storing them in analytics.

4. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use a small number of cookies:

Cookies fall into three groups: essential cookies required for the site to work and stay secure (authentication, antiforgery, bot protection), which do not require consent; analytics cookies that tell us how the site is used; and advertising cookies used by Google and its partners to personalize and measure ads.

The authentication and antiforgery cookies are strictly necessary — the site cannot function securely without them. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings, but doing so may prevent you from signing in.

5. Analytics, Advertising and Consent

We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used in aggregate — which pages are popular, whether features work, and where errors occur. We also record certain in-app events (for example, that a listing was viewed or saved) to our own analytics storage.

Advertising

We use Google AdSense to display advertising on this site. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this and other sites on the internet.

You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. You can also opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalized advertising at aboutads.info. Opting out of personalized advertising does not remove ads — you will still see ads, but they will not be tailored to you.

Consent

We implement Google Consent Mode v2 and use Google's certified Consent Management Platform to collect and record your cookie choices. Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland are defaulted to denied for analytics and advertising storage and are asked for consent before any analytics or advertising cookie is set; until consent is granted, Google's tags operate in a restricted, cookieless mode. Visitors elsewhere are defaulted to granted, consistent with the opt-out model used by United States state privacy laws.

You can change or withdraw your choice at any time using the Cookie Settings link in our footer.

6. What We Do Not Do

To be explicit about practices we have deliberately avoided:

• We do not sell or rent your personal information to anyone.
• We do not use social media advertising pixels. A Meta (Facebook) advertising pixel was previously present on this site and was removed in September 2026. It was never used for any advertising campaign.
• We do not show ads based on sensitive categories, and we do not serve interest-based advertising to anyone we know to be under 13.
• We do not use your listing data, messages, or usage analytics to train artificial intelligence models, and we do not provide them to third parties for that purpose.
• We do not track you across other websites.

7. Service Providers We Share Data With

We share information with the following third-party providers strictly so they can perform services for us. Each processes only what is needed for its function, and each is bound by its own privacy policy, linked below:

Systems We Host Ourselves

The following are not third-party services and involve no sharing of your data with anyone else. They run on infrastructure we operate, and the data in them stays with us:

• Usage analytics. We record anonymized events — which pages and features are used, and what errors occur — into our own self-hosted analytics database. This exists so we can see what is actually being used and fix what is broken. Email addresses are masked before storage. This data is never sold, never shared, and never used to train artificial intelligence models.
• Error monitoring. When something breaks, the error details, the page it happened on, and basic browser information are recorded to our own self-hosted instance so we can diagnose and fix it.
• Blog comments. Comments are stored on our own self-hosted comment server, along with any name or email you choose to provide and the IP address used for spam prevention.

We may also disclose information where required by law, valid legal process, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of our users, the public, or us.

8. Public Information

Please understand that garage sale listings are inherently public. The sale address, dates, and times are shown on a public map and are visible to anyone, including people who are not signed in and search engines. This information derives from public permit records issued by the City of McAllen.

If you believe a listing associated with your address should not appear, contact us at mail@mcallengaragesales.com and we will review it.

9. Data Retention

We keep account information for as long as your account is active. Listing records, including expired sales, are retained as part of the site's historical record. Analytics and error-monitoring data are retained on a rolling basis for operational purposes. If you ask us to delete your account, we will remove or anonymize your personal information, except where we are required to retain it by law or where it forms part of a public permit record we do not control.

10. Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed password storage, protections against cross-site request forgery, rate limiting, and bot filtering. No method of transmission or storage over the internet is completely secure, however, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

11. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

12. Your Rights and Choices

You may:

• Access and correct your account information from your account settings pages.
• Request deletion of your account and associated personal information.
• Unsubscribe from email updates using the link in any email we send.
• Control cookies through your browser settings.
• Opt out of Google Analytics using Google's browser opt-out add-on.
• Change or withdraw your cookie consent at any time via the Cookie Settings link in our footer.
• Opt out of personalized advertising at Google Ads Settings or aboutads.info.
• Disconnect a social login from your external logins settings page.

Texas residents have rights under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, including the right to confirm whether we process your personal data, to access and correct it, to request its deletion, and to appeal a refusal of such a request. Residents of other states and countries may have comparable rights. To exercise any of these, email us at mail@mcallengaragesales.com. We will respond within the time required by applicable law. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

"Sale" and "Sharing" of Personal Information

We do not sell your personal information for money, and never have. However, our use of advertising cookies to personalize the ads you see may be considered "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising under California's CCPA/CPRA, and "targeted advertising" under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act and similar laws in other states.

If you are a resident of a state with such a law, you can opt out using the Cookie Settings link in our footer, which opens our privacy options and records your choice. We also honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal where your browser sends one.

13. Third-Party Links

The Service contains links to sites we do not control, including the City of McAllen permit portal. This policy does not apply to those sites, and we are not responsible for their content or privacy practices. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of any site you visit.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last Updated" date above. Material changes — particularly any change that would introduce advertising or new tracking — will be announced on the site before taking effect. Your continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

15. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how your information is handled, contact us at:

mail@mcallengaragesales.com
Or through our contact form.