Privacy Policy

Privacy policy

Effective date: 2026-08-07

BizNameChecker (biznamechecker.com) is operated by One Six LLC, a United States company. This policy explains what we collect, why, and what we do with it. Questions go to [email protected], which is monitored.

What this service is

BizNameChecker is a free tool for checking whether a business name is available. You type a name and we check it against public records and registries. Today that includes LLC name availability by state, domain availability, federal trademark records, and social handle availability. There are no accounts and no sign-up. We do not register or reserve domains based on what you search. We make money through affiliate referrals, described below.

What we collect

We collect very little.

• An anonymous session cookie (bnc_session). This is a signed random identifier. It is not tied to a name, email, or account.
• A home-state preference cookie (bnc_home_state), which remembers the state you selected.
• Bot protection. We use Cloudflare Turnstile to distinguish people from bots. Cloudflare's handling of that data is described in Cloudflare's privacy policy. Passing the check sets bnc_clearance, a short-lived signed token showing you passed the bot check.
• Server logs. Standard, short-retention server logs that include your IP address, kept for security and rate limiting.
• Rate-limit counters. Daily counters keyed by session and by IP that cap how many lookups can be made per day. They reset daily and are not persisted.
• Affiliate click records. When you click an outbound link to a partner, we record which link was clicked, the time, whether the click looked like a browser or an automated client, the referring page's web address origin, and a keyed hash of your IP address rather than the address itself. That hash is a pseudonymous identifier, used only to count distinct visitors and detect abuse. No name, no email, and none of your search text is stored with the click.
• An email address and business name, only if you ask us to unlock more state checks after the free daily limit. We use them to lift the limit and to contact you about the service; you can opt out of those emails at any time. This is the only information we collect that directly identifies you.
• Correspondence. If you email us, we receive what you send.

We do not collect payment information, and we never collect sensitive personal information such as government identifiers, financial account numbers, or health information. We use no third-party ad trackers. We use Google Analytics to measure how the service is used, in the privacy-limited configuration described under Analytics below.

Search activity and market research

When you search a name, we keep two separate records. They are different, so we describe both.

1. Internal analytics. When a search is run we record a single pseudonymous event: a broad category the name falls into, the states of interest, coarse geography, a hashed session identifier, and a timestamp. We never store the searched name itself in this record. We use this to improve the product. This record is never sold or shared.

2. Market research. Separately, we record the searched name text, the timestamp, the type of check, and a coarse region only. This record contains no session identifier, no IP address, and no device information, so it cannot be linked to any person. We may publish or sell aggregated insights and de-identified trend data derived from it, for example the most-searched name patterns by state.

Our commitment for the market-research record: we maintain this data in de-identified form, we do not attempt to re-identify it, and we contractually require the same of anyone who receives it. Individual search records are never sold or shared, and search activity is never used for advertising. This applies to every availability check the service offers, including ones we add later; the information we keep does not change with the type of check.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the service is used: which pages and result views are seen, when a search is run, and which outbound partner links are clicked.

What we send to Google is deliberately limited. Your searched name is user content: it is never sent to Google. Analytics events carry only coarse metadata, such as a broad category the name falls into (for example "fitness" or "tech"), which lens or page was viewed, the state a result concerns, and which of the four result outcomes a check produced. We also strip the search text from the page addresses analytics sees. Beyond our events, Google Analytics collects standard usage and device information, such as browser type, screen size, coarse location derived from your IP address, and analytics cookies, as described in Google's own disclosures. Google processes this data on our behalf as a service provider.

Consent controls. For visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, analytics consent defaults to denied and no analytics cookies are set. In that state Google Analytics receives only anonymous, cookieless pings: aggregate signals that carry no cookies and no identifiers that could single you out. If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as an analytics opt-out everywhere: analytics consent is set to denied. Advertising features, ad personalization, and ad measurement are disabled for everyone; we use no ads products.

Public government records we display

Some results display information from public government records, such as state business registries, including the names of registered entities as filed, and the USPTO's public federal trademark register, including registrant and owner names as filed. This is publicly available information lawfully made available from government records, and it is excluded from the definition of personal information under state privacy laws.

We re-display these public records as they appear in the source register and do not augment them with private data. We cannot alter or delete the government's own records; requests to correct or remove information in the underlying records must go to the USPTO for federal trademark records or to the agency that maintains the state registry.

Affiliate links and how we make money

The service is free. When you click out to a formation service or domain registrar we partner with, the outbound link carries no tracking parameters today; we record the click on our own server, as described under What we collect. If we join a partner's referral program, the outbound link may carry a referral identifier so the partner can attribute a commission to us. No name, no email, and none of your search text is sent to partners. Anything you provide to a partner on their site is governed by their privacy policy, not this one.

Disclosure: we may earn a commission when you use links to our partners.

Service providers and legal disclosure

We do not sell, trade, or rent personal information. A small number of infrastructure providers process data on our behalf: our hosting provider (Amazon Web Services), our database provider (Supabase), Cloudflare for bot protection, and Google for analytics measurement as described under Analytics. They may only use the data to provide their service to us.

We may disclose information if required by law, regulation, or legal process, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of One Six LLC, our users, or the public. If One Six LLC is ever merged, acquired, or sells its assets, the data described in this policy may transfer as part of that transaction under the same commitments.

Security

Traffic between your browser and our servers is encrypted with TLS. Access to stored data is limited to what is needed to operate the service. No internet service can guarantee absolute security, but we maintain safeguards against unauthorized access, alteration, and disclosure appropriate to the small amount of data we hold.

Cookies

We set three first-party product cookies: bnc_session (anonymous session identifier), bnc_home_state (your home-state preference), and bnc_clearance (a short-lived signed token showing you passed the bot check). Where analytics consent is not denied, as described under Analytics above, Google Analytics sets its measurement cookies (_ga and ga*), which last up to two years. Cloudflare Turnstile may set what it needs for bot protection, per Cloudflare's disclosure linked above. We set no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings; without the session cookie some rate-limited features may not work correctly.

Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track

We do not sell personal information, do not share it for advertising, and do not run targeted advertising. Visitors whose browsers send Global Privacy Control or similar signals receive the same non-sale treatment as every other visitor, and we additionally treat the signal as an analytics opt-out: analytics consent is set to denied for that visit.

Your privacy rights

We honor these rights for all visitors, regardless of where you live or whether a privacy law technically applies to you:

• Access. You can ask what records we hold linked to your session or stored under your email.
• Deletion. You can ask us to delete the records we hold linked to your session. If you gave us your email to unlock more checks, that record is keyed by your email and we delete it on request as well.
• No discrimination. Exercising these rights does not change how the service works for you.

Send requests to [email protected]. We respond within 45 days. If you believe we have not resolved a privacy concern, you may lodge a complaint with the data protection authority in your jurisdiction.

Three honest limits on deletion. First, we cannot delete or change the public government records we re-display, such as state business registries and the public federal trademark register; those are the government's records. Second, we cannot delete your searches from the de-identified market-research records, because those records contain no session identifier, IP, or device information, so there is nothing in them that links back to you for us to find. Third, affiliate click records are append-only by design and cannot be edited or deleted; they contain no name, email, or search text.

Data retention

• Cookies last for their stated lifetimes in your browser.
• Server logs are kept for up to 90 days, scoped to security and rate limiting, then deleted.
• Session-linked search analytics are retained while useful for improving the product, then deleted or de-identified.
• De-identified market records are retained indefinitely; they contain nothing linkable to a person.
• Rate-limit counters reset daily and are not persisted.
• Unlock records (the email address and business name you provide to unlock more checks) are kept until you ask us to delete them. The record is keyed by your email and we delete it on request, as described under Your privacy rights.
• Affiliate click records are append-only and retained indefinitely; they contain no name, no email, and no search text, and the only visitor-linked field is the keyed IP hash described above.
• Analytics data is retained in Google Analytics under its shortest available retention setting for event-level data, then aggregated.

International visitors

The service is operated from the United States, and data is stored and processed on servers in the United States. If you visit from elsewhere, your information is transferred to the United States and handled as this policy describes.

Children

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

Changes

If we change this policy, we post the updated version at this URL with a new effective date. If we change analytics or what we collect, the policy is updated before the change takes effect.

Contact

One Six LLC [email protected] (monitored)

This policy describes how the system actually behaves, not aspirational practices.