broke2builtThis Privacy Policy explains how Broke to Built ("we," "us," or "our") handles information when you visit broke2builtai.com (the "Site"). By using the Site, you agree to the practices described here.
1. Who we are
Broke to Built is an independent publisher of free how-to guides and browser-based tools covering everyday writing and small-business tasks. You can reach us anytime through our contact page.
2. Information we collect
We deliberately collect as little as possible:
- Information you send us. If you use one of our contact forms, we receive what you choose to provide: your message, a name (optional) and an email address (optional; if you type one, we keep it whether or not you ask for a reply). Each note also stores the page address you sent it from, the first 120 characters of your browser's user-agent string (we use it to filter spam) and, if you've asked the site guide anything, that chat. Sending a note also adds to a short-lived counter keyed on a hash of your IP address that limits abuse. We use it only to respond to you.
- Tool inputs. Text you type into our free tools is used only to generate the result you asked for, and we never build advertising or marketing profiles from it. The ATS Resume Checker runs entirely on your device, so your text genuinely never leaves the tab. Where a page uses AI — currently only the course builder at /learn/ — building a course or pressing "Suggest three options" sends what you typed to our AI provider, Z.ai, which returns the result. We do not store what you type. Each use also adds to a short-lived counter keyed on a hash of your IP address, like the site guide's, described below.
- The site guide. Most questions you type to Eli, the site guide, go to our AI provider, Z.ai, so it can write the answer, along with the last few messages of the guide chat for context. We don't store them. We keep only a count of answers with none of your words in it, and a counter keyed on a hash of your IP address that limits abuse and expires within about a day. If you send the team a note, through the guide or a contact form on this site, we keep the note, the guide chat so far (with the email addresses we can spot masked), the page you're on and your browser details, plus your name and email if you give them. We keep notes so we can reply, with no set end date. If you ask us through the contact form to delete yours, we flag it and then remove it by hand. We never sell personal data, use it for ads or train AI on it.
- Analytics. We keep three kinds of daily totals, each a single count for one day, one of our pages and one label. The first is people arriving on a page from outside this site, labelled by where they came from: Google, Bing, another search engine, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, direct, or other. The second is clicks from our pages to Apify, labelled by which Apify page the link goes to. The third is fetches by search and AI crawlers and other automated tools of our pages and of robots.txt, llms.txt, llms-full.txt and our sitemaps, labelled by the crawler's name, or as other. When a named crawler asks for a page we don't have, we keep the address it asked for, without anything after a question mark, so we can fix the broken link. To pick a label we read the referring address (or, when there is none, the utm_source tag in the link you followed) and your browser's user-agent, and then drop them. The totals hold no IP address or hash of one, no user-agent, no referring address, no cookie and no ID, so nothing in them identifies you or links one visit to another. Moving between pages of this site isn't counted. We keep the totals with no set end date. Our host, Cloudflare, also keeps its own aggregate traffic stats, which we can read. Separately, we log visits from known AI crawlers, recognised by their user-agent: the crawler's name, the page, the time, the country and the referring page, kept for 400 days. Human visitors aren't logged this way.
- Standard server logs. We have Cloudflare's request logs turned on for the site. They record each request's technical details, which can include your IP address and browser type, and Cloudflare keeps them for up to 7 days. We use them for security and reliability. These logs are not used to identify individual visitors for marketing.
3. Cookies and advertising
We do not run an advertising network. As of July 26, 2026 this Site serves no third-party ad tags — no Google AdSense, no ad exchange, no retargeting pixel. Nothing on this Site profiles you to decide what advertising you see, here or anywhere else.
- What replaced it. The recommendations you may see are written and placed by us, as plain HTML, on pages where we think the thing is genuinely useful. They are labelled "Affiliate". They set no cookie and load no third-party script. Full detail on our disclosure page.
- If you click one. You leave this Site for the vendor's own site, and from that point their privacy policy applies, not ours. We record only that a click happened on that recommendation — a single counter, with no identifier of any kind attached to it.
- Managing cookies in your browser. You can set your browser to refuse some or all cookies, or to alert you when a site sets one. Some parts of the Site may not work as intended if you disable cookies.
4. Third-party services we rely on
- Cloudflare — website hosting and content delivery.
- Z.ai (GLM) — when you use the course builder at /learn/, or type a question to the site guide. The text you wrote is sent to their language model to generate the suggestions or the answer, and comes straight back to you. For the guide, the last few messages of the chat go with it for context. Nothing is sent otherwise. We don't store what goes to them, except that any note you send us, through the guide or a contact form, saves the guide chat with it, as described above.
- YouTube (Google) — some pages may embed videos; YouTube may set cookies when you play them.
- Google (Gmail) — our email runs on Gmail. If you email us, or we reply to a note you sent, Google handles your email address and the messages.
- Anthropic — the site itself never sends anything to Anthropic. Our AI team, which reads the notes you send us, runs on Anthropic's models. So when the team reads a note, what it holds (your message, the guide chat, the page, your browser details, and your name and email if you gave them) is processed by Anthropic.
- PayPal — if you hire us, invoices and payments go through PayPal, which handles your payment details. We never see your card.
- Ko-fi and Apify — if you tip us on Ko-fi or use one of our tools on the Apify Store, you do it on their site, under their privacy policy, and they handle your payment and what you send. Our links to Apify carry our referral code (fpr=broke2builtai), so Apify can tell you came from us and may pay us a share of what you spend there. Apify keeps track of that with its own cookie, under its privacy policy.
That is the complete list of third parties that load on this Site's own pages or receive what you send us. The games and apps under /play/ are separate projects shown in frames on those pages, and they may load their own services; this list doesn't cover them. As of July 26, 2026 the homepage loads zero third-party scripts. We previously ran Grow by Mediavine and removed it once we traced what it actually loaded — an advertising identity SDK (UID2 with Google Secure Signals) plus third-party event collection, which is incompatible with everything else on this page.
Each third party operates under its own privacy policy. We encourage you to review Google's Privacy Policy.
5. How we use information
We use the limited information we collect to operate and improve the Site, respond to your messages, keep the Site secure, and understand in aggregate which content is helpful. We do not sell your personal information.
6. Your privacy rights
If you are in the EU/EEA or UK (GDPR): you have the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict processing of your personal data, to object to processing, and to data portability. Our legal basis for processing contact-form data is your consent, which you may withdraw at any time.
If you are a California resident (CCPA/CPRA): you have the right to know what personal information we collect, to request deletion, and to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising — we serve no interest-based ads at all, so there is no ad-targeting opt-out to give you.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us through our contact page and we will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law.
7. Children's privacy
The Site is intended for a general, adult audience and is not directed to children under 13 (or the equivalent minimum age in your jurisdiction). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.
8. Data retention & security
Notes sent through our contact forms or the site guide are kept with no set end date: one copy expires after 400 days and the other has no expiry. Nothing deletes notes automatically. When you ask us to through the contact page, we flag yours and then remove it by hand. We apply reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect what we keep. No method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure, but we work to safeguard your data.
9. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we'll revise the "Last updated" date at the top. Material changes will be reflected here on this page.
10. Contact us
Questions about this policy or your data? Reach us through our contact page. Messages are read first by our AI team, which runs on Anthropic's models, as section 4 explains. The team says it's AI when it replies, with a human founder behind it.