Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 6, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Smart Protest (Smart Protest, “we”, “us”, “our”) collects, uses, shares, and protects personal information when you visit smartprotest.com, sign up for our services, or receive communications from us.

We collect only the information necessary to file and support your Texas property tax protest, deliver the outputs you paid for, and operate our business. We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your personal information with data brokers or advertising networks.

Information we collect

The categories of information we collect are:

  • Account information: name, email address, and phone number you provide at signup or on any lead-capture form.
  • Property information: property address, county appraisal district (CAD) account number, publicly-recorded owner-of-record name, appraised values, tax history, and hearing outcomes. Much of this comes from public CAD records; some you provide directly.
  • Payment information: billing name, billing address, and payment-method details you enter to pay for a plan or a contingency invoice. Payment card and bank account numbers are handled by our PCI- compliant payment processors (Stripe and Intuit / QuickBooks Payments); we never see or store them.
  • Signed authorization documents: a Texas Comptroller Form 50-162 (Appointment of Agent for Property Tax Matters) that you sign so we can file your protest, plus any supporting documents you upload. Signed PDFs are stored in our S3 bucket, encrypted at rest.
  • Communications: emails you send us and email-delivery metadata (opens, clicks, bounces) from our outbound transactional email.
  • Usage information: pages visited on smartprotest.com, referrer, browser and device type, and IP address. We use PostHog for product analytics and Sentry for error monitoring.

We do not collect Social Security numbers from homeowners. Filing a Form 50-162 does not require your SSN.

How we use your information

  • To file and prosecute your property tax protest with the appropriate County Appraisal District and Appraisal Review Board.
  • To assemble the evidence packet, comparable-sales analysis, and hearing brief that support your protest.
  • To send transactional communications: signup confirmations, filing receipts, hearing reminders, post-hearing results, and contingency-fee invoices.
  • To bill you for services you purchased or, for the Agency Protest plan, to invoice the contingency fee owed on a successful reduction.
  • To improve our product — measure funnel drop-off, catch and fix bugs, and refine the evidence-generation pipeline. Analytics and error data are minimized to what’s needed for these purposes.
  • To comply with legal obligations, including tax and business records retention, and to respond to lawful requests from regulators and government agencies.

Third-party services we share information with

We share the minimum information necessary with the vendors below, each of which processes it on our behalf under a contract that restricts their use to providing service to us:

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS): cloud hosting, database (RDS), signed-document storage (S3), and credential storage (Secrets Manager). Region: US East (Ohio).
  • Stripe: payment processing for plan purchases and contingency invoices via Stripe-hosted checkout and invoice pages.
  • Intuit / QuickBooks Online: accounting and invoicing for post-hearing-win contingency fees, including Intuit Payments for ACH and card processing.
  • SendGrid (Twilio): transactional email delivery for signup confirmations, hearing results, and invoice notifications.
  • Dropbox Sign: electronic signature workflow for the Texas Comptroller Form 50-162 (Appointment of Agent) so we can act as your authorized property tax agent.
  • Google Maps API: address autocomplete and geocoding on our signup form.
  • Anthropic Claude: large-language-model API used to draft evidence-packet narratives from public data. We do not send account information to Anthropic; only the property record snippets needed to generate the narrative.
  • PostHog and Sentry: product analytics and error monitoring. IP addresses are anonymized on ingest where possible.
  • County Appraisal Districts (CADs) and Appraisal Review Boards (ARBs): as your authorized agent, we submit your signed Form 50-162, protest paperwork, and evidence packet to the appropriate Texas CAD / ARB. This submission is required for the service you engaged us to perform.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your information with data brokers, advertising networks, or third parties for their own marketing.

How long we keep your information

We retain your information for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period afterward to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. In particular:

  • Signed Form 50-162 PDFs and filing paperwork are retained for seven (7) years after filing, consistent with Texas records retention practice for tax matters.
  • Financial records (invoices, receipts) are retained for the period required by applicable tax and accounting rules.
  • Marketing and account records are deleted upon a verified deletion request, subject to any legal-hold exceptions.

How we protect your information

  • Data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2 or higher.
  • Data at rest in our database and object storage is encrypted with AWS-managed KMS keys.
  • Access to production systems is limited to employees who need it, gated by multi-factor authentication, and audit-logged via AWS CloudTrail.
  • We follow the credential-hygiene policy documented in our internal credentials runbook: no secret ever lives in chat, email, source control, or a personal password manager.
  • No security program is perfect. If we ever experience a breach that legally requires notification, we will notify affected users promptly and in accordance with applicable law.

Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights over your personal information — including the right to access, correct, or delete it, and to opt out of certain kinds of processing. We extend the following rights to all users regardless of state:

  • Access. Ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
  • Correction. Ask us to correct information about you that is inaccurate or out of date.
  • Deletion. Ask us to delete your personal information, subject to legal obligations that require us to retain it (e.g. tax records, signed authorizations already filed with a CAD).
  • Opt out of sale. We do not sell your personal information; there is nothing to opt out of, but you may confirm this in writing at any time.
  • Withdraw agent authorization. Because we file on your behalf under Form 50-162, you may revoke that authorization at any time in writing to the appropriate CAD. See our Disclaimer for details.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at support@smartprotest.com from the address on file. We will verify your request and respond within 45 days.

California residents have specific rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA / CPRA), and Texas residents have rights under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (Texas HB 4, effective July 1, 2024). The rights above cover the substantive protections of both statutes; contact us if you have statute-specific questions.

Cookies and tracking

We use a small number of first-party cookies for authentication (keeping you signed in) and functional preferences. Our analytics provider (PostHog) sets cookies to measure product usage. Smart Protest does not participate in cross-site advertising networks or set tracking pixels for third-party ad targeting.

Children’s privacy

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

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of the page. Material changes will be announced via email to registered users or a prominent notice on our website.

Contact us

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

support@smartprotest.com
Smart Protest Inc., 1400 Dallas Drive, Denton, TX 76205
(940) 300-2870