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Abatero

Privacy Policy

Version:
2026-07-07
Effective:
July 7, 2026

Important: who we are

Abatero is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Abatero is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any county property appraiser, value adjustment board, or other government agency.

About this Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what information Abatero ("Abatero," "we," "us") collects when you use the Abatero website at abatero.com and our DIY property-tax-appeal product (the "Service"), how we use and share it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. It is part of, and incorporates, our Terms of Service.

1. Who we are

Abatero is a Florida-focused service that helps homeowners prepare a do-it-yourself property-tax appeal. Abatero is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice, and we are not affiliated with any county, Property Appraiser, Value Adjustment Board, or the Florida Department of Revenue. For privacy purposes Abatero is the controller of the personal information described here.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us. When you look up a property, you enter its address; we use it to find the matching public county assessment record and comparable sales. To create a report tied to your account we collect your name, email address, and phone number, and you affirm you own the property or are authorized to act for the owner; we record the date and the version of the ownership attestation you agreed to.

Sign-in email. We use a passwordless "magic link" sign-in. We send a one-time link to your email; clicking it signs you in.

Payment information. When you buy the DIY product, our payment processor collects your card details to charge the $99 fee. Abatero never receives or stores your full card number — we store only non-sensitive references from the processor (such as the card brand and last four digits, and the processor's transaction IDs).

Documents you upload (for a money-back-guarantee refund claim). If you request a refund under the money-back guarantee, you upload proof that you filed (your VAB filing confirmation) and the final decision on your petition. These are documents about you and your property.

Public assessment and sales data about your property. We pull your property's assessed value, market (just) value, parcel/folio identifier, owner name, characteristics, and comparable sales from public county and Florida Department of Revenue roll data, and we cache that data. This is public-record information that exists independently of you using Abatero.

Your appeal record and our work product. We generate and store the savings estimate, the comparable-sales selection and adjustments, the valuation, the narrative, and the draft petition packet for your property.

Technical and log data. Like most websites we receive technical data (such as IP address and request metadata) used to operate, secure, and rate-limit the Service and to deter bots. We also keep a limited audit record of key actions on your account — for example the date you affirmed ownership of the property.

Cookies. We use only the cookies needed to operate the Service — for example the session cookie that keeps you signed in after a magic-link sign-in, and tokens set by our bot-detection check where enabled. We do not use advertising cookies or cross-site tracking, and no marketing-measurement cookie is active today; if that changes, we will describe it in this Policy first.

3. How we use your information

We use the information above to: find your property's public assessment record and comparable sales, and estimate whether you appear over-assessed; prepare your draft DR-486 petition packet and make it available to you; create and authenticate your account (magic-link sign-in) and restrict each appeal to its owner; take payment of the $99 fee and process refunds, including evaluating money-back guarantee claims; communicate with you about your report, your account, and your appeal; operate, secure, debug, and improve the Service, and prevent fraud and abuse; and comply with law and enforce our Terms.

4. How we share your information

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with service providers who help us run the Service, and only as needed: Vercel (hosting and infrastructure) operates the app and holds data in transit; Neon (our database provider) stores your account, appeal, and payment references; Stripe (our payment processor) receives card details and transaction data to charge the $99 fee and process refunds; Resend (our email provider) receives your email address and message content to deliver sign-in links and notifications; Upstash (rate-limiting and anti-abuse, when enabled) receives request counters but no profile data; Cloudflare Turnstile (bot-check, when enabled) receives a bot-detection token; and Vercel Blob (file storage) receives refund-claim documents you upload, only if you file a refund claim and live storage is enabled.

Our systems also contain integrations for e-signature (BoldSign) and certified mail (Lob). These support the future done-for-you tier and are not part of the 2026 DIY-only flow, so they do not receive your data in the DIY product. They are listed in our internal retention policy for completeness.

We may also disclose information when required by law, to enforce our Terms, or in connection with a corporate transaction, subject to appropriate protections.

5. How long we keep your information

We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes above and as required by law. The concrete retention windows are set out in our internal data-retention and audit-log policy. In summary: contact details you give us that never lead to a purchase are kept for a limited window, then deleted or anonymized; appeal records and the petition packet are kept through the assessment year and for a period after, so we can support the money-back guarantee and your records; payment records are kept as required for accounting, tax, and chargeback purposes; and refund-claim documents you upload are kept while the claim is open and for a defined period after.

6. How we protect your information

We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards. Card numbers are handled by our PCI-compliant payment processor and never stored by Abatero. Sensitive contact details you give us (name, email, and phone number) are encrypted at rest. Refund-claim documents are treated as private and are not placed on any public path. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Your choices and rights

Access, correction, and deletion. You may ask us to access, correct, or delete your personal information by emailing founder@abatero.com. Public county assessment records exist independently of Abatero and cannot be deleted by us, and we may need to retain certain records for legal, accounting, or guarantee-support reasons.

Marketing opt-out. If we send marketing or direct mail, you may opt out — use the opt-out page on our website (abatero.com/opt-out) or email us. When you opt out, we record your request as a durable do-not-mail entry so we do not contact you again — including across future refreshes of the public roll — and we keep an audit record of the request, including the IP address the request came from and the date and time, as proof that we honored it. That IP is treated as sensitive and is encrypted at rest.

Email. You can stop transactional emails by closing your account; note that sign-in and appeal notifications are necessary to use the Service.

8. Children

The Service is not directed to children and is intended only for adults (18+) who own or are authorized to act for Florida residential property. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

9. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy. When we do, we update the version and effective date above and, where appropriate, notify you.

10. Contact

Privacy questions or requests: founder@abatero.com.

Questions? See our Terms and Privacy Policy.