Why we built ZIP-only mode

When we designed Get Ready, we had a choice: ask for your home address to increase precision, or design around the fact that a lot of people in our audience don't want to hand their home address to a software product. We chose the latter. Here's why.

The data doesn't actually need your address

Every data source we use for Area Studies — NOAA, census databases, crime statistics, infrastructure records — operates at the ZIP code or county level. A home address doesn't give us meaningfully better data from those sources. It gives us false precision.

A preparedness platform that tracks your location is a surveillance tool

The preparedness space has a problem: a lot of products in this category monetize through advertising or data sales. If an app knows where you live, what you're preparing for, and how much you're willing to spend on preparedness gear, that's a valuable advertiser profile. We're not that business. We're a subscription service. Our incentive is for you to find the product valuable enough to keep paying, not to sell your data.

The audience deserves the benefit of the doubt

People who prepare are often skeptical of surveillance — not because they're paranoid, but because they're paying attention. A product that assumes you're comfortable sharing your home address is not respecting that. ZIP-only mode is our way of saying: we built this for you, not for an ad network.