Privacy Policy

Raven Oak Consulting, LLC
Effective Date: October 21, 2026
Last Updated: October 21, 2026

Raven Oak Consulting, LLC ("Raven Oak," "we," "us," or "our") respects the privacy of the people who visit our website and contact us. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect through ravenoakconsulting.com and related pages (the "Site"), how we use it, and the choices available to you.

1. What This Policy Covers, and What It Does Not

This policy covers only:

• people who visit the Site; and
• people who send us an inquiry through the Site's contact form, or by the email address or telephone number listed on the Site, before any engagement exists.

This policy does not cover:

• Information about the subjects of our work. This includes individuals, businesses, or other parties we research, investigate, or review for our clients.
• Client engagement information. This includes information that clients give us, or that we gather or produce, while performing services.

Information in those categories is handled under our written engagement agreements, our confidentiality obligations, and applicable law. Where it applies, that law includes the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and comparable state laws. If you believe we hold information about you in connection with a client engagement, you may contact us as described in Section 12. We will respond as required by applicable law.

2. An Inquiry Does Not Create a Client Relationship. Please Limit What You Send.

Contacting us through the Site, by email, or by telephone does not create a client, advisory, or confidential relationship with Raven Oak. A relationship begins only when both parties sign a written engagement agreement.

We treat inquiries discreetly. However, the contact form is meant for initial contact only. Please do not include sensitive information in your inquiry. That includes Social Security numbers, dates of birth, financial account numbers, government identification numbers, health information, passwords, or detailed personal information about other people (such as a person you would like us to look into). A brief description of your need is enough. If we move forward, we will arrange a more appropriate way to exchange details.

3. Information We Collect

3.1 Information you provide

When you submit the contact form, we collect the following:

If you email or call us directly, we collect your contact details and whatever information you choose to share.

The "Referred by" field and the message field may contain information about people other than you. Please share another person's information only if you are permitted to do so, and keep it to what is necessary for an initial inquiry.

The Site does not ask for Social Security numbers, dates of birth, payment card information, or government identification numbers. It does not offer user accounts, logins, newsletter sign-ups, or online payments.

3.2 Information collected automatically

Like most websites, the Site and its service providers receive certain technical information automatically when you visit, including:

• your IP address;
• your browser type and version, device type, and operating system;
• the page requested, the referring page, and the date and time of your request.

This information is used to deliver the Site, keep it secure, and protect it from abuse. Section 5 describes the providers involved.

Site analytics. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand how the Site is used in aggregate, such as page views, which pages are visited, referring websites and campaign links, general location (country), browser and device type, and page performance. Cloudflare Web Analytics does not use cookies, does not use local storage, and does not create profiles of individual visitors or track them across other websites. We use these aggregate statistics only to improve the Site and understand which outreach is effective. We do not use advertising, tracking pixels, or social media plug-ins on the Site. The Site itself does not set cookies. See Section 6 for cookies that our providers may set.

3.3 Biometric and sensitive information

The Site does not collect biometric identifiers or biometric information, such as fingerprints, face geometry, or voiceprints. It does not collect precise geolocation. We do not request sensitive personal information through the Site.

4. How We Use Information

We use information collected through the Site to:

• respond to your inquiry and communicate with you about a potential engagement;
• check for conflicts of interest before accepting an engagement;
• operate, maintain, secure, and improve the Site, including preventing spam and abuse of the contact form;
• keep business records; and
• comply with legal obligations, enforce our Terms of Use, and protect the rights, property, and safety of Raven Oak, our clients, and others.

We do not use Site information for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects. We do not use it to build advertising profiles.

5. How We Share Information

We do not sell personal information. We do not "share" personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined under California law. We disclose information only as follows.

Service providers. We use a limited number of providers to run the Site and handle inquiries. They process information on our behalf:

• Cloudflare, Inc. hosts and delivers the Site and provides security services. Cloudflare processes technical information such as IP addresses to serve pages, protect against attacks, and provide our aggregate Site analytics (Cloudflare Web Analytics).
• FormSubmit (formsubmit.co) is a form-handling service. When you submit the contact form, your entries are sent to FormSubmit, which emails them to us at info@ravenoakconsulting.com. FormSubmit may display a Google reCAPTCHA challenge to screen out automated submissions. If it does, Google receives information about your device and interaction under Google's own privacy policy and terms. FormSubmit's privacy terms are available at https://formsubmit.co.
• Microsoft Corporation hosts our business email (Microsoft 365), where inquiries are received and stored.

Legal requirements and protection. We may disclose information if we believe in good faith that the law, a regulation, legal process, or a government request requires it. We may also disclose information to protect the rights, property, or safety of Raven Oak, our clients, or others, or to detect and prevent fraud or security problems.

Professional advisors. We may disclose information to our attorneys, accountants, and insurers as needed for their professional services. They are bound by confidentiality obligations.

Business transfers. If Raven Oak is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction. It will remain subject to protections consistent with this policy.

With your direction. We may disclose information when you ask us to or agree to it.

6. Cookies, Do Not Track, and Global Privacy Control

Cookies. The Site does not set its own cookies. We do not use advertising or analytics cookies; our analytics tool is cookie-free. Our hosting provider (Cloudflare) may set strictly necessary security cookies to detect malicious traffic. If FormSubmit shows a reCAPTCHA challenge when you submit the form, FormSubmit and Google may set cookies on their own domains. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. Doing so will not affect your ability to browse the Site, though some form-security features may not work.

Do Not Track. Some browsers send a "Do Not Track" (DNT) signal. No common industry standard exists for responding to DNT signals. Because the Site does not track visitors across third-party websites over time, and does not allow third parties to do so for advertising, the Site does not change its behavior when it receives a DNT signal. Our cookie-free analytics measures Site usage in aggregate only.

Global Privacy Control. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal, we treat it as a valid request to opt out of sale and sharing. Because we engage in neither, no further change is needed.

Third-party tracking. We do not knowingly allow third parties to collect personally identifiable information about your online activities over time and across different websites when you use the Site, except as described in Section 5 for the limited purposes stated there.

7. Data Retention

We keep inquiry information only as long as reasonably needed to respond to you, assess and manage a potential engagement, maintain business records, and meet legal, tax, insurance, and dispute-resolution obligations. Our current practice is to delete inquiries that do not lead to an engagement within two years of receipt. If an inquiry leads to an engagement, the information becomes part of the engagement record, governed by the engagement agreement and our records-retention practices. Our service providers keep technical logs according to their own retention schedules.

8. Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards suited to the nature of the information. These include encrypted (HTTPS) connections to the Site, restrictive browser security settings, and access controls on our business email. No website, email system, or internet transmission is completely secure, however, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Standard email and web forms are not suitable for highly sensitive material. This is one reason we ask you not to send it through the Site (see Section 2).

9. Children's Privacy

The Site is intended for adults and businesses. It is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, or sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16. If you believe a child has sent us personal information through the Site, please contact us and we will delete it.

10. Your Privacy Choices and Rights

Requests available to everyone. Regardless of where you live, you may ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you from your use of the Site or your inquiry;
• correct inaccurate information; or
• delete your information.

We will honor these requests where reasonably possible, subject to legal exceptions. Those exceptions include information we must keep for legal, regulatory, or dispute-related reasons, and information we hold under a client engagement (see Section 1).

State privacy laws. Several U.S. states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Oregon, and others, have comprehensive consumer privacy laws. These laws generally apply only to businesses above certain revenue or data-volume thresholds. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (together, the "CCPA"), generally applies to for-profit businesses that do business in California and (a) have annual gross revenue above an inflation-adjusted threshold (currently about $26.6 million), (b) buy, sell, or share the personal information of 100,000 or more California consumers or households each year, or (c) earn 50% or more of annual revenue from selling or sharing personal information. Based on the nature and scale of our business, Raven Oak does not believe it currently meets these thresholds. Even so, we offer residents of every state the rights below as a matter of practice, to the extent they apply to the limited information collected through the Site:

• Right to know and access: the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the sources, the purposes, and the categories of recipients;
• Right to delete personal information we collected from you, subject to legal exceptions;
• Right to correct inaccurate personal information;
• Right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, or of targeted advertising and profiling. We do not engage in these activities;
• Right to limit the use of sensitive personal information. We do not collect sensitive personal information through the Site for purposes that would trigger this right; and
• Right to non-discrimination: we will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

Categories of personal information (California disclosure). In the past 12 months, we have collected the following categories of personal information through the Site. All came directly from you or your device:

• Identifiers, such as name, email address, and IP address;
• Professional information, such as organization and referral source;
• Internet or network activity, such as browser and device information and pages requested, which our providers collect automatically; and
• Any other information you choose to include in your message.

We collect this information for the purposes in Section 4. We disclose each category to the service providers in Section 5 for business purposes. We have not sold or shared any category of personal information, and we do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes that require a right to limit.

California "Shine the Light." California Civil Code § 1798.83 lets California residents request information about personal information disclosed to third parties for those third parties' direct marketing purposes. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

How to make a request. Email us at info@ravenoakconsulting.com with the subject line "Privacy Request," or call (312) 890-2897. We will need to verify your identity before acting on a request. Usually we do this by confirming information you previously gave us, such as the email address you used. You may use an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. We may ask for proof of the agent's authority and may ask you to verify your identity directly. We aim to respond within 45 days. If you live in a state that provides a right to appeal and we decline your request, you may appeal by replying to our decision with the subject line "Privacy Appeal."

Illinois residents. The Site does not collect biometric identifiers or biometric information as defined in the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will post the revised policy on the Site and update the "Last Updated" date at the top. If we make material changes, we will place a notice on the Site's home page or near the contact form for a reasonable period, and where appropriate, we will notify people who have contacted us. Changes take effect when posted unless we say otherwise. Please review this policy periodically.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, contact:

Raven Oak Consulting, LLC
Chicago, Illinois
Email: info@ravenoakconsulting.com
Phone: (312) 890-2897