Privacy Policy

Last updated August 19, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Ridgeback Investigations LLC, doing business as Ridgeback Investigations (“we,” “us,” or “our”), collects, uses, and protects personal information when you visit our website at https://www.ridgebackpi.com (the “Site”) or contact us through it. Our investigative services for clients are governed by separate written engagement agreements, and this policy covers the Site.

If you have questions, email us at privacy@ridgebackpi.com.

Summary

We collect the information you choose to send us through our referral and careers forms, plus a limited amount of technical information needed to run the Site securely. Because of the work we do, a referral may include sensitive information about a claimant or subject who is not the person filling in the form; section 1 explains what we ask for, and section 2 explains how we treat information about other people. We use privacy-first, cookieless analytics. The Site does not set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, and we do not sell your personal information.

1. Information you provide to us

Referral form. When you submit a confidential referral through our intake form, we collect the details you enter, which may include your company, your name, email, phone number, the jurisdiction, the subject or claimant name, a claim number, and your summary of the matter. You may also attach supporting files.

The form also has three optional fields for information about the claimant: their Social Security number, their date of birth, and details of the injury or medical issue at the centre of the matter. You are not required to complete any of them, and a referral without them is accepted normally. We ask because assignments frequently cannot be worked accurately without them, and collecting them once at intake is safer than exchanging them over email later.

The Social Security number and the injury or medical details are encrypted the moment they reach us, are readable only by authorized staff working the matter, and are never included in notification emails or any other message that leaves our systems.

Careers applications. When you apply for a position, we collect your contact details, your resume and cover letter, your answers to the application questions, and any voluntary equal employment opportunity information you choose to provide. Voluntary equal employment information is kept separate and is used only for anonymous reporting, never for hiring decisions.

Direct contact. If you email or call us, we keep the information you share so we can respond.

2. Information about other people

Most of the personal information we hold is about someone other than the person who gave it to us. A referral is normally submitted by an adjuster, attorney, or employer, and it describes a claimant or subject who has not contacted us and may not know a referral has been made. We think it is worth saying this plainly rather than leaving it implied.

If you are submitting a referral, you are responsible for having the legal authority to share the information you send us, including any Social Security number, date of birth, or medical detail, and for sending only what is relevant to the matter. Please do not send information you have no lawful basis to share.

What we collect once a matter is open. Most of what we hold about a subject is not what the referrer sent us. Investigative work involves gathering information ourselves: public records, court and property filings, licensed database reports that may list addresses, relatives, vehicles and registrations, publicly visible social media, and observation and video recording in public places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. We collect it for the matter we were engaged on and no other purpose, we take only what that matter requires, and vehicle and driver records are obtained only for a purpose permitted by the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.

If you are the subject of an investigation, the sections below on how we protect information and how long we keep it apply to you the same as to anyone else, and you can write to us at privacy@ridgebackpi.com. What we can tell you in reply is limited, and section 10 explains exactly how and why.

Our investigative work for clients is governed by the separate engagement agreements referred to at the top of this policy, and by Michigan and Ohio professional investigator licensing law.

3. Information collected automatically

When you visit the Site, our hosting provider records standard technical information such as your IP address, browser type, and the pages you view. This information helps us keep the Site secure and operating correctly.

For traffic measurement we use Cloudflare Web Analytics, a privacy-first tool that reports visits in aggregate. It does not use cookies, does not store information on your device, and does not fingerprint or track you across other websites.

4. Cookies and embedded content

The public Site does not set first-party cookies, and we do not use advertising or cross-site tracking. Where a page embeds a third-party video, we use the provider’s privacy-enhanced mode, so no cookie is set unless you choose to press play. Our pages also load fonts from Google Fonts, which serves the font files and receives your IP address as part of that request without setting cookies. Our Cookie Policy explains this in more detail.

5. How we use your information

We use the information described above to respond to your referral and provide the services you request, to review job applications, to communicate with you, to keep the Site secure and prevent fraud or abuse, and to meet our legal and recordkeeping obligations.

We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share information only with service providers who help us operate, and only as needed for that purpose:

Cloudflare for website hosting, content delivery, security, and cookieless analytics.
Backblaze B2 for secure storage of files you upload.
Microsoft 365 for our email and staff notifications.

We may also disclose information if required by law, to respond to legal process, to protect our rights and safety, or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

7. How we protect your information

We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards. Connections to the Site are encrypted in transit using HTTPS. The most sensitive fields we hold — the summary of the matter, any Social Security number, and any injury or medical details — are individually encrypted where they are stored, so they are unreadable without the key even to someone with access to the underlying database. Those fields are excluded from notification emails and internal alerts. Access is limited to authorized staff working the matter.

We maintain a separate written Social Security Number Privacy Policy, as required by Michigan’s Social Security Number Privacy Act, which governs confidentiality, access, disposal and the consequences of misuse. It is published to every member of our staff and each of them signs it. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. How long we keep your information

We keep personal information for as long as needed to fulfill the purposes described in this policy and to meet legal, tax, accounting, and recordkeeping requirements, after which we delete or anonymize it. Retention periods for investigative case files are set by our engagement agreements and by the recordkeeping rules that apply to licensed professional investigators in the states where we work. A Social Security number is retained only while it is needed to identify the subject of an open matter or to satisfy those recordkeeping obligations.

9. Children

The Site is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have collected such information, we will delete it.

10. Your privacy rights

Where a privacy law that applies to you gives you rights over your personal information — to access it, correct it, delete it, receive a copy, or withdraw consent — we will honor them. Write to privacy@ridgebackpi.com. We will verify who you are and respond as that law requires.

There is a limit on this, and we would rather state it than have you discover it. Most of the information we hold was acquired for a client in the course of licensed investigative work. Michigan law (MCL 338.840) and Ohio law (ORC 4749.13) both prohibit a licensed investigator from divulging that information to anyone other than the client, except where the client authorizes it or the law requires it. In Michigan a breach of that duty is a criminal offense and grounds for revocation of our license, and communications between a client and a licensee are treated as privileged. The restriction does not end when the matter closes.

So if you write to us about information of that kind, here is what will happen. We will confirm whether we hold a file. We will tell you which client it was conducted for and how to direct your request to them, unless we are prohibited from telling you even that. We will pass your request to that client and ask them to authorize a response. We will honor any court order or other legal process. What we will not do is release the file on our own authority, and no request, however reasonable, changes that.

If your information reached us some other way — a careers application, a message through this Site, an email to us directly — none of the above applies and we will simply answer you.

We have not sold or shared personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising in the past twelve months and we do not intend to.

11. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Because we do not track visitors across other websites, there is no cross-site activity to opt out of. Where applicable law requires us to honor browser privacy signals, we will do so.

12. Updates to this policy

We will update this policy as our practices or the law change. The current version is always shown by the “Last updated” date at the top.

13. Contact us

Ridgeback Investigations LLC 1690 Watertower Place, Suite 100 #128 East Lansing, MI 48823 (313) 335-1439 privacy@ridgebackpi.com