Privacy Policy

Reading the site

You can read every investigation without an account. When you visit, our servers record standard request logs: your IP address, the date and time, the page requested, the referring page, and your browser's user-agent string. We use these logs to keep the site running, to rate-limit abuse, and to investigate security problems.

Analytics

We count page views with Umami, an analytics tool we run on our own server. It records which pages are viewed, the referring site, and general browser, device and country information. It does not set cookies, and the data is not sent to any analytics company.

Cookies and browser storage

Our site and app set no advertising or tracking cookies. The app keeps your sign-in session token in your browser's secure storage so you stay signed in. If you type a question on the home page before signing in, the question is held in your browser's local storage until the app picks it up, then cleared. Cloudflare, which delivers our site, may set a short-lived security cookie to filter malicious traffic.

Signing in

• Email passcode. We collect your email address and email you a one-time 6-digit code and sign-in link. The code works for 10 minutes and is stored only in hashed form.
• Sign in with Google. If you choose it, Google sends us your email address, your name (when Google provides it), and your Google account ID. We request only the email scope and no other Google data.
• How we use your sign-in details. Whichever way you sign in, we use your email address and name to create your account and sign you in, to show your name in the app, to match your account to your contributions (we look up your email address in Zeffy, our payment processor, for this), and to identify you in support and bug-report emails to our team.
• Sessions. Signing in creates a random session token that works for 8 hours.

Membership and contributions

Contributions are processed by Zeffy. We never see or store your card or bank details. When you pay, Zeffy sends us your email address, the amount, your Zeffy contact and subscription IDs, the subscription status and the next charge date. We use these to activate and maintain your membership.

Federal law requires political committees to collect and keep certain information about contributors (52 U.S.C. §§ 30102 and 30121). When you join, we collect your full name, mailing address, occupation, employer, a display name you choose, and your attestation that you are a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. We use it to meet those legal obligations.

Membership costs at most $8 a month ($96 a year), below the FEC ($200 a year) and California ($100 a year) itemization thresholds, so we expect to report member contributions only as unitemized totals. If your total contributions in a year pass a threshold, or the law otherwise requires it, we must report your name and the other required details.

Using the member app

When you use the app, we store what you do in it, linked to your account:

• The area you choose as your location.
• Your votes, how much weight they carry, and your participation record.
• Case files you open (including questions you ask), items you clip into them, your notes, and case files you follow.
• The handle you choose, and any application to become a contributor, with its note.
• Passages you flag in a report, with your note. We also store your IP address and browser user-agent with each flag, to stop abuse.

Case files are private unless you share them. If you share one with members, other members can see it, its contents and your handle. You can ask for a shared file to be labelled "A MathPolitics member" instead of your handle, but this changes only the label shown; the apps of members who can see the file still receive your handle, so treat anything you share as attributable to you. If MathPolitics approves a case file for the public site, the public page shows its question without your name or handle.

Feedback and bug reports

• Anonymous feedback on a report needs no account. We store your message, the report it concerns, any public source link you choose to add, a random request ID, a fingerprint (hash) of the submission, and timestamps. Your IP address is used in memory only, to rate-limit submissions; it is not stored with the message, and these requests are excluded from our request logs.
• Bug reports from the app store your description and the screen you were on, together with your user and member IDs, display name, role and membership amount, your screen size and pixel ratio, recent app error messages, and details of recent failed requests. We use these to find and fix the problem. A notification email to our team inbox includes your display name, user ID, description, screen, screen size and a summary of the errors. Bug reports do not include screenshots.

Service providers

We share information with the providers that run the service, and only what each one needs:

• Cloudflare delivers and protects the site, so every request passes through it (Cloudflare privacy policy).
• Zeffy processes contributions. We also send Zeffy your account email address to match your payments to your account (Zeffy privacy policy).
• Google sends our sign-in and notification emails through Gmail, provides Sign in with Google if you choose it, serves the web fonts our pages load, and hosts our YouTube channel (Google Privacy Policy).
• Our hosting provider runs the server in the United States where our database lives.

Other members and the public

Other members see what you choose to share in the app, as described above. The public sees only case files MathPolitics approves for the public site, without your name or handle.

Regulators and the law

We file the reports federal and California election law require, as described above. We disclose information to law enforcement or courts only when legally required to. Beyond the cases on this page, we share it with no one.

How it is stored and protected

• Account, membership, app and compliance data is stored in a PostgreSQL database on a server we control in the United States. The database is not reachable from the internet; only our own services connect to it, over a private network.
• Copies of the member and account tables are synchronized to MathPolitics's own computer, where we run our research and editorial tools. Backups of the server database are copied to MathPolitics's own storage, and that computer's copy is backed up too.
• All traffic to the site and app is encrypted with HTTPS.
• Sign-in codes are stored only as hashes. Sign-in and feedback endpoints are rate-limited.
• Service credentials are kept out of our source code.

No system is perfectly secure, but these measures limit who can reach your information.

How long we keep it

• Compliance records (name, address, occupation, employer, citizenship attestation and contribution records): at least as long as federal law requires, which is three years after the report covering each contribution is filed. When you register, we mark your compliance details to be kept for seven years. We do not currently delete them automatically when that period ends.
• Sign-in codes and sessions: a code stops working after 10 minutes and a session after 8 hours. The expired records are not deleted automatically. Signing out removes your session from our sign-in service; a copy of the session kept in our app database is not removed at sign-out.
• Anonymous feedback: after 90 days, the message and source link are erased. The report, request ID, fingerprint and timestamps remain as a record that a submission was made.
• Server request logs: kept on our server with no fixed deletion schedule.
• Your account and app activity: until you ask us to delete them.
• Backups: data deleted from our live databases can remain in earlier backups.

Seeing, correcting or deleting your data

Email [email protected] from the address on your account to get a copy of your data, correct it, or delete your account. When you ask us to delete your account, we delete your account and app activity from our live databases, except records the law requires us to keep. Copies can remain in backups and in server logs, and records the law requires us to keep are retained for the period above.

What it does

MathPolitics uses YouTube API Services in an internal tool that uploads and manages videos on our own YouTube channel, @MathPoliticsPAC. The tool runs on a MathPolitics computer and signs in only to the MathPolitics organization's own Google account, with two scopes:

• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.upload to upload our videos.
• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.force-ssl to manage our own videos and their details on our channel.

The tool does not access, collect or store any other user's Google or YouTube data. No visitor or member ever signs in to it.

What it sends and reads

• Sends to YouTube: our video files, their titles, descriptions and other video details, caption files and thumbnails.
• Reads from YouTube: our channel's ID, handle and title, to confirm it is signed in to @MathPoliticsPAC; and, for our own videos, their title, status, processing details and caption information. This is used while the tool runs and is not stored, except as listed below.

What it stores and for how long

• In our private secrets vault: the OAuth refresh token for our account, the tool's OAuth client ID and secret, and our channel's ID and handle. They stay there until we remove the tool's access, and are included in our regular backups of the vault. The token is never shared, sold or transferred, and it is used only to publish and manage MathPolitics videos.
• On the MathPolitics computer that runs the tool: an upload receipt kept with each video's production files (the YouTube video ID, our channel ID, the upload session address, a fingerprint of the video file, and which upload steps are complete), and an index linking each video ID to its production folder. These are our record of what we published. They are not deleted automatically.

Revoking access and deleting data

Anyone who controls the MathPolitics Google account can revoke the tool's access at any time at security.google.com/settings/security/permissions. The tool stops working as soon as access is revoked. The tool's own revoke command deletes the vault entry above; it does not revoke access at Google, so full withdrawal takes both steps. Upload receipts and the index are deleted by hand. Deleting the tool's data does not delete our videos from YouTube; videos are removed in YouTube Studio.

Terms and Google API Services User Data Policy

By using the tool's YouTube features, its operators agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service. Google's use of data is described in the Google Privacy Policy.

MathPolitics's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs, including YouTube API Services and Sign in with Google, adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

• YouTube Terms of Service
• Google Privacy Policy
• Revoke any app's access to a Google account at security.google.com/settings/security/permissions.

If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and its effective date.