Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

Information You Provide

• Account information: When you create an account, we collect your email address, a display name, and a password (stored as a salted hash).
• Profile information: You may optionally provide additional information such as your state, congressional district, or political interests.
• Address information: If you use the address lookup on the District Map, you may provide your address. This information is used solely for the lookup and is not stored.
• Payment information: If you subscribe to a paid plan, you provide your billing details (name, billing address, payment card) directly to our payment processor, Stripe, Inc. We never see or store your card number. Stripe shares limited information back with us (your email address, your subscription tier, your renewal date, and an opaque customer identifier) so we can grant the correct level of access.

Information Collected Automatically

• Usage data: We collect information about how you interact with the platform, including pages visited, features used, and search queries.
• Device information: Browser type, operating system, and device identifiers sent in standard HTTP headers.
• IP address: Your IP address is logged transiently by our web server for the purposes of rate-limiting, bot detection, and abuse investigation. It is not retained in a long-term analytics store.
• Cookies and similar technologies: We use essential storage for authentication, your subscription state, your theme preference, and your sidebar layout. With your consent (see the cookie banner that appears on first visit), we also use analytics and session-replay storage set by our third-party processors.

Sensitive Personal Information

We do not knowingly process sensitive categories of personal information (such as government IDs, financial account numbers, precise geolocation, or biometric data). Card details collected at checkout are handled directly by Stripe.

2. Third Parties Who Receive Your Information

We use the following service providers ("sub-processors") to operate VoteHound. Each has its own privacy policy describing how it handles the data it receives from us.

• Statsig (Pangea Inc.)— product analytics, feature flagging, and session replay. We send Statsig your anonymous or authenticated user ID, the pages you visit, and (when you consent to analytics) a recording of your in-page interactions including mouse movement, clicks, and keystrokes inside form fields. We do not send Statsig your email address or password. Statsig privacy policy.
• Google Analytics 4 (Google LLC)— aggregated page-view metrics, when enabled. We send Google the URL you are viewing and a cookie-based pseudonymous identifier. We do not send your email address or user ID. Google privacy policy.
• Stripe, Inc. — payment processing. We send Stripe your email and an opaque user identifier when you start a checkout. You provide Stripe directly with your card and billing address. Stripe privacy policy.
• Railway, Cloudflare, and other infrastructure providers— hosting, content delivery, and DDoS protection. These providers may see your IP address and request metadata in transit.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising as defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act.

We may also disclose information when required to do so by law, valid legal process, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of VoteHound, our users, or the public; and we may share or transfer information in connection with any merger, sale of assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business.

3. Your Consent Choices

When you first visit VoteHound we display a banner asking whether you accept analytics and session-replay cookies. You can change your choice at any time by clearing your browser storage for our domain — the banner will reappear on your next visit.

If you decline analytics, we still initialize the Statsig feature-flag client because it is necessary to deliver paid-tier functionality, but we disable session replay, event auto-capture, and Google Analytics.

4. How We Use Your Information

• Provide and maintain the VoteHound platform
• Authenticate your identity and manage your account
• Process payments and manage subscriptions through Stripe
• Personalize your experience, including bill tracking and alerts
• Send you transactional emails (account verification, password reset, billing receipts, alerts you have subscribed to)
• Improve and optimize our platform and services
• Detect, prevent, and investigate abuse and fraud
• Respond to your requests and provide customer support
• Comply with legal obligations

5. Data Retention

We retain your account information for as long as your account is active.

Deactivated accounts: If you deactivate your account, your data (including saved workspaces and preferences) is retained so you can reactivate at any time by logging in. If a deactivated account remains inactive for 24 consecutive months, it will be automatically and permanently deleted. (Note: automated 24-month deletion will be enforced in a future release; this section documents the intended policy.)

Permanently deleted accounts: If you permanently delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal information within ninety (90) days, except where we are required to retain it for tax, accounting, or legal compliance (for example, billing records that we are required to keep for several years after the related transaction).

6. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. Passwords are stored as salted hashes; sensitive traffic is served exclusively over TLS; payment data is handled by Stripe under PCI-DSS scope. No method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction (including under the California Consumer Privacy Act and the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation), you may have the right to:

• Know whether we are processing your personal information
• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate personal information
• Request deletion of your personal information
• Object to or restrict processing of your personal information
• Request portability of your personal information
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
• Non-discrimination for exercising any of the rights above

You can deactivate or permanently delete your account at any time from Settings → Account. Permanent deletion satisfies your right of erasure (right to be forgotten) under CCPA and GDPR.

To exercise any of these rights (or if you cannot access your account), email policy@votehound.com. We will respond within the timelines required by applicable law (45 days under CCPA, 30 days under GDPR).

8. International Transfers

VoteHound is operated from the United States. If you access the platform from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. Our sub-processors may also store and process data outside the country in which you reside.

9. Third-Party Links

Our platform contains links to third-party websites, including Congress.gov and other government resources. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those external sites. We encourage you to review their privacy policies.

10. Children's Privacy

VoteHound is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. At account creation we ask you to confirm you are at least 13 years old. If you believe we have collected information from a child under 13, please contact us so we can promptly remove it.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the updated policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. Your continued use of the platform after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us by email at policy@votehound.com.