Privacy Policy

Our Commitment to Privacy

CIV.IQ is a free, open-source civic utility. We are committed to protecting your privacy and minimizing data collection. This policy explains what data we handle and how.

What We DO NOT Collect or Store

• No user accounts - We do not require registration or login
• No stored addresses - Your address is never saved to any database
• No email addresses - We have no newsletter or mailing list
• No cookies - We do not use tracking cookies or analytics (yet)
• No selling of data - We will never sell any information

How Address Lookups Work

When you search by address to find your representatives:

• Your address is sent directly to the U.S. Census Bureau Geocoding API
• The Census API converts your address to geographic coordinates (latitude/longitude)
• We use those coordinates to identify your congressional district
• Your address is never stored by us - it exists only in memory during the request

Temporary Server Logs

Our hosting provider (Vercel) maintains temporary server logs that may include:

• IP addresses
• Geographic coordinates from searches (not full addresses)
• Timestamps and pages visited
• Browser type and device information

These logs are automatically deleted after 24 hours and are only used for debugging and security purposes.

Third-Party Services

CIV.IQ retrieves public data from the following government sources:

• Congress.gov API (Library of Congress)
• Federal Election Commission (FEC) API
• U.S. Census Bureau Geocoding API
• OpenStates API (state legislatures)

Your domain registrar (e.g., Cloudflare) may collect analytics data. Please review their privacy policies for details.

We do not currently use third-party analytics, but may add them in the future. If we do, this policy will be updated.

Data Security

All connections to CIV.IQ use HTTPS encryption. Since we do not store personal data, there is minimal risk of data breach. However, no internet transmission is 100% secure.

Your Rights

Since we do not collect or store personal information, there is no data to access, correct, or delete. If you have concerns about temporary server logs, please contact us.

Children's Privacy

CIV.IQ is a public civic information utility suitable for all ages. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated date. Continued use of CIV.IQ after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.