Privacy policy

The short version

• You can browse and search every law, member, district and spending page without signing up, and without being tracked.
• There are no advertising cookies, no analytics scripts and no third-party trackers on this site today. If that changes, this page changes first.
• Changes only look forward. We will not use information you have already given us in a new way — for advertising, for research, or by passing it to anyone new — unless you say yes first. Saying nothing means no.
• If you do make an account, we keep what you gave us and what you saved. You can see all of it on your profile and ask for it to be deleted.
• We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.

What we collect

If you never make an account

Your browser sends an IP address with every request, as it does to every website. We use it for one thing: rate limiting, so that a single source cannot flood the search index or the export routes. The counters live in the memory of the server instance handling your request and are discarded when its window elapses — typically within a minute. An IP address is also written to the server log on the rare occasion a request is actually refused for exceeding a limit.

One cookie may be set before you sign in: a theme preference (alethia-theme), recording whether you chose the light or dark appearance. It is read only by your own browser.

If you look up who represents you

The Who represents me? page can find your district from a street address. The address is sent to the U.S. Census Bureau’s public geocoder, which answers with the congressional district it falls in, and to no one else. We do not log it or put it in a web address, and we do not store it unless you ask us to (below); only the district (for example TX-23) comes back. The Census Bureau handles what it receives under its own policies.

So that you can save it, your browser keeps the address you just looked up in that tab’s own storage, which no website can read but this one in that tab, and which is cleared when the tab closes. It is sent to us only if you press “Save my members to my profile”. If you press it before signing in, the address and district wait, encrypted, in a cookie in your browser (yourstate_pending_reps) for up to an hour, until you sign in or create an account; then they are saved to that account and the cookie is deleted.

While you type in that box, what you have typed so far is sent to Esri’s ArcGIS address search, which answers with street addresses that match it, so you can choose yours instead of typing it all out. It goes from our server, so Esri does not receive your IP address, and we do not store it, log it or put it in a web address. Esri handles what it receives under its own policies.

If you press “Remember as my district”, that district code, and nothing else, is saved in your own browser (yourstate-my-seat) so that vote and law pages can show your members. We never receive it: your browser uses it to ask for a district’s members, the same public list anyone can open. Press “Forget it” or clear this site’s data to remove it.

If you make an account

We ask for, and store:

• Your email address — it identifies the account, and it is where password resets and any alerts you ask for are sent.
• Your name — what the site calls you. Signing up does not ask for a phone number. (It once did; those numbers were deleted unused. The only phone number we hold now is one you add yourself for text alerts, below.)
• Your country, and your state if you are in the United States — so the site can point you at your own delegation and district.
• Your home address, only if you give it — it is optional, asked for on the signup form and on your profile, and saved when you press “Save my members to my profile” on the Who represents me? page. We keep it with the congressional district it is in, for one purpose: to open that page on your own members. We send it to the U.S. Census Bureau to find the district, again when district lines change, and to no one else, and we show it to no one but you. “Remove my address” on your profile deletes it.
• Your password, hashed — stored using scrypt with a per-account salt. The password itself is never written down, and cannot be recovered from what we hold; a reset replaces it.
• Whether you have confirmed your email address, and the confirmation links we sent: each is stored only as a one-way hash, with the address it was sent to and when it expires.
• A Google account identifier, only if you chose “Continue with Google”. We receive your Google email address and a stable id. We never receive your Google password, and we ask Google for nothing beyond your email address and basic profile.

And, as you use the site:

• What you saved, watched and set alerts on — the provisions you bookmarked, the ones you are watching for changes, and the rules describing which changes you want to hear about.
• Your notification preferences — whether you want change alerts, the weekly digest (“Your week in the record”), and occasional product email. Product email and the digest are off unless you turn them on. Every scheduled email carries a link that stops it without signing in; that link names your account and the email, with a code only this site can make.
• Your consent record — each time you agree to these terms or turn one of those switches on or off, we keep a dated entry: what you agreed to, the version of the wording you saw, and the internet (IP) address the choice came from. It is how we can show what you did and did not agree to, and you can see it on your profile.
• Sessions — signing in stores a hashed session token with an expiry, and sets a matching cookie (alethia_session) in your browser. A second, readable cookie (alethia_user) holds only the display name drawn in the header; it grants nothing on its own.

If you turn on vote and bill alerts

The Personal and Individual plans can text or email you when your members of Congress vote and when bills you follow move. For that we keep:

• Your congressional district, as a code such as TX-23, on your account, so we know whose votes to tell you about. Alerts never need your address; it is on your account only if you saved it there yourself, as above.
• The bills you follow, and your alert settings: which votes, email or text, your time zone and quiet hours.
• A mobile number, only if you add one for texts. We text it a six-digit code to prove it is yours; the code is stored only as a one-way hash and expires after ten minutes. Your consent record keeps the exact words you agreed to and the number they covered. We text that number only the alerts you asked for and the codes you request: no marketing. Reply STOP to any text and we stop, and record that you did; START turns texts back on. “Remove this number” on the alerts page deletes it.
• A log of each alert: what it was about, when, and whether it went by email or text, so you can see it on the alerts page.

Mobile information and text-message consent are never shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Your number goes to Twilio, our text-message provider, only so it can deliver the texts, and on to your mobile carrier to reach your phone.

If you subscribe to a paid plan

Payments are handled entirely by Stripe. Card numbers are never sent to this site and we never see them. What we store is Stripe’s customer and subscription identifiers, which plan you are on, its status, and when the current period ends — enough to know what your account is entitled to, and nothing about the instrument you paid with. We also keep a note of each billing email we send you (a renewal reminder, or a failed-payment notice), so the same one is never sent twice. Stripe processes payment data as its own controller under its privacy policy.

What we do not collect

• No advertising or analytics trackers. No Google Analytics, no pixels, no ad network, no cross-site identifiers, no fingerprinting. This is why the site shows no cookie consent banner: every cookie it sets is one the site cannot function without, or one you chose (the theme).
• No search history tied to you. Searches are not recorded against an account.
• No location beyond what you tell us: your state, and your street address only if you choose to save it. Nothing reads your device location or derives one from your IP address.
• No data about you from anyone else. The public records on this site — members of Congress, campaign finance filings, federal spending — come from government and academic sources and describe public figures and public transactions. We do not buy, append or enrich data about site visitors.

Who it is shared with

A small number of service providers, each doing one job, each bound by its own agreement:

• Our hosting and database providers, which run the site and hold its data.
• Our email provider, which delivers password resets, email confirmation links, the change alerts you asked for and, if you subscribe, billing notices.
• Stripe, if and when you subscribe.
• Twilio, our text-message provider, which receives your mobile number and the text of each message only if you turn on text alerts, and passes them to your mobile carrier to deliver.
• The U.S. Census Bureau, which receives a street address only when you type one into the district lookup or save one to your account (and again when a saved one needs placing on new district lines), and only to say which district it is in.
• Esri, our address-suggestion provider, which receives what you type into the district lookup as you type it, and only to suggest matching street addresses.
• The people in your organization, if you join one by accepting an invitation: everyone in it sees your name, your email address, your role and when you joined, and its owners and admins can remove you. They do not see your district, your alerts, your phone number or anything else about your account. Leaving the organization, on its page, ends this.

Beyond that: nobody. We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not trade it. We will disclose data if the law actually requires it — a valid subpoena or court order — and, where we are permitted to tell you, we will.

How long it is kept

Account data is kept while the account exists. Sessions expire on their own and are swept daily. Delete your account and the associated records — saved items, watches, alert rules, preferences, followed bills, a phone number, a saved home address — go with it; we may retain what we must for tax and accounting purposes if you were ever billed. Your consent record is kept for as long as the account exists, because its purpose is to show what you agreed to while you had one. The log of vote and bill alerts is kept for 180 days, and phone codes for 30 days after they are used or expire.

Your choices

Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. Residents of California, Texas and other states with comparable laws have those rights by statute, including the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them. Since we do not sell or share personal information for advertising, there is nothing to opt out of on that front.

Most of it you can do yourself: your profile shows and edits your details and your notification switches, and shows your consent record. Turning a switch off takes effect at once and is recorded the same way as turning it on. For anything else, including deletion, email privacy@yourstate.us from the address on the account and we will action it.

Security, stated plainly

Passwords are hashed with scrypt, session tokens are stored hashed, connections to the database are encrypted and certificate-verified, and the site is served over HTTPS. No system is perfectly secure, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

When you sign up with an email address, we send a link to it, and we do not send change alerts there until the link is used. That keeps alerts from going to someone who never asked for them. Signing up with Google counts as confirmed, because Google has already confirmed the address.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has made an account, email us and we will remove it.

Changes

If this policy changes in substance, the date at the top moves and the change is recorded in the site’s public changelog. Material changes affecting account holders will also be emailed. A change never reaches back: information you gave us under an earlier version is used only as that version said, unless you agree to more.

Contact

privacy@yourstate.us

See also the terms of service.