Pol.is Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 2022/03/07

This privacy policy (this "Policy") describes the collection of personal information by The Computational Democracy Project, a corporation Washington nonprofit ("The Computational Democracy Project," "we," or "us") from users of our Web site at "http://pol.is/" (the "Site"), as well as all related applications, widgets, software, tools, and other services provided by us and on which a link to this Policy is displayed (collectively, together with the Site, our "Services"). This Policy also describes our use and disclosure of such information. By using our Services, you consent to the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information in accordance with this Policy. This Policy is incorporated by reference into the Terms of Use (https://pol.is/tos) and subject to the provisions of the Terms of Use. If you reside in the European Economic Area or Switzerland, please see International Visitors and Supplemental Notice to EU Data Subjects, below, which contains information about your rights and how to contact us.

Personal Information

"Personal Information" as used in this Policy, is information that specifically identifies an individual, such as an individual's name, address, credit card information, telephone number, or e-mail address. Personal Information also includes information about an individual's activities, such as information about his or her activity on our Services, and demographic information, such as date of birth, gender, geographic area, organization, job title, and preferences, when any of this information is linked to Personal Information that identifies that individual.

Personal Information does not include "aggregate" or other non-personally identifiable information. Aggregate information is information that we collect about a group or category of products, services, or users that is not personally identifiable or from which individual identities are removed. We may use and disclose aggregate information, and other non-personally identifiable information, for various purposes.

Collection of Information

Collection of Voluntarily-Provided Information

We collect Personal Information that our users provide to us in a variety of ways on our Services. These include the following:

1. User Accounts and Profiles.   Our Services may give you the ability to register for a Company account or to create and update a user profile on the applicable Service. If we offer user account or profile functionality on the Services, we will collect the Personal Information that you provide to us in the course of registering for an account or creating or updating a user profile. This information may include, for example, name, postal address, telephone number, e-mail address, and related demographic information about you. We may indicate that some personal information is required for you to register for the account or to create the profile, while some is optional.

2. Integrated Services   You may be given the option to access or register for the Services through the use of your user name and passwords for certain services provided by third parties (each an 'Integrated Service'), such as through the use of your Facebook credentials through Facebook Connect. By doing this, you authorize us to access and store the credentials you provide, your name, email address(es), date of birth, gender, current city, profile picture URL and other information that the Integrated Service makes available to us, and to use and disclose it in accordance with this Policy. You should check your Facebook or other Integrated Service privacy settings to understand and change the information sent to us through Facebook Connect or other Integrated Services. Please review each Integrated Service's terms of use and privacy policies carefully before using their services and connecting to our Services"

3. Interactive Features.   Our Services may contain interactive functionality that allows you to engage with other users on the Services, post questions to other users, answer questions of other users, post comments to questions and other forums, to upload other content (the 'User Materials'), participate in surveys, and otherwise to interact with the Services and with other users. If you use any interactive functionality on our Services that request or permit you to provide us with personal information (including, for example, any services that allow you to post User Materials on any of our Services), we collect the Personal Information that you provide to us in the course of using these interactive features.

4. Correspondence.   If you contact us by e-mail, using a contact form on the Services, or by mail, fax, or other means, we collect the Personal Information contained within, and associated with, your correspondence.

Automatically Collected Information

When you visit our Services, some information is collected automatically. For example, when you access our Services, we automatically collect your browser's Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type, the nature of the device from which you are visiting the Services (e.g., a personal computer or a mobile device), the identifier for any handheld or mobile device that you may be using, the Web site that you visited immediately prior to accessing any Web-based Services, the actions you take on our Services, and the content, features, and activities that you access and participate in on our Services. We also may collect information regarding your interaction with e-mail messages, such as whether you opened, clicked on, or forwarded a message." We may collect this information automatically using technologies such as cookies. We use automatically-collected information to administer, operate, and improve the Website and our other services and systems, to improve the effectiveness of advertising on our Services, and to provide advertisements and other content that is tailored to you. If we link or associate any information gathered through automatic means with Personal Information, or if applicable laws require us to treat any information gathered through automatic means as Personal Information, we treat the combined information as Personal Information under this Policy. Otherwise, we use and disclose information collected by automatic means in aggregate form or otherwise in a non-personally identifiable form.

Also, please be aware that third parties, such as companies displaying advertisements on the Services or sites or services provided by third parties ('Third-Party Sites') that may be linked to from the Services, may set cookies on your hard drive or use other means of passively collecting information about your use of their services, Third-Party Sites or content. We do not have access to, or control over, these third-party means of passive data collection.

Information from Other Sources

We may receive information about you, including Personal Information, from third parties and third party application programming interfaces, as well as authentication service providers, and may combine this information with other Personal Information we maintain about you. If we do so, this Policy governs any combined information that we maintain in personally identifiable format.

Use of Personal Information

We use Personal Information to provide services and information that you request; to enhance, improve, operate, and maintain our Services, our programs, services, Web sites, and other systems; to prevent fraudulent use of our Services and other systems; to prevent or take action against activities that are, or may be, in violation of our Terms of Use or applicable law; to tailor advertisements, content, and other aspects of your experience on and in connection with the Services; to maintain a record of our dealings with you; for other administrative purposes; and for any other purposes that we may disclose to you at the point at which we request your Personal Information, and pursuant to your consent.

We may also use your Personal Information:

• To process information you have directed us to process.
• To communicate with you (such as through email) about services you have subscribed for, changes to our policies (such as this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service), or to provide important notices.
• To provide information or content that you’ve subscribed to receive.
• To set up and maintain your account, and to do all other things required for providing our services, such as backing up and restoring your data.
• To understand how our services are used, to monitor and prevent problems with our Site and/or services, and to improve our Site and/or services.
• To provide customer support.
• To detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, to report spam, and to protect the rights and interests The Computational Democracy Project’s customers, third parties, and the public.
• To update, modify, and analyze our records, and to identify prospective customers with their consent.
• To identify and analyze trends, track user activity on the Site, and understand what Site visitors are looking for with their consent where necessary.
• To create, monitor, and improve marketing campaigns with visitor consent.
• To inform you of new services, upcoming events, offers, and other information that we believe will be of interest to you, with your consent.
• To ask you to participate in a poll or survey, or to request feedback about our services, with your consent.
• For any other purpose that we describe to you when you provide information to us and for which you provide your consent.

Disclosure of Personal Information

Except as described in this Policy, we will not disclose your Personal Information that we collect on the Services to third parties without your consent. We may disclose information to third parties if you consent to us doing so, as well as in the following circumstances:

Service Providers

We may disclose Personal Information to third-party service providers (e.g., data storage and processing resources) that assist us in our work. We limit the Personal Information provided to these service providers to that which is reasonably necessary for them to perform their functions, and we require them to agree to maintain the confidentiality of such Personal Information.

Authentication providers

Conversation participants may opt to use third party data collector and processor Twitter to authenticate user identity and for profile picture. Information about how Twitter uses your data when you use our Site can be found at: https://twitter.com/en/privacy Conversation participants may opt to use third party data collector and processor Facebook to authenticate user identity, display profile picture, and use friend information to decide who to show your picture to. Information about how Facebook uses your data when you use our Site can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/policy.php

Technical Infrastructure

• We use Akismet spam filter to filter out spam comments (can be configured through administrative access). Information about how Akismet uses your data when you use our Site can be found at: https://automattic.com/privacy/
• We use Heroku’s web hosting services, including a hosted Postgres database, where we store all information. Information about how Heroku uses this data when you use our Site can be found at: https://www.salesforce.com/company/privacy/
• We use Logentries for server logs, which may include personal information such as IP address necessary for debugging production issues. Information about how Logentries uses this data when you use our Site can be found at: https://www.rapid7.com/privacy-policy/
• We use Amazon Web Services Simple Email Service for sending account confirmation and notification emails to users. We also use AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) for securely storing and managing data, ensuring reliability, scalability, and compliance with industry-standard security measures. Information about how AWS handles data can be found at: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/
• We use Google Translate for automatic machine translation of comments, and Google Analytics for site usage statistics. Information about how Google uses this data when you use our Site can be found at: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• We use Google Vertex AI for machine learning workloads, including model training and inference. Information about how Google handles data within Vertex AI can be found at: https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/general/privacy
• We use Jigsaw Perspective API for comment moderation. This service analyzes the content of comments to detect potentially toxic or inappropriate language. Information about how Perspective API handles data can be found at: https://www.perspectiveapi.com/
• We pass all Site web requests through a Cloudflare caching proxy. No personal information is cached at this level. Information about how Cloudflare uses your data can be found at: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/
• We use OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini large language models (LLMs) to analyze and contextualize data as part of the output of a Polis report. Information about how these services handle data can be found at:
  • OpenAI: https://openai.com/enterprise-privacy
  • Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/privacy
  • Google Gemini: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• We use GitHub for storing and managing source code repositories. Information about how GitHub handles data can be found at: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-privacy-statement
• We use Docker to manage containers, including specific images from the public repository. Our containers are not public, but we rely on publicly available images. Information about how Docker handles data can be found at: https://www.docker.com/legal/privacy
• We use NPM packages from the NPM public registry to facilitate various tasks within our client-facing application. Information about how NPM handles data can be found at: https://www.npmjs.com/policies/privacy

Public Areas and Syndicated Services

Some features on our Services may allow you to upload, post, or otherwise transmit User Materials to public areas of the Services, such as content that you post in a public profile on the Services. We may make these User Materials available for display upon Company properties that are not governed by this Policy, as well as to services operated by third parties that display content from the Website (collectively, 'Syndicated Services'). Please be aware that any Personal Information that you include within any User Materials will be made available to other users of the Services, and to users of Syndicated Services, who view it. You include Personal Information in User Materials at your sole risk. Additionally, even after information posted on the Website is removed, caching and archiving services may have saved that information, and other users or third parties may have copied or stored the information available on the Services. We cannot warrant or guarantee that any Personal Information that you provide on and in connection with the Services will not be accessed, viewed, or used by unauthorized persons.

Business Transfers

Information about our users, including Personal Information, may be disclosed and otherwise transferred to an acquirer, or successor or assignee as part of any merger, acquisition, debt financing, sale of company assets, or similar transaction, as well as in the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership in which Personal Information is transferred to one or more third parties as one of our business assets.

To Protect our Interests

We also disclose Personal Information if we believe that doing so is legally required, or is in our interest to protect our property or other legal rights (including, but not limited to, enforcement of our agreements), or the rights or property of others, or otherwise to help protect the safety or security of our Services and other users of the Services.

Choice

We may allow you to post User Materials in an anonymous or non-anonymous manner, which may affect which User Materials may be shared with third party advertisers. Please review the relevant settings before posting User Materials. Please note that some interactions on the Service are dedicated non-anonymous by the moderators of those interactions. You will be notified that a given interaction is non-anonymous before posting any User Materials to such an interaction. If you receive commercial e-mail from us, you may unsubscribe at any time by following the instructions contained within the e-mail. You may also opt-out from receiving commercial e-mail from us, and any other promotional communications that we may send to you from time to time (e.g., by postal mail) by sending your request to us by e-mail at admin@compdemocracy.org or by writing to us at the address given at the end of this policy. Additionally, we may allow you to view and modify settings relating to the nature and frequency of promotional communications that you receive from us. Please be aware that if you opt-out of receiving commercial e-mail from us, it may take up to ten business days for us to process your opt-out request, and you may receive commercial e-mail from us during that period. Additionally, even after you opt-out from receiving commercial messages from us, you will continue to receive administrative messages from us regarding our Services.

Access

If we offer the ability to create user accounts or profiles on our Services, you may have the ability to access and update many categories of personal information that you provide to us by logging in to your account and accessing your account settings. If you wish to access or amend any other personal information we hold about you, you may contact us at admin@compdemocracy.org. If you request that we delete your account on any of our Services (via a user settings page, by e-mail, or otherwise), we will do so within a reasonable period of time, but we may need to retain some of your Personal Information in order to satisfy our legal obligations, or where we reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so.

Links

The Services may contain links to other Web sites, products, or services that we do not own or operate. The Services may contain links to Third-Party Sites such as social networking services. If you choose to visit or use any Third-Party Sites or products or services available on or through such Third-Party Sites, please be aware that this Policy will not apply to your activities or any information you disclose while using those Third-Party Sites or any products or services available on or through such Third-Party Sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these Third-Party Sites or any products or services on or through them. Additionally, please be aware that the Services may contain links to Web sites and services that we operate but that are governed by different privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully review the privacy policies applicable to any Web site or service you visit other than the Services before providing any Personal Information on them.

Children

Children's safety is important to us, and we encourage parents and guardians to take an active interest in the online activities of their children. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of 16without obtaining parental consent. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under the age of 16on our Services, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we may have collected any such personal information on our Services, please notify us at admin@compdemocracy.org.

Security & Retention

The Company retains your information for as long as it is required for the purposes stated in this Privacy Policy. Sometimes, we may retain your information for longer periods as permitted or required by law, such as to maintain suppression lists, prevent abuse, if required in connection with a legal claim or proceeding, to enforce our agreements, or for tax or accounting. When we no longer have a legitimate need to process your information, we will delete or anonymize your information from our active databases. We use reasonable security measures that are designed to protect personal information from accidental loss, disclosure, misuse, and destruction. For instance, we keep all database credentials confidential through security procedures and confidentiality agreements and we have segregated employee access to our systems. Please be aware, however, that no data security measures can be guaranteed to be completely effective. Consequently, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information that you provide to us. You transmit information to us at your own risk.

International Visitors

Our servers and data centers are located in the United States. If you choose to use the Services from outside the U.S., then you should know that you are transferring your Personal Information outside of your region and into the U.S. for storage and processing. By providing your Personal Information to us through your use of the Service, you agree to that transfer, storage, and processing in the U.S. Also, we may transfer your data from the U.S. to other countries or regions in connection with storage and processing of data, fulfilling your requests, and operating the Services. You should know that each region can have its own privacy and data security laws, some of which may be less stringent as compared to those of your own region.

Supplemental Notice to EU Data Subjects

For those individual users of the Site who reside in the European Economic Area or Switzerland (collectively the “EU”), and for which the General Data Protection Regulation effective 25 May 2018 (the “GDPR”) applies, we have implemented the practices described below to provide you with control over your data that comprises “Personal Data” under the GDPR. Under the GDPR you are defined as a “Data Subject” and The Computational Democracy Project is a “Data Controller” for Personal Data that it obtains and processes pursuant to this Privacy Policy. Our Data Protection Officer is Christopher Small and can be reached at admin@compdemocracy.org.

Lawful Grounds for Processing Personal Data of Data Subjects: (a) your consent; (b) contract; (c) legal obligation; vital interest; (d) public task; and (e) the legitimate interest of The Computational Democracy Project or a third-party. Where we rely on your consent as the legal grounds, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, but this will not affect any processing that has already taken place. Where we rely on legitimate interests as the legal basis and those legitimate interests are not specified above, we will explain to you what those legitimate interests are at the time that we collect your information.

Data Transfer Notice: We transfer your personal data to the United States for processing in the United States. We make the transfer to the United States in the absence of an adequacy decision because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you, or with your explicit consent. In the event such a transfer is made, we will employ appropriate safeguards such as binding corporate rules, contractual agreements, or certification mechanisms in conjunction with binding and enforceable commitments to protect the transferred Personal Data.

Individual Rights and Data Subject Requests: You may exercise certain rights, described below, under the GDPR. In order to exercise any of the rights described below, please contact us at admin@compdemocracy.org and provide specific and detailed information about your request necessary for us to respond to and carry out your request.

• You may object to processing: you may object to certain types of processing, including processing of your information for direct marketing purposes.
• You may request to be informed about our processing: you may request information about how we process your Personal Data and your rights under the GDPR. This Privacy Policy is intended to provide you with such information, but you may contact us if you believe this Privacy Policy does not do so.
• You may obtain access to your Personal Data: you may obtain access to your Personal Data that we process.
• You may request rectification: if you believe any Personal Data we process is incorrect or incomplete, you may request that we correct it.
• You may request deletion of your Personal Data: you may request that we remove or delete your Personal Data if there is no legitimate reason for us to continue processing or storing it. We may retain certain Personal Data to keep a record of our compliance with your request.
• You may restrict our processing of your Personal Data: you may request that we cease further processing of your Personal Data. If you make such a request, we may continue to store your Personal Data but will not make further use of it.
• You may withdraw consent: if we are relying on consent as the lawful ground to process your Personal Data, you may withdraw your consent for such processing at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing based upon your consent before it is withdrawn. We will endeavor to address your request within 30 days from receipt, but in some instances it may take longer. We will inform you within 30 days from receipt of your request if an extension is necessary and the reason for the delay. In addition to the above rights, you may submit a complaint about our processing of your Personal Data to your national data protection regulator.
• Retention of Personal Data: Pursuant to the GDPR, we will permanently erase your Personal Data at such time there is no lawful basis or legal obligation for us to store or process the Personal Data.

Updates to this Policy

We may occasionally update this Policy. When we do, we will also revise the 'last updated' date at the beginning of the Policy. Your continued use of our Services after such changes will be subject to the then-current policy. If we change this Policy in a manner that is materially less restrictive of our use or disclosure of your Personal Information, we will use reasonable efforts to notify you of the change and to obtain your consent prior to applying the change to any Personal Information that we collected from you prior to the date the change becomes effective. We encourage you to periodically review this Policy to stay informed about how we collect, use, and disclose personal information.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions or comments about this Policy, please contact us using the following contact information:

The Computational Democracy Project PO Box 30877, Seattle WA, 98113, United States of America admin@compdemocracy.org