Privacy Policy

We may collect information that you provide directly when you create an account, complete your profile, submit a rating, write a comment, contact us, or otherwise use the Service.

This information may include:

• Your email address and authentication account identifier.
• Your first and last name, if you choose to provide them.
• Your selected home state.
• Your confirmation that you are at least 18 years old.
• Ratings, comments, notes, and related submission timestamps.
• Messages or requests you send to us.

If you sign in using email, Google, or another authentication provider, that provider may give us limited account information permitted by your settings and the authorization process.

This may include your email address, name, provider-specific account identifier, and other basic account information. We do not receive your third-party account password.

When you access the Service, our hosting, database, authentication, and security providers may automatically process limited technical information.

This may include:

• Internet Protocol address.
• Browser type, device type, and operating system.
• Access dates and times.
• Requested pages and basic usage events.
• Authentication, error, performance, and security logs.

This information may be used to deliver the Service, diagnose errors, prevent abuse, maintain security, and improve performance.

We may use collected information to:

• Create and authenticate user accounts.
• Maintain profiles and apply home-state rating restrictions.
• Store, publish, update, and delete ratings and comments.
• Calculate community rating averages and participation totals.
• Respond to support, privacy, and account requests.
• Detect spam, fraud, manipulation, unauthorized access, and other misuse.
• Moderate content and enforce our Terms of Service.
• Maintain, troubleshoot, secure, and improve the Service.
• Comply with legal obligations and valid legal requests.

Ratings and comments submitted through the Service may be displayed publicly or to other signed-in users, depending on the feature involved.

Your displayed rating or comment may be associated internally with your account so that you can update or delete it. We do not intend to publicly display your email address as part of ordinary public rating content.

You should not include private, confidential, or sensitive personal information in comments or notes.

Your selected home state is used to determine which state-level officials you are eligible to rate and which officials appear in your profile.

If you change your home state, the Service may delete your existing ratings and comments as described in the profile interface and Terms of Service.

We do not sell, rent, or trade personal information for money.

We may disclose limited information in the following circumstances:

• To service providers that host, authenticate, secure, maintain, or support the Service.
• When you direct us to disclose information or use an integrated third-party service.
• To comply with applicable law, a court order, subpoena, or other valid legal process.
• To investigate fraud, security incidents, threats, abuse, or violations of our Terms.
• To protect the rights, property, or safety of users, the public, Rate My Politicians, or our service providers.
• In connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, financing, transfer, or sale of all or part of the Service.

The Service may use third-party providers for hosting, databases, authentication, email delivery, deployment, analytics, security, and related infrastructure.

These providers process information on our behalf or under their own terms and privacy policies. For example, your current technical setup may involve providers such as Supabase for database and authentication services and Vercel for hosting and deployment.

Information processed by third-party providers may be stored or handled in locations outside your state or country.

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the Service, maintain account functionality, enforce our Terms, prevent fraud, resolve disputes, comply with legal obligations, and protect the Service.

Ratings may remain stored until you delete them, delete your account, change your home state in a manner that triggers deletion, or we remove them under our moderation rules.

Some information may remain temporarily in backups, logs, fraud records, audit records, or legally required records after deletion from the active Service.

Depending on the feature and applicable law, you may be able to:

• Review and update your profile information.
• Update or delete your own ratings.
• Delete your account and associated data through your profile settings.
• Contact us to ask questions about information associated with your account.

We may need to verify your identity before completing certain requests.

You may permanently delete your account through the profile settings page when that feature is available to your account.

Account deletion is intended to remove your profile, ratings, comments, and associated account data from the active Service, subject to limited retention for backups, security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, legal compliance, and audit purposes.

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures intended to protect information against unauthorized access, loss, misuse, alteration, or disclosure.

However, no website, database, transmission method, or storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. You use the Service and transmit information at your own risk.

The Service is intended for adults who are at least 18 years old. Users must confirm that they are at least 18 before completing a profile or submitting ratings.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has submitted personal information through the Service, contact us so that we can investigate and take appropriate action.

Some browsers offer “Do Not Track” or similar signals. Because there is no universally accepted standard for responding to every such signal, the Service may not respond to all browser privacy signals in the same manner.

You may be able to control cookies, local storage, and similar technologies through your browser or device settings. Blocking required technologies may prevent authentication or other features from working.

Residents of certain states may have legal rights regarding access, correction, deletion, portability, restriction, or disclosure of personal information, subject to eligibility, verification, and legal exceptions.

To submit a privacy request, contact us using the email address below. We will evaluate requests under the laws that apply to the Service and the requesting individual.

We will not unlawfully discriminate against a user for exercising an applicable privacy right.

If you access the Service from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to, stored in, or processed in the United States or other countries where our providers operate.

Privacy and data-protection laws in those locations may differ from the laws where you live.

The Service may contain links to government websites, social networks, authentication providers, public data sources, or other third-party services.

We are not responsible for the privacy, security, availability, or content practices of third-party websites and services. You should review their policies separately.

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes to the Service, our practices, our providers, or legal requirements.

When the policy changes, we will update the “Last updated” date shown at the top of this page. Material changes may also be communicated through the Service when appropriate.

Your use of the Service is also governed by our Terms of Service.

Questions, privacy requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy may be sent to: