Privacy

What you give us

Two things, only when you choose to: your question, and your ZIP code. Most ZIP codes fall inside a single congressional district, so your ZIP is usually all Civvie needs to identify your senators and representative. Some ZIP codes cross district lines; only then does Civvie ask for your full street address, to pinpoint the right one. Nothing else is required to answer. (If you later choose to send feedback, that optional comment is covered below.)

What we don't ask for

No account, no email, no name, no phone number, no payment information. We don't ask you to log in. We don't ask why you're asking.

Where your data goes

Your ZIP is matched against a district map Civvie holds itself, so the ZIP alone is never sent to a third party. Only if your ZIP crosses district lines and you enter a full street address does Civvie send that address to Google Maps and the US Census, to resolve it into a district. Either way, Civvie sends your question (with the resolved district) to Anthropic's Claude API for parsing and writing. When you zoom in close on the district map, its street detail loads from OpenFreeMap, a free map service. Like any site your browser loads images from, OpenFreeMap sees your IP address and which part of the map you're looking at; it never receives your question, your ZIP, or your address. Each of those services has its own privacy terms. Civvie doesn't share data with anyone else.

What we store

We cache answers by the combination of question + district so that two people asking the same thing don't trigger a fresh AI run. The cache is keyed by content, not by you — it doesn't include any identifier that links a query back to a person, device, or session.

Feedback you choose to send

If you rate an answer or report that the record should cover something, we store what you send — your question, your district, your rating, any reason tags you pick, and any comment you write — so we can check accuracy and fill gaps. If you use the Feedback link in the footer, we store your message and which page you sent it from, and nothing else. It's anonymous: no name, address, or identifier is attached. Leaving feedback is always optional.

What we don't store

We don't store your ZIP, your address, a browser fingerprint, or anything that identifies you, and we keep no profile of you.

If you choose a district as yours, your browser remembers which district it is, for example "PA-6", so it's there next time. It's kept in your browser for up to 400 days, and Civvie uses it only so its pages can work: to show your reps, and to open the pages for your district, whose addresses name it, as any district page's does. It's never shared and never follows you to other sites. You can forget it any time with "Forget my district".

Your browser also keeps a few small things for Civvie, never sent anywhere else: whether you closed the notice about new district lines, whether the glossary is on, and, until you close the tab, the last question you typed. Your ZIP is also passed to the next page in the same tab, so it can check whether your district's lines are changing. It's deleted as soon as that page reads it, and in any case it's gone when you close the tab.

If you want to be removed

There's nothing user-keyed to remove — there's no record of you in the first place. To clear your district from your browser, use Forget my district. If you'd still like to flag a concern, email civvie.us@gmail.com.

Changes to this policy

If this changes, we'll update the date at the top.