Privacy Policy

1. Data We Collect

We collect your email address when you create an account; this is used solely for authentication. During onboarding we collect the following demographic information:

• Gender (including an optional free-text description if you select “Other”)
• Education level
• State of residence
• Birth year
• ZIP code — used for geographic moderation only, never shared individually

Political affiliation is a separate, optional field that is collected only when you actively opt in (see Section 2 below).

2. Political Affiliation — Special Category Data

Political affiliation is a sensitive data category. It is collected only if you actively check a consent checkbox during onboarding or in your account settings. It is never stored without your explicit, affirmative consent.

When collected, political affiliation is used exclusively in anonymized, aggregated form — your individual response is never exposed. You may request removal of this data at any time by contacting us at ratemyrepresentativeusa@gmail.com.

3. How We Use Your Data

• Aggregate analytics: Demographic data is combined and anonymized to generate community-level insights displayed on the platform. No individual records are ever shown.
• AI review processing: Review text is processed by an AI model to extract sentiment scores and topic tags. This processing is fully automated — review text is not read by humans and is not shared with third parties.
• Geographic moderation: Your ZIP code is used to match reviews to the correct congressional districts for moderation purposes. It is never shared individually or used for any other purpose.

4. Data Sharing with Research Partners

We share anonymized, aggregated demographic data — never individual records — with academic research partners for civic and political science research. This sharing includes political affiliation data only when users have consented to its collection.

We do not sell personal data. Our platform infrastructure is hosted by Supabase; their privacy policy governs infrastructure-level data handling.

5. Your Rights (CCPA)

California residents have the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act:

• Right to know what personal information we collect about you and how it is used.
• Right to request deletion of your personal information, subject to certain exceptions.
• Right to opt out of sale — we do not sell your personal data.

To submit a CCPA request, email ratemyrepresentativeusa@gmail.com.

6. Data Retention & Deletion

Deleting your account permanently removes your profile and all associated demographic data from our systems. Reviews you submitted may be retained in anonymized form for aggregate analytics after account deletion.

7. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected in an updated “Last updated” date at the top of this page. Continued use of the platform after a policy update constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.