We don't know who you are.

Civic Notice has no accounts, no analytics, no ads and no tracking. There's no server that knows what you read or follow. This page spells out what that means, and the few things that do leave your phone, including the one thing we count.

What we collect

One thing, and only sometimes. If you name a place the app can't match to a government we cover, the app sends us the place's name, whether you entered it as a city (or CSD) or as a county, and its state, once per place. A misspelling counts, and so does a special district that a version of the app older than 1.2 does not recognise. We keep a count per place per day so we know where to look next. We don't keep your address, any district, anything that identifies you or your phone, your IP address, or the time of day. Like every request, it passes through Cloudflare, which sees your IP address on the way. We don't store or log it. Nothing is sent for a place the app matches to a government we cover, and nothing is sent while you're still typing.

That's it. We don't collect personal information. There's no sign-in, no profile, no email address and no device identifier, and the app contains no analytics, advertising or measurement libraries.

Since there's no account, there's nothing to delete, export or request. We have no record that you exist.

What stays on your device

These are saved in the app's own storage on your phone. They aren't synced or backed up to us, and apart from the one exception above, the name and state of a place we don't cover, we can't read them:

The city, county and state you named, and any districts worked out from them.
Items you've saved to follow.
Your filter choices, appearance setting and notification preference.
From version 1.1, a count of the days you've opened an item (up to four, with the latest day's date) and the version of the app that last asked your iPhone to show Apple's rating prompt.

Deleting the app deletes all of it.

What leaves your device, and where it goes

1. Requests to our own server

To show you agendas and votes, the app asks for them from api.civicnotice.net, which we run. Those requests name the governments you're looking at, because they have to, and nothing about you. There's no account, no cookie and no identifier attached, and we don't build profiles from server logs. The one thing the app sends rather than asks for is covered under What we collect: the name of a place we don't cover yet, once.

2. The optional address lookup

On the welcome screen you can type a street address and let the app fill in your city, county and state. It's optional, and the app works fully without it.

If you use it, your address goes straight from your phone to the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder, and on iPhone, if the Census can't find it, to Apple's geocoding service. The app never sends your address to our servers and never stores it. Only the place names and districts that come back are kept, on your phone.

What those services do with an address is up to their policies, not ours. We can only promise what this app does.

Finding your district also queries public map layers published by local governments. Those requests carry a coordinate, not your address or anything that identifies you.

Notifications

Meeting reminders are scheduled by your phone. Civic Notice doesn't use push notifications, has no push server and never asks for a push token. Nothing about what you follow is sent anywhere to remind you about it.

Children

Civic Notice is a public-records reader for general audiences. It collects no personal information from anyone, including children under 13.

Third parties

We don't sell, rent or share personal information, because we don't have any. The only outside services the app contacts are the ones above: our own API, and, only if you use the address lookup, the U.S. Census geocoder, Apple's geocoding service on iPhone, and public government map layers. From version 1.1, the app may also ask your iPhone to show Apple's rating prompt. That prompt is Apple's own: a rating you give there goes to Apple, not to us.

Changes to this policy

If any of this changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it. Collecting personal information would take an app update, and we'd say so in the release notes, not just here.

Contact

Questions about privacy go to support@civicnotice.net.