Privacy

When you look up a place

To find who governs a spot, your browser sends that point to our server. We then save a record of the lookup with:

• the point, rounded to about 1 km (two decimal places), never the exact spot;
• the time, which place it fell in, and how many governments we found there;
• whether it looked like an automated test rather than a person.

We don't save your IP address, browser details or anything else that identifies you with it. We use these records to see which places people need and add their data first. Only the people building Society see them; whether to publish a summary map is still being decided.

To tell people from automated scripts, the server briefly keeps, in its memory only, a scrambled code made from your IP address and browser and the times of your recent lookups. It is forgotten after 30 minutes without lookups and is never written down.

To stop floods of requests and spam, the server also counts recent requests from each IP address, in its memory only. Each count is forgotten within 15 minutes and is never written down.

The page address changes to include the spot, rounded to about 100 m, so you can share or bookmark it. If the spot is your home, keep that in mind before sharing the link.

When you search for a place

What you type is matched against the names of places in our own database, on our own server. It is never sent to anyone else, and suggestions shown while you type are not recorded.

When a search you submit finds nothing, we count it, so we know which places to add. If what you typed is short and reads like a place name (letters, spaces, hyphens and apostrophes, under 40 characters; a digit only inside a word, as in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh), we keep that name, with the date and whether it looked like an automated test. Anything else, such as a street address, postal code or number, is only counted, never kept.

Cookies and your device

Visitors get no cookies from Society. A few choices are saved in this browser only (local storage), never linked to an account:

• your chosen place, so the You and Elections pages can show your representatives and ballot (to do that, the page asks our server about that spot each time, and those requests are not recorded);
• the governments you say you belong to, such as a First Nation: the page downloads the whole list and picks yours out on your device, so we never learn which you chose;
• light or dark theme.

You can forget your place on the You page, or clear all of them by clearing this site's data in your browser.

"Use my location" asks your browser for your position. It is used for that one lookup and stored only as the rounded area above.

Two cookies exist, but not for visitors. Society's owner signs in to answer open questions about how it is built; signing in sets one cookie, used only to keep the owner signed in. People testing the site can mark their browser on a testing page, which sets one cookie that says only "tester".

Cloudflare, which sits in front of the site (see Where your data is), may set its own short-lived security cookies, such as __cf_bm or cf_clearance, when it checks whether traffic comes from bots or asks a browser to pass a challenge. Society sets none for visitors.

Feedback is public

Messages sent with the feedback form are shown publicly on the feedback page, with what was done about them. Please don't put private details in the message.

An email or other contact you add stays private and is used only to follow up. If the message is about a spot, that spot is stored rounded to about 1 km and not shown publicly.

Officials, candidates and their photos

Society shows people who hold or seek public office: their name, office, party, terms and public contact details, each with its source. These come from official sources such as legislatures, councils and election offices.

Photos come from official portraits, free-licence photos on Wikimedia Commons, or photos candidates publish for the press, and each is credited with its licence. We never use a photo we aren't sure shows the right person.

If you are pictured and would rather your photo not be shown, ask us (see Contact below). Once it is withheld, Society stops showing it on every page.

Where your data is

Society's server and database are in Canada, at OVHcloud in Beauharnois, Quebec.

Cloudflare sits in front of it worldwide: it delivers pages, maps and photos from a location near you, provides the secure connection and protects the site from attacks. To do that, Cloudflare handles your IP address and browser details for each request, under its own privacy policy. Some files, such as map tiles and photos, may be stored with Cloudflare too.

The web server in front of Society keeps no log of the requests it passes on, and its error log leaves out IP addresses.

Apart from Cloudflare, the pages use no other services: the map, the map software, the fonts and place search all come from Society. Source links and official websites open the other site, which has its own policy.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it.

If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, the GDPR gives you these rights by law, along with the right to object to how we use your information, to limit it, and to complain to your country's data protection authority.

For most visitors there is little to find: lookups and searches are not linked to anyone, so we can't pick out yours. What we can find is feedback you sent (tell us its number or the contact you gave), and, if you hold or seek public office, your record on Society.

Contact

For privacy requests and questions: A privacy contact address will be published here before Society launches.

Until then, please don't send private details through the feedback form: messages there are public. For a question with nothing private in it, send us a message.

Changes to this page are listed with every other change to Society.