The short version
- No tracking. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking cookies.
- Only what you send. Our forms collect only what you type into them.
- No IP addresses stored. Your address is never saved with a submission.
- Never sold. We don’t sell or rent personal information.
What we collect
Browsing. Reading the Site requires no account. We use no analytics tools, advertising networks, tracking pixels or tracking cookies.
Tips and messages. When you use the tip form or contact form, we receive what you enter: for tips, your tip, any links, and optionally your name and contact details (dropped if you choose to stay anonymous); for messages, your name, email, subject and message. We also record the time it was received.
On your device. The homepage saves small preferences, such as races you pin in the election tracker, in your browser’s local storage. They stay on your device and are never sent to us.
How submissions are stored
Submissions are stored in Cloudflare Workers KV, a database run by our host, Cloudflare, and are accessible only to our editors. We do not store IP addresses. To prevent spam, we briefly keep a one-way, salted fingerprint of the sending network address, which can’t be reversed to recover the address and expires automatically after 10 minutes.
Our host and service providers
The Site is hosted and delivered by Cloudflare, Inc. As our host and content delivery network, Cloudflare may process standard request data, such as IP address, browser type and request time, to deliver and secure the Site, under Cloudflare’s privacy policy. Articles may embed video from YouTube (in privacy-enhanced mode, loaded only when you press play) or other platforms, which follow their own policies.
How we use information
We use what you send only to read and report on tips, reply to messages, correct errors and protect the Site from abuse. We don’t sell, rent or trade personal information, and we don’t use it for advertising.
Retention and your choices
We keep submissions only as long as needed for reporting and correspondence, then delete them. To ask us to access or delete something you sent, contact us with enough detail to find it.
Children
The Site isn’t directed to children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information.
Changes
If we change this policy, we’ll update the effective date above.
Contact
Privacy questions? Reach us through our contact page.