Privacy & data retention

CapTracker is a public-record accountability tool. We collect the minimum personal information needed to mail or email a constituent letter on your behalf, and we delete it on a schedule. This page tells you exactly what, why, and for how long.

What we collect

When you use the paid Contact Congress flow, we collect:

• Your full name — printed as the sender on the letter or email so the office knows you are a real constituent.
• Your email address — for the payment receipt and, on the email channel, as the reply-to so the office can write back to you directly.
• Your US return address (mail channel only) — printed on the envelope so the office can verify you are a constituent and respond.
• The snapshot of the letter body as it was sent — so we can prove what was delivered if a question ever arises.
• Consent record — which version of this policy you agreed to, and when.

We do not collect credit card numbers — all payment is handled by Stripe; we only store the Stripe session ID.

If you join the AI phone-call waitlist, we collect your email address only.

Why we collect it

Legal basis: performance of the service you asked us to provide (sending your letter) plus our legitimate interest in keeping an aggregate, anonymized record of how many letters were sent to which member of Congress.

Who receives it

We share the minimum necessary with three processors. Each has its own privacy policy linked below.

Vendor	What they receive	Policy
Stripe	Email (to pre-fill checkout); payment details you enter on their hosted page. CapTracker never sees card numbers.	stripe.com/privacy
Lob (physical mail)	Your name and return address; the destination office address; the printed letter contents.	lob.com/legal/privacy-policy
Resend (email)	Your name and email (as reply-to and receipt recipient); destination office email; the letter contents.	resend.com/legal/privacy-policy

We do not sell your data. We do not run advertising trackers. We do not use your data to train any model.

How long we keep it

Data	Retention
Your name, email, return address, letter snapshot	180 days from the send, then automatically nulled.
One-way hash of your email (for aggregate counts), member ID, channel, timestamps, send status, Stripe session ID	Indefinite. These columns are needed for the public "letters sent" counter and for audit, and they cannot be reversed to your email or identity.
Phone-call waitlist email	365 days from signup, then the row is deleted entirely.

You can ask us to delete sooner — see below.

Your rights

• Access & deletion — request a copy or full deletion of the personal information tied to your email.
• Correction — email us if any record is wrong; we will fix or delete it.
• Withdraw consent — once a letter is dispatched, the post or email is in the recipient's hands and cannot be recalled, but everything on our side can be deleted on request.

This service is operated in and targeted at the United States.

Request deletion

Contact

Privacy questions: [email protected].

This policy is also published as PRIVACY.md in the source tree. When the policy materially changes, the version string at the top of this page changes and we record the new version against any new consents.

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