Privacy Policy

1. Overview

Our Civic Duty is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains, in plain terms, what information we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding that information. We do not sell your personal data to third parties.

2. Information We Collect

Account Information

You can browse the site, read the Local Wiki, and use the chat assistant without creating an account — a temporary, anonymous Firebase identity is assigned automatically, and no personally identifiable information is collected for that. If you choose to sign in with Google, Firebase Authentication receives your name, email address, and profile photo directly from Google. If you sign in by email instead, Firebase Authentication receives only your email address and sends a one-time sign-in link to it; no password is created. We use this information solely to authenticate you; we don't copy it into our own database.

Local Wiki Contributions

Signing in (with Google or an email link) is required to contribute to the Local Wiki, to suggest missing information, or to flag a page as possibly outdated. Before your first contribution, you choose a public, pseudonymous display handle — not your real name — which is what appears next to anything you write. Wiki pages, edits, and their full revision history are public by design, the same as any wiki, and stay visible even if you later stop using the Service.

When you flag a page, we record which page, when, and your account's identifier so the flag can be reviewed and resolved. Your identity isn't shown publicly — the page only shows that it has been flagged.

Chat Conversations

When you ask the chat assistant a question, that question is sent to Google Cloud's Vertex AI (Gemini models) to generate an answer, and checked against Qdrant, a vector-search service, to find relevant sources. We do not store your conversation history tied to your identity. The text of a question you ask — not who asked it — may be cached to answer future visitors' similar questions instantly: for up to 7 days for a freshly generated answer, or indefinitely for our own hand-curated FAQ entries.

Usage Data

We collect a small set of anonymized, aggregate usage events via Firebase Analytics — for example, that a chat message was sent and its character length (never its content), or that you switched the color theme. This data isn't linked to your identity.

Rate-Limiting Data

Your session's identifier — including an anonymous one — is used to enforce a temporary hourly and daily usage limit on the chat assistant, stored briefly in Upstash Redis. These counters expire automatically and aren't used for anything beyond preventing abuse.

3. How We Use Your Information

• To authenticate you and maintain your session
• To let you contribute to the Local Wiki and be credited under your chosen handle
• To generate chat answers, and to answer future visitors' similar questions faster
• To prevent abuse of the chat assistant through rate limiting
• To improve the Service through aggregate, anonymized analytics

We do not sell or rent your personal information to any third party.

4. Data Processors

We use the following third-party services to operate the platform. Each acts as a data processor on our behalf:

• Google Firebase — authentication, database storage, hosting, and analytics (Google LLC, USA)
• Google Cloud Vertex AI — the Gemini models that generate chat answers (Google LLC, USA)
• Qdrant Cloud — vector search for chat sources and the semantic answer cache (Qdrant Solutions GmbH)
• Upstash — rate limiting and internal cost tracking; stores no personal content, only temporary usage counters

5. Data Retention

Your Firebase Authentication account (name, email, profile photo) is retained for as long as your account exists. Content you contribute to the Local Wiki — including the pseudonymous handle attached to it — is retained as part of the public record, the same as any wiki, even after you stop using the Service; that's inherent to how a collaboratively edited wiki works.

We don't currently have a self-service account-deletion tool. Email us to request that your account be deleted or a specific piece of information corrected, and we'll handle it directly. Cached chat answers expire automatically after their retention window (see Section 2).

6. Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate data, including something you wrote on the Local Wiki
• Request deletion of your account by emailing us
• Opt out of analytics by disabling cookies or blocking analytics scripts in your browser

7. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

8. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the revised policy with an updated effective date. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

9. Contact Us

For privacy-related questions or to exercise your data rights, email us at ourcivicduty.app@gmail.com.