Privacy Policy

An App Idea LLC ("we", "us", or "our") operates the Pinpoint app, a civic engagement app that helps you find your elected officials, follow the bills they vote on, compare their votes with how you would vote, and write to them.

Account Information

• First name and last name, which you enter when you sign up and can change later
• Email address (from your sign-in provider)
• Postcode / ZIP code (optional). You can enter it when you sign up, when the app asks where you are, or in the You tab. We save it to your account to find your representatives.
• Your sign-in provider (Google Sign-In or Apple Sign-In) and your Firebase user ID
• Whether you want push notifications

We do not collect or store passwords. Sign-in is handled entirely by Google or Apple.

Location Data

• With your permission, the app reads your device's location to find the officials who represent you. It asks for an approximate fix, not continuous tracking.
• The app sends those coordinates to our servers, which match them against district maps. When our maps don't cover a location, our servers send the coordinates, rounded to about 11 meters, to OpenStates to find your officials.
• The app also sends your coordinates directly to Nominatim (OpenStreetMap) to turn them into a street, city, state and ZIP code. It uses Nominatim to look up a ZIP code you type and to draw your city's boundary on the district map, too.
• We don't store your coordinates on our servers. Your device keeps your most recently confirmed location so the app can open where you left off, until you delete your account or the app.
• You can decline or revoke location access at any time in your device settings and enter a ZIP code instead.

Bill Votes

When you vote on a bill (yes, no, or abstain), we save your vote to your account along with the bill's number and title. A vote on a bill is final: it can't be changed or deleted afterwards, except by deleting your account. Your vote is counted in that bill's anonymous tally, which is shown only to people who have voted on the bill themselves and only once at least ten people have. We also use your votes to show how your officials voted compared with you, and to tell you when a bill you voted on reaches a final outcome, such as becoming law or failing. We don't show your individual votes to other users.

Officials and Bills You Follow

When you follow an official or a bill, we save that to your account with its name or title. We use your follows to decide what appears in your Activity. Other users see only how many people follow something, and only once at least ten people do.

Notes You Write About Officials and Bills

If you write a note on an official or a bill, we save it to your account with what the note is about: the official's name, role and party, or the bill's number, title and state. That lets you read and edit it on any device you sign in on, and find it under Notes in the You tab. Your notes are private. Other users never see them, we don't send them to AI Vote Assist or any other third party, and we don't write their contents to our logs. You can edit or delete a note at any time, and deleting your account deletes all of them. These are separate from your notes for AI Vote Assist and your ballot notes, described below.

Activity and Push Notifications

• We create notifications about the officials and bills you follow or voted on (for example, "Sen. Smith voted Yes on H.R. 1") and store them with your account so you can see them in Activity.
• If you allow push notifications, we store your device's push token and its platform (iOS or Android). To deliver a notification, we send the token and the notification's text to Expo's push service, which passes it to Apple or Google for delivery.
• You can turn push notifications off in the You tab or in your device settings. Signing out removes this device's push token from your account.

Writing to Your Officials

Pinpoint helps you draft a message to an official, then copies it to your clipboard and opens it in your own email app. Pinpoint doesn't send the message and never receives its contents. To show you how to reach an official, the app asks our servers for their contact details by the official's ID. Your device keeps a record of the messages you drafted (the official, the topic and the text) and any follow-up reminders you set. They stay on the device until you delete your account or the app.

Ballot Lookup

If you choose to look up your ballot, you type your home address. The app saves it on your device and sends it to our servers, which send it to Google's Civic Information API to find your upcoming elections, ballot and polling place. Our servers keep that answer in memory for up to six hours so repeat lookups are fast, and don't save your address. Signing out removes the address from your device. Any notes or choices you record for your ballot stay on your device only and are never sent to us; signing out removes them as well.

Survey Answers and Results

If you take Pinpoint's political affiliation or political philosophy survey, we save your answer to each statement (how strongly you agree or disagree) and your results to your account. Questions you skip aren't saved. Because survey answers can reveal your political opinions and beliefs, we treat them as sensitive. We use them to show you your results and, only if you turn it on, for AI Vote Assist (described below). We don't show your individual answers or results to other users. The only survey information anyone else sees is anonymous averages across everyone who has taken a survey, shown only after at least five people have taken it. Your device also keeps a copy of your answers so a retake can start from them; signing out removes it.

AI Vote Assist (optional)

AI Vote Assist uses an AI model to suggest how you might vote on bills, based on your own survey answers. It stays off unless you turn it on and agree to a screen that names the AI provider. You review every suggestion, and only votes you approve or choose yourself are cast.

When you ask for suggestions, we send the AI provider:

• the statements you answered in both surveys, and your answer to each;
• your answers to five topic questions (agriculture, housing, transportation, veterans and energy);
• any notes you've written for the AI;
• public information about each bill: its number, the legislature it's in, its title, topic and plain-English summary, and the legislative steps it has been through.

We never send your name, email address, street address, ZIP code, account ID or survey results. Because the bills come from your officials, they do show which state you're in.

To run the feature, we also keep:

• Your agreement: which AI provider you agreed to, and when. If we change providers, we ask you again before sending anything.
• Your topic answers and notes for the AI: up to 10 short notes, until you delete them.
• A usage count: how many bills you sent and when, to enforce a daily limit. It doesn't record which bills.
• How each vote was decided: when you cast a vote through AI Vote Assist, we record with that vote whether you kept the AI's suggestion or changed it.

We don't store the AI's suggestions or its reasons on our servers, and we don't write your answers, notes or the AI's suggestions to our logs. Your review (the suggestions, their reasons and your decisions) stays only on your device so you can finish it later. It expires after 7 days, and signing out or turning off AI Vote Assist deletes it.

Information That Stays on Your Device

Some things never leave your device: the keyword filters you save on the Bills tab, your theme and display settings, and which introductions you have already seen.

Technical Information

• Pinpoint contains no analytics, advertising, tracking or crash-reporting tools.
• Our servers log each request for security and troubleshooting: the page requested (without the details you entered), the result, how long it took, and the app's user agent, which can name the app and your device's operating system. Our hosting provider may also record your IP address. We use IP addresses briefly to limit how quickly requests can be made.
• When the app opens, it checks Expo's update service for a newer version. That request tells Expo your platform, the app's version and an identifier for this installation.

• To identify your elected officials from your location or ZIP code
• To show you the bills your officials vote on, record your own votes, and compare the two
• To keep your Activity up to date and send the notifications you asked for
• To help you draft messages to officials and remind you to follow up
• To keep the notes you write about officials and bills, for you alone
• To look up your ballot when you ask
• To show you your survey results
• To suggest how you might vote on bills, only if you turn on AI Vote Assist
• To show anonymous totals that never identify anyone
• To maintain the security and reliability of the service and prevent abuse
• To comply with legal obligations

• Our servers and database run on US-based infrastructure hosted by Railway. Sign-in and push tokens are handled by Firebase (Google).
• We keep your account information, votes, follows and notifications until you delete your account. We keep your survey answers and results until you delete them or your account.
• We keep each note you write about an official or a bill until you delete it or your account.
• We keep your AI Vote Assist agreement, notes and topic answers until you remove them (see section 07) or delete your account, and its usage count until you delete your account.
• Our hosting provider keeps server logs for a limited period, after which they are deleted.
• Data stored on your device is described in section 02. Signing out clears your cached account data, your ballot address and notes, and your survey answers. Deleting your account clears the rest, except display settings such as your theme. Deleting the app removes everything it stored on the device.
• Earlier versions of Pinpoint had community features: Pinboard issues and group messages. If you posted there, that content is kept. When you delete your account, we replace your name on it with "Former member" and remove your backings and group memberships.

We use the following third-party services to operate the app. Your data may be transmitted to these services as necessary:

We also read public legislative and election data from Congress.gov, the U.S. Senate and the Federal Election Commission. We send them no information about you.

• We do not sell your personal data, or use it for advertising or tracking.
• Other users never see your individual votes, follows, notes, survey answers or results. They see only anonymous totals, each withheld until enough people have contributed that it can't point to anyone.
• A small number of authorized administrators can see account details (name, email, and account status) to operate the service and handle abuse. Administrative changes to an account are logged.
• We may disclose data if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, and security of our users and the service.

• Access: You may request a copy of your data by contacting us at hello@anappidea.llc.
• Deletion: You can delete your account in the app (You tab → Delete account), or ask us to by email. Deleting your account removes your profile, votes, follows, notes, notifications, survey data and push tokens from our servers, and clears the data the app stored on your device.
• Notes: To delete a note, open it from the official's or bill's page, or from the You tab → Notes, and choose "Delete note." This removes it from our servers.
• Survey data: To delete a survey's answers and results, open your results in the You tab and choose "Delete my results." This removes them from our servers and from your device. You can also delete your whole account in the app (You tab → Delete account), which removes all of your survey data along with the rest of your account.
• AI Vote Assist: To stop using it, open the You tab → AI Vote Assist and choose "Turn off AI Vote Assist." This withdraws your agreement and deletes the review on your device. You can also choose "Also delete the answers it reads," which deletes your per-question survey answers and your topic answers; your survey results stay. Your notes stay until you delete them on the same screen. Votes you've already cast stay cast, because a vote on a bill can't be changed.
• Location: You may withdraw location permission at any time in your device settings, or enter your ZIP code manually instead.
• Notifications: You can turn push notifications off in the You tab or in your device settings.
• Sign out: Signing out clears your cached account data, ballot address and notes, and survey answers from the device. Deleting the app removes all locally stored data.

The app is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this policy from time to time. Changes will be posted in-app and on our website, and we will update the "Last Updated" date above. Continued use of the app after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.