Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective date: June 4, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what information The Unredacted Project (the “Platform,” “we,” or “us”), operated by The Unredacted Project, collects, how we use and share it, how long we keep it, and the privacy rights available to you. Please read it alongside our Terms of Service.

Contents

  1. Data We Collect
  2. Retention Periods
  3. Third-Party Sharing
  4. Your Rights (CCPA / VCDPA / CPA / CTDPA)
  5. Cookies & Similar Technologies
  6. Contact Us

1. Data We Collect

1.1 Account information

When you create an account, we collect:

  • Your email address (used for magic-link authentication and transactional notifications).
  • A chosen display name or pseudonym, if you provide one.
  • Your attribution preference for submissions (real_name, pseudonym, or anonymous).
  • Notification-channel preferences you configure.
  • Account metadata such as account creation time, last sign-in time, and user role.

We do not require a password. Authentication uses one-time magic links delivered by email.

1.2 Technical and request data

When you access the Platform, our servers and our CDN provider automatically receive standard request metadata, including:

  • IP address.
  • User-agent string (browser and operating-system identifiers).
  • Referrer URL (when provided by your browser).
  • Request timestamp, method, and path.
  • Approximate geolocation derived from IP address, used for jurisdiction-scoped voting eligibility, for rate-limiting, and for abuse detection.

We use this information for security, rate limiting, fraud/abuse detection, aggregate usage analytics, and enforcing Platform rules (for example, jurisdictional voting eligibility).

1.3 Submission content

When you submit a claim, file a dispute, reply to a dispute, upload evidence, or cast a vote, we collect the contents of that submission. Because the Platform operates as a public record, these contents are displayed publicly on the Platform and are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 as described in the Terms of Service. Evidence files are stored under our object-storage provider and served through our CDN.

1.4 Derived and AI-processed data

We send submission text and, where relevant, file metadata to AI providers to generate summaries, risk indicators, suggested categories, and frivolous-dispute signals. The AI provider’s response is stored alongside the submission. AI output is editorial context, not a finding of fact.

1.5 What we do not collect

  • We do not sell personal information.
  • We do not use third-party advertising trackers.
  • We do not build cross-site behavioral profiles.

2. Retention Periods

Retention is calibrated to the purpose of each category of data:

  • Account records. Retained for as long as your account is active. After account deletion, personally identifying account fields are removed or irreversibly anonymized within 30 days except where a longer period is required by law.
  • Submitted content (claims, disputes, replies, votes, evidence). Retained indefinitely as part of the durable public record. Removal occurs only through the Platform’s moderation, DMCA, or legal processes. See the Terms of Service for details.
  • Magic-link records. Unused links expire quickly (on the order of minutes); used links are retained for a short audit window and then purged.
  • Request and security logs. IP addresses, user-agent strings, and request metadata are retained for up to 90 days for security, abuse detection, and capacity planning, then deleted or aggregated.
  • Admin audit logs. Moderation and administrative actions are retained indefinitely to preserve the integrity of the audit trail.
  • Backups. Encrypted backups may retain data for a longer rolling window; deletions propagate through backups on the normal backup-rotation cycle.

Where a legal hold, subpoena, or pending dispute requires preservation of data beyond these periods, we will retain that data for as long as required.

3. Third-Party Sharing

We share personal information only with the following categories of service providers, and only to the extent necessary to operate the Platform:

3.1 AI providers

Submission text and associated metadata are transmitted to third-party large language model providers to generate AI summaries, risk assessments, category suggestions, and moderation signals. We contractually require these providers not to use the content to train their general-purpose models and to honor appropriate data-handling standards.

3.2 Cloudflare (CDN and edge)

The Platform is fronted by Cloudflare, Inc. for content delivery, DDoS mitigation, and edge caching. Cloudflare receives the IP addresses, user-agent strings, and request metadata of every request to the Platform.

3.3 Resend (transactional email)

Magic-link authentication emails, notification emails, and digest emails are delivered through Resend. Resend receives the recipient email address and the contents of each transactional message we send to you.

3.4 Legal and safety

We may disclose information when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to comply with a valid legal obligation (subpoena, court order, or similar), to protect the rights or safety of any person, to investigate suspected fraud or abuse, or to enforce our Terms of Service.

3.5 Corporate transactions

If The Unredacted Project is involved in a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, or sale of assets, information may be transferred to the successor entity. We will notify users in advance of any such transfer that materially changes how personal information is handled.

We do not sell personal information for monetary consideration.

4. Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA / CPRA), the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA), the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA), the Connecticut Data Privacy Act (CTDPA), or other applicable privacy laws. These rights generally include:

  • Right to know / access. You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and information about how we use and share it.
  • Right to correction. You can ask us to correct inaccurate personal information about you.
  • Right to deletion. You can request deletion of your account and associated personally identifying data, subject to the content-preservation rules described in our Terms of Service and to legal exceptions that require us to retain certain records.
  • Right to opt out. You can opt out of marketing or digest emails at any time via your notification preferences or the unsubscribe link in each email. Because we do not sell personal information or use targeted advertising, there is no separate “do not sell or share” workflow; opt-out requests are honored as deletion or correction requests where applicable.
  • Right to appeal. Where required by law (for example, under VCDPA, CPA, and CTDPA), you may appeal our response to a rights request by replying to the response email or contacting us as described below.
  • Right against discrimination. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@theunredactedproject.com from the email address associated with your account (or provide sufficient information for us to verify your identity if you do not have an account). We will respond within the timeframes required by applicable law.

Authorized agents may submit a request on your behalf if they provide written proof of authorization.

5. Cookies & Similar Technologies

The Platform uses a small, functional set of cookies and equivalent technologies:

  • Session cookies. A secure, HTTP-only session cookie identifies signed-in users and maintains authenticated state. Required for signed-in functionality.
  • CSRF cookies. A paired cookie/header value protects state-changing requests from cross-site request forgery. Required for submission and voting functionality.
  • CDN and security cookies. Cloudflare may set cookies for bot detection, challenge, and performance purposes, consistent with Cloudflare’s cookie policy.
  • Preference storage. We use localStorage to remember non-sensitive preferences such as accessibility settings (font size, contrast mode).

We do not use third-party analytics or advertising cookies. You can configure your browser to reject cookies; doing so may prevent you from signing in or submitting content.

6. Contact Us

For privacy questions or to exercise your rights:

The Unredacted Project
Attn: Privacy
[Street Address]
[City, State ZIP]
Email: privacy@theunredactedproject.com

For DMCA notices, please use the contact information on our Terms of Service page.

We will update this Privacy Policy from time to time; material changes will be communicated in the same manner described in the Terms of Service.