Privacy policy

This policy covers Vugol Me: the website at vugol.me and the Vugol Me mobile app (Android package me.vugol, iOS bundle me.vugol.app). On Google Play the Vugol Me app is listed under the developer name Bhugolpark, and on the App Store under the developer name Vugol Me. The app uses the same accounts and services as the website, so everything below applies to it too. Contact for both: hello@vugol.me.

• Aggregate usage statistics. Browsing Vugol Me requires no account. We use Google Analytics (GA4) to understand which pages are visited and how the site is used; it sets its own cookies and processes visit data under Google’s terms. We run no advertising scripts and set no marketing cookies of our own, and analytics is never joined to your votes or demographics.
• What you read on Vugol Me. To learn what you care about, such as the races, states and candidates you look at, and to make the site more useful to you, we keep a history of the pages your browser opens here. It is tied to the same random browser token Vugol Pulse uses (stored only as a one-way hash, never with your IP address), and if an email from us brought you here, we note which one. When you sign in, this history joins your account so your preferences follow you, and our staff can see it to understand how members use the site. We use it only for Vugol Me: we never sell it, never share it with campaigns, parties or advertisers, and never combine it with outside data. We keep it for 13 months. We do not keep it at all if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, or for visitors in the European Union, the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland. You can clear it at any time.
• An email address, if you sign in. Sign-in uses a one-time email link or, if you choose it, your Google account; we store your email and authentication session. With Google, Google tells us your name, email address and profile picture, and nothing else from your Google account. There are no passwords.
• What you submit, if you participate. Community-poll votes are stored against your account so each person votes once. Profile-claim requests store the evidence you provide. Campaign-provided profile content is public by design and labeled as yours.
• Vugol Pulse answers. The daily question can be answered 3 times without an account. To count those answers once each, your browser keeps a random token; we store only a one-way hash of it with your answer, never your IP address. When you sign in, those answers move to your account. Your first answer creates a Vugol Pulse profile (a random id tied to that hash, or to your account) so we can ask an optional ZIP code once and not again; if you share it, it is stored on that profile and, when you sign in, in your demographics. After that, members may be asked one more optional question at a time (the fields listed below). Results are published only as totals; your ZIP code is never published. Vugol Pulse is for adults 18 and older.
• Reader approval votes. A thumbs up or down on a politician’s profile is stored with one vote per person per politician, which you can change or withdraw at any time. Without an account, your browser keeps a random token of its own (not the one Vugol Pulse or your reading history uses, so they cannot be joined) and we store only a one-way hash of it, never your IP address. A browser can vote on one politician with no sign-in, on a second after an optional sign-in offer, and needs a Google sign-in from the third; Google tells us your name, email address and profile picture, and nothing else. When you sign in, your browser’s votes move to your account and are not counted twice. Your first vote asks for an optional ZIP code: it is looked up in your browser and is never sent to us or stored; we keep only your state and congressional district. On later votes we may ask, one at a time and each optional, for your age band, party identification and 2024 presidential vote, used only to show how approval differs between groups. Results are published as totals with the number of votes; a state is shown only from 30 votes, and no individual vote, ZIP code or answer is ever published. A withdrawn vote stops counting and leaves a short record (the date and politician) in a log we use to enforce daily limits. If your account is deleted (see below), its votes, answers and log entries go with it. These votes are self-selected and are kept apart from our polls and ratings.
• Optional demographics, if you choose to share them. Community-poll participants may self-report the standard questions pollsters ask: ZIP code, state, age band, gender, race/ethnicity, education, household income, party identification, political views, voter registration, likelihood to vote, and 2024 presidential vote. Every field is optional, editable, visible only to you individually, and published solely as aggregate counts, groups smaller than five are never shown. ZIP code is never published, even in aggregate breakdowns. We never use these to identify you, never sell them, and never combine them with outside data.
• Billing details, if you subscribe. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see or store your card number. We keep your Stripe customer id, the plan you are on, its status and renewal date so the site can grant what you paid for. Race alerts, if you switch them on, send email to the address on your account.
• Daily digest opens and clicks. If you subscribe to the daily digest, our email provider (Mailjet) records whether each digest was opened and which links were clicked, using a tracking pixel and redirected links. We look only at totals per send, to learn what readers find useful; we do not add this to your reading history or share it. Confirmation and account emails are not tracked. Blocking images in your mail app turns off open tracking.
• Sales and pilot inquiries, if you send one. The pilot form on our pricing page collects your name, work email, organization, role, the plan you are interested in, what you would use Vugol Me for, and an optional phone number, plus the campaign tags of the link that brought you (UTM) and a one-way hash of your IP address for abuse prevention, never the address itself. We store the request, email it to our team through our mail provider (Mailjet), and send you a confirmation. If you book a call, Calendly processes the booking under its own terms and tells us the meeting time; we keep that with your request, along with our own notes and any email correspondence about it. We use inquiry data only to answer you and run the pilot; we do not sell it, add it to marketing lists, or enrich it from outside sources.
• Standard server logs (IP address, request path, time) kept by our hosting providers for security and abuse prevention.

• Sell or share personal data with advertisers, campaigns, or parties.
• Publish who you voted for in a Vugol race poll, only aggregate counts appear.
• Combine your account with any external voter file or commercial data broker.

• Job applications (careers): the answers you give, your résumé (and the text we read from it to fill in the form for you to check), the sectors, skills and tools you select, and a hashed form of your IP address for abuse prevention. Résumés are kept in private storage and opened only by our hiring team. We use applications to consider you for roles; no software screens, ranks or scores applicants.
• Optional product insights: if you tick the separate box on the form, the sectors, skills and tools you selected are counted, without your name or contact details, in aggregate statistics we use to improve our products and services. It is off unless you choose it and does not affect how your application is considered.
• We keep an application for up to 24 months so we can consider you for roles that open later, then delete it and its files. Résumés are never copied into backups; the written answers can remain in our private database backups until those expire, within about six months. You can ask us to delete it sooner at any time.
• Investor and press inquiries (investors, press): your name, email, organization and message, used only to reply to you.
• We do not sell or share this information, except with the processors listed below that store it and send our emails.

Accounts and application data are stored with Supabase; the site is served by Vercel; subscriptions are processed by Stripe; race-alert and digest email is sent through Mailjet. Each acts as a processor for us. If you choose “Continue with Google”, Google confirms who you are under its own privacy policy. If you are not signed in here, after you open a couple of pages your browser may load Google’s sign-in prompt, which offers to sign you in with the Google account already signed in to this browser; Google runs it under its own privacy policy, and nothing about your Google account reaches us unless you choose to continue.

You can stop using the account at any time. To have your account, its votes, demographics and watchlist deleted, email hello@vugol.me from the address on the account with the subject “Delete my account”; we confirm and remove them within 30 days. Published aggregate releases are immutable and contain no personal data, so nothing about you remains in them.

Your reading history. Clear it here at any time: this deletes the history of this browser and, if you are signed in, of your account, at once. Copies in our private database backups expire within about six months. To stop it being kept, turn on Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track in your browser.