"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy"
- UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12
Privacy is a human right. And foundational to how we built CivicBell.
Access to political communication shouldn’t come with sacrificing your privacy
Facebook Cambridge Analytica Scandal
Facebook was fined $5 billion for aiding Cambridge Analytica to harvest personal data of 87 million Americans that was exploited for political advertising.
Twitter Targeted Advertising Scandal
Twitter was fined $150 million in 2022 for misusing personally identifiable information users provided solely for account security for targeted advertising.
Facebook 500+ million data leak
Hackers put up for sale over 500 million leaked Facebook user profiles in November 2021.
Why isn’t there a secure political public forum in the age of data privacy?
There is now. Welcome to CivicBell.
Let's talk about how we protect your data and identity
No Targeted Advertising
We will never display conventional targeted ads (like Google AdSense) on our CivicFeed.
Targeted ads set financial incentives to harvest personal identifiable information which we think is wrong.
No Cross-Site Tracking
We developed a next-generation web platform that no-longer uses cookies or other browser-side elements that could be used to track your activities across different websites.
End-to-end Encryption
Everything you do while being on CivicBell (including every like you give, every comment you write) is end-to-end encrypted. So even when you’re on public wifi, your communication with CivicBell is protected.
State-of-the-art
Password Hashing
Your stored password is so-called cryptographically hashed with a random salt added for additional security. This means your password is stored in a way that makes it virtually impossible for anyone, even for someone within CivicBell, to figure out what password you use.
Decentralized Architecture
Your personal identifiable data (demographics, passwords, and general account information) are all stored separately and only linked together when you sign-in. This means even in the unthinkable scenario of a hack, it’s extremely difficult and unlikely that enough data could be compromised and traced back to you as a person.
Military-grade Data Encryption
If you provided us with your race, ethnicity, household income, highest educational degree, religion, or political orientation, together with your gender, and age, we will encrypt this data using a military-grade AES 256-bit algorithm making it virtually impossible for hackers to get to your data – even in case of a breach.
Ready to start exploring a more private and secure way of political communication?
Sometimes it's beneficial for you to use some of your data
We will always tell you exactly when and how we use your data. See below.
CivicBell Posts
If you view, react, or engage on a CivicBell post the government account that started this post will see, fully anonymized and not linked to your name or account, the following information: race, ethnicity, household income, highest educational degree, religion, and political orientation.
If you did not opt-in to provide us with this information, we will approximate race, ethnicity, religion, and political orientation based on voter registration, census, and American Community Survey information.
Government accounts will also be able to see, fully anonymized, your ZIP Code, gender, and age.
Identity Verification
Our identity verification service provider, ID.me, will provide us with your full name, gender, birthday, ZIP Code, and email address.
We will not see any of your documents used for verification purposes, such as passport or driver's license, nor will we ever need or see any highly sensitive personal information, such as your SSN or Credit Score.
CivicSentiment Reports
We provide “public sentiment reports” for government agencies, public officials, and elected officials for purchase.
Sentiment reports are anonymized and aggregated reports on how a certain constituency (city, congressional district, county, etc.) thinks about an issue. An issue might be “gun control”. We anonymously aggregate how people within a certain geography deliberate about this issue (from negative to positive and what aspects they think are important).
You always have the right to request from us what information has been used from you for which report. Again, it's all anonymized and can't be traced back to you as a person.