We collect as little as we can. And show almost none of it.
This page explains exactly what decide.scot holds about you, why it holds it, who else can see it, and how to have it deleted. If anything here is unclear, that's a bug: tell us and we'll fix the wording.
What we collect
Email address
Verified with a one-time code every time you sign in, on any device. It exists to secure your account and to stop one person quietly registering as ten citizens. Never shown publicly, never sold, never used for marketing.
Postcode
Checked once, at signup, only to confirm you're in Scotland and to work out which region your voice is attributed to. Never shown publicly, not even to moderators or admins; only the region it maps to ever appears.
Handle
A name you choose at signup. Handles get reused across platforms and can be personally identifying on their own, so it's never shown publicly either. It exists only so you can be recognised if you ever need account support.
Citizen number
An automatically assigned number: the only thing that ever appears in public next to anything you back, oppose, comment on, or propose.
Why we collect it
Every one of these exists to solve exactly one problem: proving you are a real, single Scottish citizen, without ever having to show anyone who you actually are. Nothing here is collected for advertising, profiling, or resale.
Who else can see it
Three outside services process data on our behalf, under their own security commitments, never to sell it or advertise against it:
- Supabase, our database and sign-in provider, hosted in the EU.
- Resend, which sends the one-time codes to your inbox.
- Google Analytics, which tells us which areas of the site visitors use, so we know what to improve. It sees pages visited and rough, city-level location. It is never given your email, handle, postcode, or citizen number, and we do not use it for advertising.
Moderators and admins on the site itself can see your citizen number, your handle, and your role if you have one. They cannot see your email address or postcode through any tool the site gives them, full stop.
How long we keep it, and deleting your account
We keep your details for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account yourself, at any time, from your citizenship page: it removes your email, handle, and postcode for good and signs you out everywhere. Anything you wrote in public stays on the record for the sake of the debate it sits in, but is re-attributed to "a departed citizen" with no link back to you. If you would rather we did it for you, email us and we will.
What we email you, and what we never will
Your email address is used for two things only: keeping your account secure (the one-time sign-in codes), and, if and only if you opted in, notifications about activity you are part of, replies to your comments, movement on clauses you backed or follow, new drafts of the Foundation Paper.
- No marketing. No newsletters. No promotional content. No third-party content. The address is never sold, shared, or used to advertise anything, including this project.
- Every notification email carries a one-click unsubscribe that works immediately, no login, no confirmation page, no "are you sure".
- Opting out of email never reduces access to anything on the platform. The full on-site experience works identically either way.
- If a future feature would send an email outside those two categories, it needs fresh consent from you first, not a quiet update to this page.
The switches live on your citizenship page: personal digest, civic digest, or everything off. Full account deletion remains available as described above.
Cookies and local storage
No advertising trackers. Storage on your own device holds your session, your language preference, and small interface hints, things like which clauses you have already backed, so a button does not flicker back and forth. We also use Google Analytics, but only if you allow it: it stays switched off until you say yes on the banner, and your choice is remembered on each device. It sets its own cookies to count visits and show us which areas of the site people use. It measures pages, not people: none of your account details are ever shared with it.
Your rights
You can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or delete your account yourself from your citizenship page at any time. If you think we've got something wrong here and cannot resolve it with us directly, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's independent data protection regulator.
Changes to this policy
We may update this page as the project develops. Material changes will be noted here with a new date at the top.
Questions about any of this? Email hello@decide.scot. If something here contradicts how the site actually behaves, that behaviour is the bug, not this page.