Effective November 2, 2026. Hidden Levers is a project of the Hume Institute for Political Influence Research.
This Privacy Policy explains how the Hume Institute for Political Influence Research ("Hume," "we," "us") collects, uses and shares information in connection with Hidden Levers (the "Service"). It covers two different things:
When you read the Service without signing in
When you create an account
When you buy Desk
When you use Desk and the MCP connector
When you write to us. Your messages to corrections@hiddenlevers.org or hello@hiddenlevers.org and what they contain.
Cookies. We use strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in and to protect forms against forgery. When advertising is shown on free pages, Google's cookies are described above and in Section 6.
We do not use account, billing or Desk information for advertising.
The Service is directed to people in the United States. Where a law such as the EU or UK GDPR applies, we rely on performance of our contract with you, our legitimate interests (security, misuse prevention and improving the Service), your consent where the law requires it (including for advertising cookies), and our legal obligations.
Service providers that act for us
Sign-in providers you choose. If you sign in with Google or GitHub, that company confirms your identity to our identity system. We store with your account your account identifier and username at that company, your email address and whether it is verified, and your name. GitHub does not send a first and last name, so we ask you for them. Each time you sign in this way, our identity system also keeps a separate record of the profile the provider sent and the sign-in tokens it issued. Depending on the provider, that record can include your profile photo link, your work or school organization and other profile and account details, such as your company, location, bio, job title, phone numbers or account statistics. This record is kept as described in Section 10. The provider learns that you used it to sign in to Hidden Levers, and handles your information under its own privacy policy, not this one. We never receive your password for that account.
Google (advertising on free pages). When advertising is shown on free pages, Google receives the information described in Section 1 through its advertising service on pages read without signing in. Google uses it to serve and measure ads, and may combine it with other information it holds, under its own policies. You can read how Google uses information from sites that use its services at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
"Sale" and targeted advertising. Some state privacy laws treat allowing an advertising company such as Google to collect information through our website as a "sale" of personal information, or as processing for "targeted advertising". Before this policy took effect we did not do so. When advertising is shown on free pages, we allow Google to collect the identifiers and internet-activity information described in Section 1 on pages read without signing in. Account, billing and Desk information is not given to Google's advertising or analytics services, or to any advertiser. You can opt out at any time (Section 6).
Legal and safety. Where the law requires it (for example, a subpoena or court order), or where reasonably necessary to investigate misuse, protect anyone's rights or safety, or enforce our Terms, including cooperation with lawful FEC or law-enforcement inquiries into misuse of contributor data.
Successors. In a reorganization or transfer of the Service, subject to this Policy.
Hume decides how billing information is used and is responsible for it. Stripe processes it for us to take payments, and separately acts on its own account for fraud prevention and legal compliance. We use billing information only to sell and administer Desk, keep tax and accounting records, prevent fraud and handle disputes.
Opt out of advertising. When advertising is shown on free pages, you opt out of the sale of your information and of targeted advertising through Google's consent messages, which Google shows on those pages where the law gives you that choice. Your choice applies to that browser.
Other tools. You can also opt out of personalized advertising from Google at https://adssettings.google.com, and from many participating companies at https://www.aboutads.info/choices. Your browser's settings let you block or delete cookies. Signing in also stops Google's advertising script loading, because it does not run for signed-in accounts.
Do Not Track. Browsers' "Do Not Track" setting has no common standard, and we do not respond to it.
Email. We send only service, security and billing email. If we ever add any other kind, it will include an unsubscribe link.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
To make a request, email hello@hiddenlevers.org with the subject "Privacy request", from your account email if you have an account. We will verify your request and respond within 45 days, or within any shorter time your state's law sets. You may use an authorized agent; we may ask the agent for proof of authority and ask you to confirm your identity. If we decline your request, you may appeal by replying to our decision with the subject "Privacy appeal". We will respond to an appeal within the time your state's law sets, and if we deny it, we will tell you how to contact your state attorney general.
To correct your account information or request account deletion, use the Privacy request process above. After deletion we keep some records where the law requires or allows it, such as payment, tax and consent records and records of Terms acceptance (Section 10). Within 30 days of deletion we also erase your personal information from our identity system's history, leaving only a record that identifies no one, and backups that still hold it expire within 90 days (Section 10).
Hidden Levers republishes and analyzes records that federal and state law make public, including FEC contribution reports that identify contributors by name, city, state, employer and occupation.
We do not publish contributor street addresses, ZIP codes, telephone numbers or email addresses, on any page, in any search result, through the MCP connector, or at any level of access, paid or unpaid. Contributor location is shown no more precisely than city and state, and no plan unlocks anything more precise.
Some pages carry a "Low-confidence estimate" badge. It describes our confidence in the computed figures on that page; it is not a statement about the person and does not suggest wrongdoing.
If you appear in these records: the underlying filing is a government record we did not create, and corrections to it must be made by the filer or the FEC. We will fix errors our own processing introduced (for example, records linked to the wrong person), annotate disputed filings, and consider limiting location display further for documented safety reasons (for example, for participants in an address-confidentiality program). Write to corrections@hiddenlevers.org. We do not remove accurate records of lawful, publicly disclosed activity because a person would prefer not to appear in them.
The Service is hosted in the United States and directed to people in the United States. If you use it from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States. Requests from people outside the United States about public-record content are handled under Section 8.
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Account information | While your account exists; deleted within 30 days after you delete your account, except the records below |
| Identity-system history (account changes and sign-ins) | While your account exists. Our identity system saves each account change and sign-in as a history entry: your email address and name, a one-way hash of any password, what a sign-in provider sent (Section 4), and details of each sign-in, which can include its IP address and browser. Within 30 days after your account is deleted, we erase all of that from the history. What remains identifies no one: a random account identifier and the kind and time of each change, which our identity system needs to keep working and secure. A sign-in or signup you start but do not finish is not linked to any account, so it stays in the history. Access to the history is limited to the people who operate our identity system for us. |
| Terms acceptance records | While your account exists and 4 years after |
| Checkout consent records (automatic renewal) | 3 years, or 1 year after your subscription ends, whichever is longer |
| Billing, payment and tax records | 7 years |
| Server logs (IP address, pages requested) | 30 days |
| Backups of account and identity-system data | Up to 90 days. If we restore a backup, we delete again any account deleted after the backup was made. |
| Question text stored apart from accounts | 90 days |
| Turnstile and Stripe data | Under Cloudflare's and Stripe's own retention policies |
| Statistics that identify no one | Indefinitely |
We use reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards, including encryption in transit, hashed credentials, access controls and logging. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and regulators as the law requires.
The Service is not directed to children. You must be 16 or older to use it and 18 or older to create an account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16; if you believe a child has given us personal information, email hello@hiddenlevers.org and we will delete the account and the personal information linked to it, including from our identity system's history. Backups that still hold it expire within 90 days.
We will post changes here with a new effective date, and we will give prominent notice of a material change, by email to account holders or on the Service, before it takes effect.
Privacy questions and requests: hello@hiddenlevers.org (subject: "Privacy request"). Data errors: corrections@hiddenlevers.org. Post: Hume Institute for Political Influence Research, 502 W 7th St, Ste 100, Erie, PA 16502, Attn: Privacy.