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North ArrowDistrict Mapper

Data & Privacy Policy

You're trusting us with your constituents' data. Here's exactly what we do with it — in plain language, not legal boilerplate.

Last updated: October 14, 2026

The short version

Your uploaded constituent data is stored securely, accessible only to your organization, and used for nothing other than the analysis you request. We will never sell it, share it, or use it to train AI models. Ever.

What we store

We collect two categories of data:

  • Account information — your name, organization name, job title, state, and email address. Collected when you sign up. Used to manage your account and communicate with you about the service.
  • Uploaded datasets — the CSV or Excel files you upload, including coordinates and other columns in your file, subject to the personal-information rules described in the next section. Stored privately and accessible only to your organization. We do not inspect, analyze, or read your data except to provide the features you use.

We do not use cookies for tracking or advertising. We do not build profiles of your constituents. We do not track individual user behavior beyond what's needed for authentication and basic service operation.

Personal information in your uploads

Before anything you upload is saved, we scan every column for personal information — names, email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, Social Security numbers, and bank account numbers. What happens next is under your control. For each type of personal information, you choose one of three rules:

  • Keep — stored as-is. Visible in the app, exports, and reports.
  • Discard — never saved. For street addresses, we keep only the map coordinates (lat/lon) produced by geocoding — never the address itself.
  • Encrypt at rest — saved in encrypted form (AES-256), unreadable in our database without the application's key, but still shown normally to you in the app and exports.

You set standing rules in your account settings, and every upload shows you a confirmation of exactly what will be encrypted or discarded — with the option to change it for that upload — before anything is saved.

Social Security numbers and bank account numbers are never stored, under any setting. If we detect them in an upload, that column is removed automatically. This cannot be overridden.

A few honest caveats:

  • Encryption protects against a breach, not against us. The application holds the encryption key so it can show your data back to you. Encrypting a column means a stolen copy of our database would be useless to an attacker — it does not put your data technically beyond North Arrow's reach. Our commitment not to access your data is the policy promise in "What we will never do"; encryption strengthens that promise but is not a substitute for it.
  • Detection is automated and can miss things. The scanner combines column names with value patterns. An unusually formatted or misleadingly labeled column can slip through, so review the per-upload summary rather than relying on detection alone.
  • Rules apply to future uploads only. Changing a rule does not re-process, re-encrypt, or un-discard data that is already stored. To apply new rules to an existing dataset, delete it and upload it again.

Small counts in what you share

A small group can point to a specific person, so by default small numbers are held back in everything you share — one-pagers, share links, PDF reports and map images:

  • A district with fewer than ten of your records shows its total and nothing more: no charts, no categories, no averages.
  • In larger districts, a category with 1 to 9 records shows as “<10”, and in PDF reports and map images an average resting on fewer than ten values is left out.
  • A total of 1 to 9 also shows as “<10” when it comes from a filtered map, sits beside another dataset's total, or appears on a bill one-pager.

In the app, your own account sees exact numbers.

You can turn this protection off in your account settings, or for a single one-pager. With it off, numbers under 10 appear exactly as they are, including in category breakdowns. Your organization decides whether exact small counts are right for what it shares. We ask you to confirm first, and we record when the account setting was changed and by which login. Documents and links already made keep the setting they were made with. Nothing from your uploaded data is sent to an AI service, and protection always stays on for anything made without signing in.

How your data is isolated

Every organization on District Mapper has a unique ID. Your uploaded dataset is stored at a private path keyed to that ID, and every data access requires authentication through your account. No other user — including us — can retrieve your data through the application.

This isolation is enforced at the database level, not just the interface. A request for your data must pass both Clerk authentication and a database check that confirms the requesting user belongs to your organization.

Third-party services that touch your data

We use a small number of reputable third-party services to operate District Mapper. Here's exactly what each one sees:

Handles authentication. Sees your email address, name, and login activity.

Constituent data: No — Clerk never sees your uploaded constituent data.

Hosts the application and stores your uploaded datasets. All data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and at rest (AES-256).

Constituent data: Your dataset files are stored on Vercel's infrastructure, but are private and not publicly accessible.

Handles billing and payment processing. Sees your payment information when you subscribe.

Constituent data: No — Stripe never sees your uploaded constituent data. We never see your card details.

Used to convert street addresses into coordinates (geocoding) when you upload an address-based dataset. Addresses are sent to Mapbox's API through our server — your browser never contacts Mapbox directly.

Constituent data: Street addresses are sent to Mapbox during the geocoding step. Per Mapbox's API terms, they do not retain or use geocoded address data submitted via the API.

Powers Policy Pulse's keyword suggestions and bill scoring: your organization's profile (mission, issue areas, populations served, policy positions and geographic focus), the legislature and district being scanned, the titles and published summaries of candidate bills, and the titles of bills you marked as not relevant are sent to Anthropic's Claude API.

Constituent data: Nothing from your uploaded data is sent — no rows, columns, counts or names of the people in it. Per Anthropic's commercial terms, API data is not used to train their models.

What we will never do

  • Sell, share, rent, or monetize your constituent data — to anyone, for any price.
  • Access your constituent data for our own analysis, research, or product development.
  • Provide your data to government agencies, law enforcement, or other organizations unless legally compelled and after notifying you (if permitted).

Data retention and deletion

Your uploaded dataset is kept until you delete it or close your account. You can delete your current dataset at any time from the main interface — click the trash icon next to any dataset in the left panel.

Deletion is permanent. When you delete a dataset, it is removed from our servers immediately and cannot be recovered.

To delete your account and all associated data (account info, datasets, billing records), contact charles@north-arrow.org. We will complete the deletion within 30 days.

Security

  • All data is transmitted over HTTPS. Unencrypted connections are not accepted.
  • Uploaded datasets are stored with private access — they are not publicly accessible URLs.
  • Access to your data requires authentication and is scoped to your organization ID.
  • Columns you set to "encrypt at rest" get an additional layer of application-level encryption (AES-256-GCM) on top of Vercel's infrastructure-level encryption.
  • Infrastructure is hosted on Vercel, which maintains SOC 2 Type 2 certification.

If you discover a security vulnerability, please report it to charles@north-arrow.org rather than disclosing it publicly.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to how we handle your data, we will notify you by email and update the "last updated" date above. Continued use of the service after a change constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Contact Charles at charles@north-arrow.org.

District Mapper is operated by North Arrow, a data visualization consultancy serving nonprofits.