Privacy
People asking for help during a disaster are vulnerable. This page is a plain description of exactly what happens to what you type.
What is shown publicly
- Your first name (or the name you give when offering help).
- Your city.
- What you need or what you are offering, and your description.
- How urgent it is, and roughly when you posted.
What is never shown publicly
- Your phone number or email address.
- Your ZIP code.
- Your street address — we never ask for one.
- Your IP address.
The queries that build the public boards physically cannot select these columns, and there is an automated test that fails the build if anyone changes that.
The address checker
When you check an address, it is sent to Spokane County’s public address service and evacuation service to look up the answer. We do not store it, log it, or associate it with you.
What we store and why
- Your contact details— so a moderator can connect you with someone who can help. They are never shown on the site. If a moderator approves a match between you and another person, we email each of you the other’s name and contact details so you can talk directly. That only happens after a human has approved it, and only with the person you were matched with.
- Your ZIP code — to match you with nearby help.
- A one-way hash of your IP address — to stop automated flooding. It is salted and hashed, so it cannot be turned back into an address. If no salt is configured, we store nothing at all rather than something reversible.
Removing your post
When you post, you are given a removal link. It is the only credential attached to your post, so keep it. You can use it at any time to take your post down.
If you have lost it, there is no automated way to recover it — that is deliberate, since anyone able to recover it could also take down someone else’s post.
No tracking
There is no analytics, no advertising, no third-party scripts, and no cookies except the single session cookie used by the moderator to sign in. Nothing on this site loads from another company’s server except the map tiles and the official data sources named throughout.