Privacy policy
Effective October 23, 2026
ShowUp HTX helps you find your local governments and speak up. We collect as little as we can. Here is what we keep and why.
Your address
We send your address once to the U.S. Census Bureau's address lookup to find your local governments. To save you from retyping it, we keep it only in this browser's local storage. We do not store it on our servers, in your account, or in links. While you type, we send only the street name, never your house number, to Photon, a free street search built on OpenStreetMap, to suggest matching streets. Links to your results hold only a list of government IDs, not your address. To remove the saved address, sign out in the account menu or clear this browser's site data.
Optional sign-in, a few cookies
You don't need an account. We set a few small cookies: your language (NEXT_LOCALE), the roles you picked, like student or renter (showup_stakes), the IDs of your governments, so the app can show their updates (showup_bodies), and a random browser ID (showup_coach_id) that limits how often the AI coach can run. Your government IDs stay on this browser for about six months, so you don't have to enter your address again. Sign out in the account menu to make this browser forget them. If you sign up for alerts, one more cookie (showup_sub) remembers that you signed up. It doesn't hold your phone number. If you sign in with Google, or you're a team admin, a sign-in cookie keeps you signed in.
Signing in with Google
Signing in is optional. If you sign in with Google, Google shares your email address, your name and a link to your profile photo with us, and Supabase, our database, keeps them for your account. We also save the IDs of the governments you follow and the roles you picked, so they follow you to other devices. Your street address stays only in this browser and is never added to your account. Signing out makes this browser forget your governments, your roles and your saved address, but your account keeps your governments and roles. To delete your account and everything saved with it, choose Delete my account in the account menu.
Limits on use
To stop abuse, we keep a scrambled (hashed) copy of your IP address for up to two days, only to limit how often the app can be used. The scrambled copy changes every day.
"Who governs you?" answers
If you answer the "Who governs you?" question, we store your answers anonymously, as types of government only (for example, "school board"). Nothing in them identifies you.
Comment drafts
Speak up drafts are never stored on our servers. Your progress stays in your own browser. To give you feedback, we send your draft to OpenRouter, which passes it to an AI model from Google (Gemini) that processes it for us.
Alerts
Alerts are optional. If you turn on browser notifications, we store your browser's push subscription (a web address and keys from your browser's push service, run by Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft depending on your browser), the governments you follow and your language. That push service delivers the notifications for us. Turn them off on the Alerts page and we delete it. If you sign up for text alerts, we store your phone number after you verify it, and Twilio sends the texts for us. The program is called "ShowUp HTX alerts." Message frequency varies. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop or HELP for help. If you're under 18, a parent must agree before we text you or send you notifications.
No sharing for marketing
We do not share your mobile number or text-message consent with third parties for marketing.
Services that handle data for us
Supabase (our database and sign-in), Vercel (hosts the website), the U.S. Census Bureau (finds where your address is), Photon and OpenStreetMap (suggest street names as you type), OpenRouter and Google (AI models, for summaries and comment feedback), Google (sign-in, if you choose it), your browser's push service from Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft (browser notifications) and Twilio (text messages).
News links
Government pages show headlines and links from outside news outlets. We don't copy the articles.
Contact
Questions or requests? Open an issue on our project page: https://github.com/PlaidMod/NeighborhoodHacks/issues