Write to Congress
Privacy Policy
Effective date: August 18, 2026
What Write to Congress Does
Write to Congress is an iOS app that helps you contact your elected representatives. You describe your position on an issue, the app drafts a personalized message using AI, and it opens your representative's official contact form inside the app and fills in the fields for you. You always review the filled form, solve any CAPTCHA, and press the office's own Send button yourself. The app never submits anything on its own.
What We Collect
We collect the following information when you create an account and use the app:
- Account: email address and password (your password is hashed by our authentication provider and never stored in plain text)
- Profile: name, mailing address, phone number, and reply-to email, used to find your representatives and fill their contact forms
- Messages: the issue descriptions you provide, the AI-drafted messages generated from them, and a per-representative record of each message's status (draft, sent)
- Causes and chats: the causes you follow and the questions you send to the in-app assistant, which are processed to generate responses
- Consents: a record of the agreement version you accepted and when
- Shares: if you choose to share a topic with a friend, we store the share code, your first name, and the topic essence you approved, so the recipient's link works; shares expire after 90 days
- Activity: which screens and features you use, timings, and error codes, so we can fix problems and improve the app (message text is never included outside the beta program)
What Stays on Your Device
- Your sign-in tokens are kept in the iOS Keychain on your phone.
- When you send a message, the app may take a snapshot of the form page on your device only, using Apple's on-device text recognition, solely to notice the office's confirmation page and mark your message as sent. These snapshots are not uploaded and never leave your phone.
Beta Program
If you join our beta through TestFlight, you will be asked to accept a separate Beta Program Agreement. With that consent, the beta build records what you do in the app and what you send, including message and chat text, so we can debug and improve the app. Beta recordings are never sold, never shared with sponsors, never used for advertising, and recorded message content is deleted within 30 days. Outside the beta, we collect activity data without any message content: screens, timings, counts, and error codes.
How We Use Your Data
- To find your federal representatives from your address
- To draft messages in your words and fill official contact forms in front of you
- To store your message history so you can review past contacts
- To improve the accuracy of form filling for representatives' offices
We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties for advertising or marketing purposes.
Filling Official Contact Forms
When you choose to send a message, the app opens the representative's official website in a browser view inside the app and fills the form fields from your profile and message. Your information is entered into that official government website exactly as if you had typed it yourself, and is then governed by that website's own privacy practices. The app never presses Send: you always review the form and submit it yourself.
Third-Party Services
| Service | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Secure database, authentication, and the server functions that power AI drafting |
| Anthropic (Claude AI) | Drafting your personalized messages and answering in-app questions; your message text and instructions are sent to Anthropic to generate responses |
| Railway | Hosting this website and share-link pages |
| Zippopotam.us | Converting your ZIP code to a location for representative lookup |
| Smarty (address validation) or U.S. Postal Service (Addresses API) | Standardizing your street address and finding your ZIP+4 when you save your profile, so official contact forms accept it; the service receives only the address you typed, never your name, email, or messages |
| U.S. Census Bureau geocoder | Converting your validated street address to a congressional district so you are matched to the correct House member; receives only the street address |
| OpenStates API | Finding representatives from your location |
| Congress.gov / congress-legislators data | Public directories of federal representatives |
Data Storage and Security
Your data is stored in Supabase (US-based). Row Level Security ensures only you can read or write your own account data. All data is transmitted over HTTPS.
Your Rights
You can update your profile information at any time in the app under My profile. To request deletion of your account and all associated data, contact us at the address below.
Contact
Questions or data requests: privacy@writetocongress.net