This privacy policy describes how Independent Voter News (IVN) collects, uses, and protects your information when you visit ivn.us, sign up for our newsletters, create a member account, comment, donate, or otherwise interact with us.
Last updated: October 27, 2026
Scope
This policy applies to ivn.us and to the newsletters, member accounts, and other services we offer through it. IVN is a co-publication of the Independent Voter Project and the Foundation for Independent Voter Education. Each of those organizations has its own website and its own privacy policy; this policy does not apply to them, or to any other website we link to.
Information You Provide
You can read IVN without giving us any personal information. You may choose to provide some when you:
- Subscribe to a newsletter or create a member account. We ask for your email address, and optionally your name, so we can deliver the newsletters you choose and let you sign in. Ghost, the platform that runs our site, sends sign-in links and one-time codes to that address.
- Sign in with Google. If you choose "Continue with Google," Google sends us your name, your email address, and a confirmation that the address is verified. We use this only to create or sign in to your IVN member account; we do not receive your Google password, your contacts, or anything else from your Google account.
- Comment. Comments are public. The name you choose, any short bio you add, and the content of your comments are visible to everyone who reads the article.
- Donate or buy a membership. Donations are processed by Donorbox and paid memberships by Stripe. They collect your payment details directly; we receive your name, email address, the amount, and a record of the transaction, but not your full card number.
- Contact us, send a tip, submit a story, or republish one. We keep what you send us, including your name, email address, and, for republication requests, the outlet you write for, so we can respond and keep a record of permissions.
Information Collected Automatically
When you visit, we and the services we use automatically record your IP address, browser and device type, operating system, the pages you view, the site that referred you, and how you move through the site. From your IP address we estimate your approximate location (country, state, and city). When we send a newsletter, the email service records whether it was opened and which links were clicked. This information helps us understand what our readers value, fix problems, and keep the site secure.
How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect to:
- deliver the site and the newsletters you asked for, and manage your member account;
- process donations and memberships, and send receipts;
- respond to your messages, tips, corrections, and republication requests;
- understand how IVN is read so we can improve our reporting and the site;
- measure the reach of our stories and of our own promotions on other platforms;
- protect the site and our readers from abuse, spam, and security incidents;
- comply with legal obligations and enforce our policies.
We do not use your information to make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
Analytics, Advertising, and Other Services We Use
IVN relies on outside services to publish the site, deliver newsletters, take donations, and measure our reach. The main ones are listed here so you know who may receive information about your visit. Each has its own privacy policy.
- Ghost (Ghost Foundation) hosts the site and runs member accounts, newsletters, comments, and our basic site statistics. Newsletter email is delivered through Ghost's email provider.
- Outpost Publishing Co-op provides the subscription prompts you see on the site and reports on how readers respond to them.
- Plausible Analytics gives us privacy-friendly, aggregate traffic statistics without cookies.
- Google Analytics and Google Ads help us understand our audience and measure whether the promotions we run on Google bring readers to IVN.
- Meta Pixel and StackAdapt measure the reach of our own promotions on Meta's platforms and elsewhere and may be used to show IVN's content to people who have visited the site before. These tools may set cookies and may share information about your visit with Meta and StackAdapt, which they use according to their own policies.
- Contextly suggests related stories at the end of articles.
- Donorbox and Stripe process donations and membership payments.
- Google provides the "Continue with Google" sign-in option described above. Cloudflare runs that sign-in service and helps protect the site from abuse.
- Embedded media and social content from YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, X, Facebook, Instagram, and similar services may load from those companies' servers when it appears on a page, and they may record your visit as they would on their own sites.
We do not run third-party advertising networks on IVN, and we do not sell your personal information.
Cookies
Our website uses cookies and similar technologies (small data files stored on your device) for three purposes:
- Essential: keeping you signed in to your member account and remembering choices like a closed prompt. The site does not work properly without these.
- Analytics: understanding how the site is used, as described above.
- Advertising measurement: the Google, Meta, and StackAdapt tools described above.
You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings, though blocking essential cookies will sign you out and may affect site functionality. Our site does not currently respond to "Do Not Track" browser signals. You can limit how Google and Meta use information about your visits through your Google Ads Settings and your Facebook or Instagram ad preferences.
Information Sharing
We do not sell your personal information to third parties, and we do not rent or trade our newsletter or member lists. We share information only:
- with the service providers listed above, who may use it only to provide their services to us;
- with the Independent Voter Project or the Foundation for Independent Voter Education, our co-publishers, when you ask us to (for example, by opting in to their updates), or in aggregate form that does not identify you;
- when required by law, subpoena, or court order, or when we believe in good faith that sharing is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of IVN, our readers, or the public;
- in connection with a merger, reorganization, or transfer of IVN to a successor organization, which would be bound by this policy.
Anything you choose to make public on the site, including comments, is visible to everyone.
Your Choices and Rights
You are in control of what you share with us:
- Newsletters: every email includes an unsubscribe link, and you can change which newsletters you receive from your account page at any time.
- Your account: you can update your name and email address from your account page, and you can ask us to delete your account and the information attached to it.
- Comments: you can edit or delete your own comments.
- Access, correction, and deletion: whether or not the law where you live requires it, you can ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. We will respond within 30 days. We may keep records we need for legal, tax, or security reasons (for example, donation records) and will tell you if so.
We will never treat you differently for exercising these rights. California residents and residents of other states with privacy laws may have additional rights, including the right to opt out of targeted advertising; the ad-measurement opt-outs described under Cookies apply to everyone. To make a request, contact us using the details at the end of this policy.
Data Retention
We keep your account and newsletter information for as long as your account or subscription is active and for a reasonable period afterwards, so we can honor your preferences and answer questions. Donation and membership records are kept as long as tax and accounting rules require. Server logs and analytics data are kept for a limited time and then deleted or reduced to aggregate statistics.
Children Under 13
Our website does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we discover that we have collected such information, we will delete it promptly.
Security
IVN uses reasonable technical, physical, and administrative measures to protect your information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, including encrypted connections to the site and to the services we use. However, no method of electronic storage or transmission is 100% secure.
Visitors Outside the United States
IVN is published in the United States and our services are hosted there. If you visit from elsewhere, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, where privacy laws may differ from those where you live.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with a new "last updated" date, and if a change materially affects how we use information you have already given us, we will tell members by email before it takes effect.
Contact
If you have questions about this privacy policy or want to exercise any of the rights described above, email us at editor@ivn.us.