Your privacy is important to Ask the Candidates, and we do not collect any more information about you than is necessary to help us empower you with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. Any information that we do collect or that you provide is kept in the strictest confidence and not shared with or sold to others without your explicit consent.

Last Updated: May 5, 2008

What Information We Collect

Our website software does not collect personally-identifiable information. It does, however, record your computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address. This IP address could be used to identify your computer's geographic location but is not linked to any other information about you.

Your personal information is used for member registration and donations

We record personally-identifiable information (name, e-mail address, mailing address, city, state, postal code and country) if you choose to provide it by registering for our site. Our donation and action forms, processed by the third-party Democracy In Action service, collects similar data along with your credit card information using a secure, industry-standard protocol known as Secure Socket Layer encryption.

You may alter your geographic information at any time by updating your user profile. You may also delete your account entirely by editing your user profile and pressing "Delete my account" at the bottom of the screen.

We use cookies and statistical tracking to enhance our website

We also use a small piece of data called a "cookie" in order to provide you a continuous experience, such as allowing you to save your passwords on your own computer if you wish. You may set your browser to not accept cookies by altering its preferences, and although you may experience difficulties logging in as a registered user most areas of our site will function normally. As is done on most sites, our web server also collects the date and time of your visit for statistical, non-identifiable tracking.

We encrypt your user password for the website

Your password is stored on our system in an encrypted format — not even we know what it is! You can change your password at any time by editing your user profile.

We do not collect information from children under 13

Ask the Candidates is concerned about the safety and privacy of children online. We will make all efforts to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its accompanying FTC regulations establish US federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet. We do not and will not knowingly contact or collect personal information from children under 13. Our site is not intended to solicit information of any kind from children under 13, and we will develop our site with the capacity to block acceptance of information from children under 13 whenever age-related information is requested.

It is possible that by fraud or deception by others we may receive information given to us or pertaining to children under 13. If we are notified of this, as soon as we verify the information we will immediately obtain parental consent or delete the information from our servers. If you want to notify us of our receipt of information by children under 13, please do so by contacting us.

Security breaches

Please note that security breaches can occur even if reasonable steps are taken to prevent such breaches; for example, we cannot guarantee that information provided through our sites will not be illegally accessed on our servers or intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet. Please contact us if you believe there has been any breach of the security of our website.

What Information We Disclose

AskTheCandidates.org is a joint project of the Genocide Intervention Network, the Save Darfur Coalition, the Enough Project and STAND: An Anti-Genocide Coalition. The information you provide will be shared between these organizations; however, you will not be signed up for any mailing lists unless you choose to do so on our newsletter page or when you take action.

If you provide your information to these organizations by signing up for their newsletters, your information will be governed by their individual privacy policies:

Outside requests for your information will require your approval

Subject to the privacy policies of our partner organizations (see above), requests for your information from outside parties will require your explicit approval. On occasion, the news media or elected officials may request the names and contact information of one or more members. We will contact you directly to ask for your permission in each and every case, and will not release this information without your explicit written consent. If you have previously given your consent to release your information and later decide you no longer wish to consent, contact us and we will update your status. Additionally, we may share personal information with affiliated organizations and third parties who provide services, such as website hosting or other services of an administrative or technical nature, solely for the purpose of providing such services and subject to confidentiality obligations. If we are required by law to disclose any information you have submitted, we will attempt to provide you with notice, unless we are prohibited, in order to give you an opportunity to legally challenge such disclosure.

Contact Us with Any Questions or Concerns!

Please contact us if you have any questions regarding our privacy policy. Please note that as new features are added to this website, the privacy policy may change; such changes will be posted on this page. You can determine whether our privacy policy has been modified since your last visit by checking the "last updated" legend at the top of the policy. As stated above, the spirit of this policy will be maintained.