Privacy policy

When you sign in. We use Google or Facebook to sign you in, or send a one-time link to your email. From that we receive your email address and, where the provider supplies it, your name. We never receive your password. If you sign in with Facebook and it does not give us a working email address, we will ask you for one before your first vote.

What we show publicly. Your name is shortened to a first name and last initial — “Marta G.” — and only that shortened form ever appears on the site. Your email address is never shown publicly.

If you enter the contest. Both partners’ first names, the town you select, your story, and any photos you upload. Entries are reviewed before they appear, and once approved they are public.

When you vote. Which entry, when, and a one-way scrambled fingerprint of your network address. We do not store the address itself. The scrambled version lets us count votes from a single network and stop automated voting without keeping a record of who browsed from where.

If you donate for bonus votes. The amount, the entry you chose, and a receipt email address. Card numbers go directly to Stripe and never reach our systems. We store Stripe’s reference to the payment, not the payment details.

To run the contest — counting votes fairly, enforcing one free vote per entry per day, grouping entries by town, and contacting entrants and the winner.

To send transactional email: entry received, entry approved, donation receipts. Donation receipts are records you may need for tax purposes, so we send them regardless of your marketing preferences.

For marketing. Signing in adds your email address to Milk & Honey Ranch’s mailing list, for news about the ranch and the contest. This is stated on the sign-in page before you sign in. Every marketing email carries a one-click unsubscribe, and unsubscribing does not affect your account, your votes or your entry.

To detect and stop fraud. There is a substantial prize here, so we do look for automated voting and duplicate accounts, and we may block an account or a network that is abusing the contest.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers or list resellers, and we do not post anything to your Google or Facebook account.

We use a small number of service providers, each for one job, and each only receives what that job needs:

• Supabase — accounts, sign-in and the database
• Vercel — hosting the site
• Stripe — donation payments, including all card details
• Mailgun — sending email
• Airtable — a mirror of entries, used by our team to review and moderate them
• Google and Facebook — only if you choose to sign in with them

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to investigate fraud or protect someone’s safety.

Entries, votes and standings are kept for the life of the contest and afterwards as a record of the result — a contest whose history can be quietly rewritten is not a fair one. Donation records are kept as long as tax and charity rules require. Everything else is deleted when you ask us to.

You can unsubscribe from marketing email at any time using the link in any message, or at /unsubscribe.

You can ask for a copy of your information, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Residents of many states have these rights under state law, and we extend them to everyone rather than checking where you live. See how to delete your account and data.

You can also disconnect this site from your Google or Facebook account in that provider’s own security settings, which stops you signing in but does not by itself delete anything we hold.

This contest is for adults. Both partners must be 18 or older, and the site is not directed at children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top and, where the change affects how we use your email, tell you by email.

Questions, requests or complaints: contact@neverjustexist.org, or through our contact form.