How we handle your data
This opinion poll is designed to collect the minimum data needed to prevent duplicate voting and detect manipulation — and nothing more.
Last updated: April 2026
In one paragraph
We never store your raw phone number, Google account id, or IP address. You may sign in with Google (handled by Firebase) or verify by SMS. When you vote, we keep only: a one-way HMAC-SHA256 hash of your phone number **or** of your Firebase user id (so the same account or number cannot vote twice), your declared district and age bracket (for aggregate charts), the country/region you selected (or from your phone number for SMS), and a 2-letter country + region from your connection for bucketing. We do not use advertising cookies, and vote records are deleted within 30 days of the poll closing.
The data we store against each vote
• SMS path: a one-way HMAC-SHA256 hash of your phone number (E.164) — cannot be reversed to the number. • Google path: a one-way HMAC-SHA256 hash of your Firebase user id (we never store your email or Google id in our database). • Your declared district (or "Outside Kerala") and age bracket — aggregate charts only. • Country code for bucketing: from your phone number (SMS) or from the country you select in the form (Google). • An approximate country + region code derived from your connection (e.g. IN/KL). • A timestamp when the vote was cast, and whether verification was phone or google (for support only). Firebase (Google): if you choose Google sign-in, Google processes authentication under their terms; we receive only a short-lived ID token to verify you server-side. We also use Google Analytics 4 for aggregate site statistics (IP-anonymized).
Data we will not — and cannot — see
• Your raw phone number (hashed before it is written to our database). • Your raw Firebase / Google user id or email in our database (only the one-way hash of the uid is stored). • Your raw IP address (only the 2-letter country and 2-letter region code are kept). • Your name, email, or any government ID in our vote database. • Your precise location, GPS coordinates, or home address. • Cookies for cross-site advertising tracking. • Any deliberate linkage in our systems between your stored hash and your identity in other services.
Geographic bucketing, and why it matters
This poll asks who should lead the Kerala UDF. To make the headline number meaningful, we need to tell apart: votes from inside Kerala, votes from Malayalis living elsewhere in India or abroad, and votes from everyone else. We do this by reading a 2-letter country + 2-letter region code from the CloudFront edge server that delivered the page to you (e.g. "IN" + "KL" for Kerala, "AE" for UAE). Your raw IP address is never stored — only the derived codes, which by themselves cannot identify an individual. This approach is consistent with India's DPDP Act 2023 notion of legitimate non-personal processing.
Retention and deletion
Vote records (the data listed above) are deleted within 30 days of the poll closing on 4 May 2026. Google Analytics data is retained for 14 months under GA4 defaults. No backup tapes, no archives, no data warehouse.
What you can ask us to do
You may at any time ask us to: • Delete your vote — SMS: tell us the phone number you used so we can re-compute the same hash, remove the row, and adjust counters / Firebase as needed. Google: tell us the Google account email you used (or enough detail for us to verify you in good faith); we locate the row via the same hashed uid and remove it. • Show what we hold — describe the phone number or Google account you used; we explain the single aggregate row tied to that verification method. • Clarify anything on this page. We only store one-way hashes in our own database, so we need the information above to find your record.
Who operates this poll
This is an independent, non-binding opinion survey. It is not affiliated with the Indian National Congress, the UDF, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee, or the Election Commission of India. For data requests, corrections, or questions, please contact the site operator at the address on the Contact page.