Privacy Policy
Effective date: On publication for the founding beta
Version: Draft v2
Last updated: September 16, 2026
Status: Draft (pending legal review)
Steppe is ad-free civic infrastructure in development for Redmond and Central Oregon. Steppe has a signed fiscal-sponsorship agreement with Ignite Empowerment Foundation, a Central Oregon 501(c)(3). Gregory Chism operates the member app and handles member data. Ignite handles sponsor-routed grants, donations, and other sponsored responsibilities, but does not routinely handle the membership database or member subscriptions. A particular contract may be handled by Gregory Chism or Ignite; the contract will identify its actual party.
This policy explains what the founding beta collects, why, who handles it, and the choices members have. The plain-language summary is at steppe.community/privacy.
1. Information We Collect
We collect the minimum needed for the interest list and, once beta accounts are enabled, a verified local community.
| Category | Examples | Why we collect it |
|---|---|---|
| Beta interest | Email; optional first name and area response; explicit email consent | Send the one beta-readiness notice requested |
| Account basics | Email, display name, language | Sign-in and member-to-member contact |
| Residency check | Proof of local address | Intended for one eligibility decision; collection remains closed until deletion and orphan cleanup are verified |
| Member content | Listings, messages, group activity, votes | Provide the service the member requested |
| Safety intake | A report and an excerpt a participant chooses to disclose | Let a human moderator review the report |
| Technical support | Problem description, optional expected result and reply email; account association when signed in; optional reviewed technical details | Investigate and resolve a reported problem |
| Minimal logs | Basic technical and security records | Keep the service working and safe |
The founding beta is free and does not collect member subscription payments. Before paid membership begins, this policy and the checkout flow will name the payment provider and describe the data it receives. Gregory Chism will administer member subscriptions directly rather than routing them through Ignite.
2. How We Use Information
We use information to operate the beta list and member service, verify local eligibility, provide the exchange, groups, messages, and governance, send service email, respond to reports, and secure the platform. We do not use member data for advertising or behavioral profiling, and we do not sell it.
Contact-form messages are delivered through Resend to the Steppe inbox. They are not stored in the app. Direct messages are readable in the app only by the two participants; moderators and administrators have no message-reader interface. Database operators can technically access plaintext stored in the database, but Steppe policy and ordinary tooling prohibit routine access.
Optional bug reports and crash monitoring
The beta's Report a bug control sends your description, normalized page name, language and app release to Steppe. Signed-in reports are linked to your account. You may add an expected result or reply email. Please leave out passwords, sign-in codes, residency documents and private messages.
Technical history is off until you turn it on. It remembers at most 100 technical navigation/action/error events from the previous ten minutes in page-session memory. You can inspect the history and browser, operating-system, viewport, language, connectivity and release details before choosing to include them. Typed field values, message contents, vote choices, screenshots, session replay and raw exception text are excluded. Your written description may itself contain personal information. Signing out, changing accounts or leaving the page session clears the local history.
Separately, Sentry receives anonymous browser session health and sanitized error records to help us detect crashes. These records exclude member identity, submitted text, request content, browsing history and session replay. If you choose to include technical details in a report, up to five recent error references from that page session can connect the report to its exact Sentry errors. Designated support operators see matching error type, time, app release and code locations in the private case. Report descriptions and the optional activity history stay in Steppe; they are not copied to Sentry.
3. Legal Bases for Processing
Where a legal basis is required, Steppe relies on the requested service or membership agreement, explicit consent for the beta-readiness email and other optional communications, legal obligations, and the legitimate interest in operating a secure community service.
4. How We Share Information
We do not sell or rent member information. We disclose the minimum needed to service providers operating under contract, to Ignite when a sponsored responsibility actually requires it, or when valid legal process requires it.
| Recipient | Purpose | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Authentication, database, and private verification storage | Account and app data needed to provide those services |
| Resend | Service email and contact-form delivery | Recipient email; contact content in transit; bug-report alerts contain only a reference and private review link, not the report description or diagnostics |
| Sentry | Browser crash health and maintenance monitoring | Anonymous session health, sanitized error/code details and maintenance check-in status; no report descriptions or optional activity history |
| Hosting/infrastructure providers | Run and secure the app | Requests and operational data needed to host it |
| Ignite Empowerment Foundation | Administer sponsored funds and responsibilities | Only information needed for the applicable sponsored matter; no routine membership-database access |
| A future payment provider | Process member subscriptions after beta | Payment and transaction data entered with that provider |
The future payment provider will be named before paid membership data is collected. A contract handled by Ignite or Gregory Chism will identify that party rather than treating “Steppe” as an unspecified legal entity.
5. Retention and Account Deletion
We do not keep member data merely because storage is available.
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Beta-interest email | Until the notice is sent or the person asks to be removed |
| Account basics | While the account is active; intended to be removed or scrubbed on deletion after the deletion/session-revocation gate passes |
| Residency proof | Not collected until delete-after-review and orphan cleanup are verified end to end |
| Messages | Intended to remain participant-only and to remove a person's sent messages on account deletion; both behavior and session revocation must pass the beta gate |
| Safety reports | Until resolved or the reporter deletes their account; a participant-supplied excerpt may remain even if the source conversation is later deleted |
| Consent, closed-ballot, moderation, and audit records | Kept in minimized or anonymized form when deletion would make the governance or accountability record inaccurate |
| Bug reports and private case history | Expire 30 days after submission; ordinary access ends at expiry and the next successful hourly cleanup deletes the stored content. Cleanup failure can delay physical deletion. Account deletion removes linked reports. |
| Minimal operational logs | Kept only as long as operationally needed; no fixed purge promise is made until it is technically enforced and verified |
Support operators must delete downloaded bug-report copies by the report's 30-day expiry, or earlier when handling a valid deletion request. Downloads are separate copies and must not be placed in shared public folders. Provider recovery copies are subject to provider retention; deleting a live record does not promise immediate erasure of every recovery copy. If data is restored, expired reports and previously requested deletions must be reapplied before ordinary access resumes. The current Supabase Free plan does not provide project backups; this does not establish a retention period for provider-internal recovery copies.
Account exports include the member's own unexpired bug reports, excluding private support notes. Anonymous reports are not retrospectively linked after sign-in.
A valid legal hold may temporarily stop deletion of the specific records covered by that hold. Steppe will not broaden a hold beyond its lawful scope.
6. Your Rights and Choices
The intended beta process lets you ask to see, export, or correct information, withdraw optional communication consent, and delete your account. Before beta invitations, Steppe must verify that export coverage is complete, deletion removes ordinary account data and authored messages, and every surviving session loses authority. Integrity-required governance, consent, moderation, and audit records may remain attached only to a scrubbed “Former member” profile where necessary.
7. Security
Steppe uses access controls, row-level database rules, least-privilege service credentials, private verification storage, and human review for consequential moderation. No system is perfectly secure. Steppe will give notices required by applicable breach law.
8. Children's Privacy
The founding beta is for adults and is not directed to children. A version for ages 13–17 will not launch without separate safeguards and legal review. Steppe does not knowingly collect information from a child under 13.
9. Changes to This Policy
We will post a revised version with a new effective date and give advance notice of material changes where required. A material privacy promise will not be published before the product can actually perform it.
10. Contact
Privacy questions and requests go to hello@steppe.community or by mail to 3566 NW 8th Street, Redmond, OR 97756. Gregory Chism handles member-data requests. Ignite should be contacted only for a sponsored matter that Ignite actually administers.