Privacy & Security
Your vote stays private.
Ayenay is built on a simple rule: no one should be able to see how you voted, use it against you, or sell it. This page explains how we keep that promise.
Your individual vote is secret
Nobody can see how you voted — not even us.
When you vote Aye or Nay, your choice is saved under a scrambled, one-way code instead of your name or account. The code is created with a secret key that only our app server uses at the moment you vote. That means even someone with full access to our database cannot tell which way you voted on any item. The Ayenay team included.
Public tallies only show totals.
The only thing shown publicly is the running count — for example, "120 Aye, 45 Nay." Those numbers are added up from all votes, but they do not reveal who voted which way.
Comments are public, votes are not.
Comments and likes are tied to your display name because you choose to share them. Votes are not. Someone can see that you commented on an item, but they cannot see whether you voted Aye or Nay on it.
What we never do with your data
- We never sell, rent, or trade your personal information or vote data to advertisers, campaigns, data brokers, or political parties.
- We never show individual votes to elected officials, council members, government agencies, or law enforcement.
- We never use your vote history to target ads, build a profile for resale, or train third-party models.
- We never share your email address, phone number, or address with other users without your explicit permission.
How we protect your data
Encrypted connections.
Every page, vote, and form on Ayenay is served over HTTPS with TLS encryption, so data moving between your device and our servers cannot be read by third parties.
One-way hashing so votes can't be traced back to you.
Instead of storing your account next to your choice, we store a HMAC-SHA256 hash — an industry-standard one-way scrambling used by banks and password systems. The same input always produces the same code, but nobody can reverse the code to figure out who it belongs to without a secret key that only lives on our server.
Even we can't look up your vote.
Because the choice is stored under a hash and not your user id, there is no query the Ayenay team can run to see how you voted. Your vote choice can only be reproduced when you yourself are signed in and asking the server for your own record.
Secure sign-in.
You must sign in to vote or access any account-specific data. We use industry-standard authentication with password hashing and email verification.
Admin access is limited.
Site administrators can manage content and organizations, but they do not have access to view individual votes. Your vote choice remains private even from the admin team — this is enforced by the hashing above, not just by policy.
Who owns Ayenay
Ayenay is operated as a community-owned, non-profit platform. It is not owned by investors, advertisers, or political parties. The goal is to serve the people who use it — residents who want a stronger voice in local decisions. We are in the process of formalizing the non-profit structure.
What we collect and why
Account information.
We collect your email, display name, and optional address/phone during signup so we can verify that you are part of the community, send notifications you ask for, and prevent duplicate or fake accounts.
Votes and comments.
We store your votes to compute community tallies and your comments to show discussions you choose to participate in.
Usage data.
We may collect basic, anonymous usage data (page views, error logs) to keep the site running and improve it. We do not track you across other websites.
Have a privacy question?
Use the form below to send a message. It will open your email app and address it directly to our privacy contact.
This page is maintained by the Ayenay team to answer common privacy questions. Last updated July 2026.