Privacy

What we collect

When you use the story form, we collect only what's in it: your name and how you'd like to be identified (or "anonymous"), an optional email for follow-up, category, whether you've already contacted the OIG/Congress/a Veteran Service Organization, your story text, and your consent choices. Name and email are both optional.

The "I'm not a robot" check on the form (Cloudflare Turnstile) also sees your IP address and browser signals, in order to tell a human from a bot — it does not see anything you typed into the form.

Documents

Don't email us documents or screenshots — there's no upload field on the form either. If we ever ask you for something specific to verify a story, we use it only for that check: it's redacted out of anything we publish, or deleted right after we're done reviewing it.

How it's reviewed

Every submission is reviewed by hand before anything is shared — nothing is posted automatically. Only the person who runs IndependantVA sees a raw submission; nobody else has access. No name, email, or other identifying detail is shared until your consent and redaction choices have been applied. We do not sell, rent, or share your information with advertisers, data brokers, or anyone else, for any reason.

How long we keep it

Submissions are kept for as long as needed to review, verify, and (if you consented) publish your story. If you'd like yours deleted — whether or not it was ever published — email independantva.project@gmail.com with roughly when you submitted it and we'll remove it.

Email isn't a secure channel

Regular email isn't encrypted end-to-end. If you think you need to send us something sensitive, ask us first and we'll figure out a safer way — don't just send it.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you want to ask about your own submission, email independantva.project@gmail.com.