Privacy

Who runs this site

Abolition Events is run by abolitionists, for abolitionists. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by Abolitionists Rising or any other organization. The Norman Statement is reproduced here because everyone who joins affirms it, and it is published with attribution and a link to its source.

What we collect

When you create an account

• Your name, email address and a handle for your profile.
• Your password, which is stored only as a cryptographic hash. Nobody, including us, can read it.
• The date you affirmed the Norman Statement, and which version you affirmed.
• Optionally: a short bio, your city and state, and your timezone.

When you use the site

• The groups you belong to, the events you create or respond to, and anything you write in discussions or post as a link.
• If you add a passkey, the public part of it. A passkey's private half never leaves your device.
• The date of your last sign-in.

Location

If you press Near me, your browser asks your permission and then gives us your approximate position. We round it to about a kilometre, keep it for that browsing session only, and never store it against your account. If you put a city on your profile, we look up that city's coordinates instead. We never ask for or store precise location in the background.

Automatically

• A session cookie, so you stay signed in. It is not used for tracking.
• Standard web server logs.
• If the site hits an unexpected error, we record what page it happened on, your browser's user-agent string, the IP address of the request and, if you were signed in, your account, so that we can fix it.

There is no analytics package on this site, and no advertising or third-party tracking scripts.

Who can see what

• Your profile is visible to signed-in members by default. You can make it public in your settings.
• Your email address is never shown to other members. Administrators of a group you ask to join can see it, and so can site administrators.
• Events are seen by whoever the host chooses: everyone, signed-in members, one group, or specific people.
• Who is attending an event is shown only to its hosts and the hosting group's moderators, unless the host chooses to show attendees to each other. Everyone else sees a count.
• Exact event locations are shown only to the people the host decides, at the time the host decides. They are never included in an email, on a map pin, or in a page's search-engine preview.
• Forums are visible only to members of that group.
• Reports you make are private. The person you report is not told who reported them.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your information or share it for advertising. We use these services to run the site:

• Amazon Web Services hosts the site, stores group logos, and sends our email.
• A map tile provider supplies the map images. Your browser requests those tiles, so that provider sees your IP address, as it would for any map on any site.
• A geocoding service converts city names to coordinates. We send it a city name, never your identity.

When someone posts a link, we fetch that page's title and image from our own server, not from your browser. Preview thumbnails are loaded from the original platform when you view them, so that platform can see your IP address; we ask your browser not to tell them which page you came from.

We will disclose information if the law requires it. If we are ever compelled to hand over information about members, we will tell those affected unless we are legally forbidden from doing so.

How long we keep it

Your account exists until you close it. When you close it, we erase your name, email address, profile and sign-in methods, and the account can never be used again. Things you posted remain, attributed to “Former member”, because conversations and event history would otherwise become incoherent for everyone else in them.

Accounts that are banned keep a record of the ban, so the ban can be enforced. Error records are kept while we need them to fix the problem.

Your choices

• Edit or remove most of your information yourself in Settings.
• Choose which emails you get in Settings → Notifications. Account emails, such as verifying your address and resetting your password, are always sent.
• Close your account in Settings → Profile.
• Ask us for a copy of your information, or ask us to correct something, using the contact form.

Security

The site is served only over HTTPS. Passwords are hashed, and passkeys are supported so you need not use a password at all. Uploaded files are kept in private storage and served through the application, so permission is checked every time.

No site can promise perfect security. Please use a unique password, or a passkey, and tell us through the contact form if you find a weakness.

Children

This site is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has created an account, please tell us and we will remove it.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so on the site. The date at the top always shows when it last changed.