Privacy

The short version: votes are anonymous unless you choose to keep them under your email, your email is never tied to your answers unless you do, and we don't sell data. The details:

Votes and demographics

Voting requires no account. A browser cookie holds a random identifier so we can enforce one vote per person and remember your demographic answers. Those answers (age bracket, gender, party, voter registration, education) exist to power group breakdowns and are stored against that anonymous identifier only.

Where you came from

Some links to Crosstab carry a label naming where they were shared, such as a newsletter (a link ending in ?via=). When you first arrive by one, the label is kept with your anonymous identifier so results can say where respondents came from, and a newsletter that shares a link can see its readers' results set against everyone's, in aggregate only. It names the link, never you. A link to someone's shared result carries that result, so the site can offer to show you both on one chart.

Your results on another device

From your result page you can make a private link that opens your results in another browser. We store only a scrambled fingerprint of the link, never the link itself and never your email. Anyone who has the link can see your results, so treat it like a password. Making a new link retires the old one.

Keeping your results

If you choose “Keep your results,” we link your answers (votes, the flagship poll, and the questions about you) to your email so you can see them on any device. Nothing is linked until you confirm from the email we send, and a link joins only the browser you open it in. We use the link to show you your history and, in aggregate, to see how opinions change over time among people who keep their results. You can delete your account from “Your answers” at any time: the email is removed and your answers become anonymous again, like any other vote. If you never choose to keep your results, none of this applies to you.

Email and phone

If you only subscribe to the poll email, your email lives in a separate system with no link to your votes or demographics. We send poll notifications after you confirm (double opt-in); every email has one-click unsubscribe. Emails are sent through Resend, which receives only your address and the message itself. A phone number is stored only if you provide one and check the SMS consent box; we currently send no text messages, and if we ever start, it will be exactly what you consented to, with STOP honored immediately.

Technical data

We keep salted, truncated hashes of IP addresses and browser signatures for abuse prevention (ballot-stuffing detection, rate limiting): enough to spot patterns, deliberately not enough to identify you. We use privacy-respecting analytics without cross-site tracking.

Your choices

Polls are open to adults 18 and over; Crosstab is intended for a US audience. Clear your cookies and the anonymous identifier is gone. Email us at hello@crosstabpoll.com to unsubscribe, or to ask for deletion of your subscriber record.