Privacy Policy

We built Fix Central Hudson to help our neighbors — not to harvest their data. This policy explains exactly what we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with it. We tried to make it short enough that you'll actually read it.

The short version

We collect the bare minimum to make this site work. We don't sell your data. We don't share your individual information with anyone. We don't track you across the internet. We use one cookie, and it's just to keep you logged in.

What we collect

When you create an account

• Email address — used for authentication. This is the only piece of identifying information we store.
• Display name — optional, chosen by you, shown on forum posts. Can be anything — it doesn't have to be your real name.
• Zip code — optional, used to group bills by area for community analysis.

When you submit a bill

• Bill amount (dollars)
• kWh usage (if you provide it)
• Billing period (month and year)
• Meter read type (actual, estimated, or unknown)
• Zip code

When you use the forum

• Your posts and replies
• Timestamps of when you posted

Automatically

• Basic server logs (IP address, browser type, pages visited) — standard for any website. We use these to keep the site running and to detect abuse, not to build profiles on you.

What we do NOT collect

This is just as important as what we do collect. We never ask for or store:

• Your real name (unless you choose to use it as your display name)
• Your home address
• Your Central Hudson account number
• Your Social Security number
• Your payment or banking information
• Your phone number

We designed the bill intake form specifically to avoid collecting anything that could identify you personally. Zip code is the most specific location data we ask for, and a zip code covers thousands of households.

How we use your data

• Anomaly detection — we compare your bill against weather data, historical patterns, and community averages to calculate a suspicion score
• Community statistics — aggregate numbers like "average bill in zip code 12401" or "percentage of estimated reads this month"
• Forum display — showing your posts and replies to other users
• Authentication — keeping you signed in
• Site improvement — understanding how people use the site so we can make it better

How we store your data

Your data is stored in a SQLite database on our server. We use HTTPS for all connections, so data is encrypted in transit.

We are a small community project, not a Fortune 500 company. We use reasonable security measures appropriate for the sensitivity of the data we hold (which is intentionally low — we designed it that way). But no system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee that a breach will never happen.

Cookies

We use one cookie: a session cookie that keeps you logged in. That's it. No tracking cookies. No advertising cookies. No third-party analytics cookies.

We don't sell your data

Period. Full stop. We don't sell it, we don't rent it, we don't trade it, we don't give it away for marketing purposes. There is no business model here. This is a community project built by volunteers.

We don't share individual data

We share aggregate statistics — things like "42 bills submitted from zip code 12601 this month, with an average amount of $287." We do not share your individual bill data, email address, or any other personal information with anyone, including Central Hudson, the PSC, elected officials, journalists, or other users.

The only exception: if we are legally compelled to produce data by a valid court order or subpoena, we will comply with the law. If that ever happens, we will notify affected users unless legally prohibited from doing so.

Bill photos

If you upload a photo of your utility bill, you are responsible for redacting any personal information before uploading. Your name, address, account number — cross it all out. We strongly recommend using your phone's markup tools or a black marker before taking the photo.

We store uploaded images on our server. We may use text extraction to pull bill data from the image. We do not run facial recognition or any other biometric analysis (obviously — it's a utility bill).

Third-party services

We try to minimize third-party dependencies. Currently:

• Hosting — standard cloud hosting provider.

We do not use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or any other advertising or tracking service.

Your rights

You can do the following at any time:

• See your data — your profile page shows your submitted bills and forum posts
• Delete your data — you can request deletion of your account and all associated data by emailing us. We will process deletion requests within 30 days.
• Export your data — email us and we will provide a copy of your data in a standard format
• Correct your data — if something is wrong, let us know and we'll fix it

Children

This site is not intended for anyone under 18 years old. We do not knowingly collect data from minors. If you believe a minor has created an account, please contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll post the updated version here with a new date. If we make significant changes to how we use your data, we will try to notify registered users by email. But we're volunteers, so checking back here occasionally is a good idea.

Contact us

Privacy questions, data deletion requests, or concerns? Email us at [email protected].

We'll do our best to respond within a few days. We're volunteers, not a help desk, but we take this seriously.