A Candidate For Us
Privacy Policy
Mike Sell for Congress (Friends of Mike)
Last updated: September 3, 2026
This policy covers mikesell.org and our volunteer engagement games, Bloomers and Dragon Farmer (vote.mikesell.org). The short version: your data stays on your device, we store almost nothing, and we never sell anything.
The games: what happens on your phone stays on your phone
Bloomers and Dragon Farmer help volunteers invite friends to vote. When you choose to check your contacts against the Florida District 4 voter rolls:
The comparison runs entirely on your device, in your browser. Your contact list is never uploaded to us or anyone else.
Phone numbers are checked using a one-way scrambled code (a cryptographic hash). Your friends' actual numbers never leave your phone.
Results are saved only in your own browser's local storage. We cannot see them. Deleting your browser data deletes them.
Text messages to friends are composed by you and sent from your phone, through your own messaging app, under your carrier's terms and rates. We never see your messages or send messages on your behalf.
If you import contacts from Google
You can optionally sign in with Google to check your saved contacts. If you do:
We request read-only access to your contacts (names and phone numbers) and nothing else.
That information goes directly from Google to your browser, is compared on your device, and is never transmitted to, stored on, or seen by our servers.
You can revoke this access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
Bloomers and Dragon Farmer's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy (https://developers.google.com/terms/api-services-user-data-policy), including the Limited Use requirements.
How long we keep Google user data, and how to delete it
Retention on our servers: none. We do not store Google user data on any server we control. There is no contact database, no backup, and no log containing your contacts. Because we never receive it, there is nothing on our side to retain or delete.
Retention in your browser. Contact information obtained from Google is held only in your device's memory while the comparison runs. The only thing kept afterward is the short list of matches you chose to keep, stored in your own browser's local storage on your device. Your Google access token is held in memory for the single session and is never written to disk by us.
How to delete it, at any time:
1. In the game, tap the X next to any saved match to remove it permanently from your device.
2. Clear your browser's site data for vote.mikesell.org. This erases the entire local record, including all matches and game progress.
3. Revoke our access to your Google account at myaccount.google.com/permissions. This immediately ends any further access to your contacts.
4. Email sellforcongress@gmail.com with a deletion request. Because we hold no Google user data on our servers, we will confirm within 30 days that nothing is retained, and help you clear your device data if you would like.
Automatic expiry. Google access tokens expire on Google's normal schedule (about one hour) and we do not request refresh tokens, so access is not retained after your session ends.
How we protect your data
Contact information is sensitive, so the app is built to hold as little of it as possible and to protect what passes through it.
Encryption in transit. Every connection to mikesell.org, vote.mikesell.org, and our lookup endpoint uses HTTPS with TLS 1.2 or higher. Plain HTTP requests are redirected to HTTPS. Contacts travel directly from Google's servers to your browser over Google's own encrypted connection.
Data minimization. We request one read-only scope, contacts.readonly, and nothing more. We read only names and phone numbers, and ignore every other field Google returns.
No server-side copy. Contact data is never sent to any server we control, so there is no database, backup, or log of it to secure, breach, or disclose. Our servers are a static file host and a lookup endpoint that hold no user data at all.
Irreversible hashing. Before any lookup, each phone number is converted on your device into a one-way SHA-256 hash. The original number cannot be recovered from it.
Partial-lookup design. Only the first two characters of that hash are sent to our lookup endpoint. That fragment is shared by hundreds of thousands of possible numbers, so the endpoint cannot determine which contact was checked, and it never receives a name, a phone number, or a complete hash.
Token handling. Your Google access token is held in browser memory for a single session, is never written to disk by us, is never transmitted to our servers, and expires on Google's normal schedule. We do not request refresh tokens, so no long-lived access is created.
Access control. No one on the campaign can view your contacts, because no copy of them exists outside your own device. Administrative access to our hosting and lookup endpoint is limited to a small number of authorized campaign staff using individual accounts, and is used only to publish application code and the public voter index.
No trackers, no sharing. The games carry no advertising or analytics trackers. We do not sell, rent, trade, or share Google user data with anyone, for any purpose.
Incident response. If we became aware of any incident affecting user data, we would take the affected service offline, investigate, and notify affected users and Google promptly.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning
We do not use Google user data to develop, train, improve, or fine-tune any artificial intelligence or machine learning model, whether our own or a third party's.
Google user data is never sent to any artificial intelligence service. The contact comparison in Bloomers and Dragon Farmer is ordinary arithmetic – a one-way hash and a lookup – performed on your device. No model, service, or API is involved.
mikesell.org separately offers an assistant that answers questions about the campaign's positions. It is part of the website only. It is not part of Bloomers or Dragon Farmer, it has no connection to Google sign-in, and it never receives contact data or any other Google user data.
The use of raw or derived user data received from Workspace APIs will adhere to the Google User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
The little we do store
Our game server stores only: anonymous random tokens as identifiers, and if you join the leaderboard, the nickname you chose plus your score. That's it. No accounts, no passwords on our servers, no contact lists, no voter-file data tied to you.
Voter roll information
The games reference publicly available Florida voter registration data solely to help volunteers encourage registered neighbors to vote. We display at most a name and city, and only to the volunteer whose own contact matched.
Website
mikesell.org is built on Wix, which may set basic functional cookies; see Wix's privacy policy for details. We don't run advertising trackers, and we never sell or share personal information with data brokers.
Children
Our games and site are intended for 16+. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Questions or removal requests
Email sellforcongress@gmail.com and we'll respond promptly. If a match in the games looks wrong, use the X on that entry – it's removed permanently from your device.
Paid for by Friends of Mike · 119 Center St S #143, Jacksonville, FL 32234