Privacy Policy

What This Site Is

American Default Research (americandefault.org) is an independent, nonpartisan data project that tracks household financial distress in the United States. We publish the American Distress Index (ADI) and related economic indicators using publicly available federal data.

We do not sell products, run advertising, or paywall any data.

Data We Collect

Site Analytics

On eligible public pages, we use Umami Cloud as cookieless web analytics. Umami records page views and paths, referral and campaign information, browser and device characteristics, approximate country, session timing, and custom interaction events such as tool steps, downloads, and successful form submissions. AI-referral events may include a bounded referring AI-tool URL or question or prompt value when the referring or landing URL supplies one. Umami does not set an analytics cookie.

We also use Microsoft Clarity on eligible public pages to understand page rendering and masked session activity such as mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling. Clarity sets first-party and third-party cookies to associate page views, sessions, and browser identifiers. Clarity runs on public help and tool pages, but form input is masked and the homeowner lead, email subscription, and comment forms are explicitly marked for masking.

Neither Umami nor Clarity runs in the private Riley borrower workspace at /apply, on account and sign-in, registration, or password-recovery pages, or on admin, operator, and Command Center pages. We do not use Google Analytics. Google Analytics collection is disabled; historical GA4 data remains preserved, and Google Search Console is not linked to GA4.

Information You Give Us

If you enter, upload, paste, select, send, or submit information into any form, assessment, intake flow, tool, product, API request, MCP request, or connected service, we may collect and use that information. This includes partial entries before you press submit or before a form is complete.

That information may include contact details, household or financial facts, hardship details, mortgage or servicer information, uploaded documents, messages, tool inputs, tool outputs, generated drafts, support requests, technical logs, and request content.

We may send this information to our team by email or internal alert so we can understand the user's situation, see where people stop, debug errors, check whether a tool worked correctly, prevent abuse, answer requests, improve accuracy, and improve the service.

Email Subscriptions

If you voluntarily subscribe to our email updates, we collect your email address. We use Buttondown to manage email subscriptions. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in every email. We never share, sell, or rent your email address to anyone.

Polls

Poll responses are pseudonymous, not anonymous. The poll does not ask for or store a name or contact details, and its duplicate-vote record does not store the raw IP address. To prevent duplicate votes, it derives a deterministic pseudonymous code from the request IP and retains that code, the poll indicator, and the selected answer for 30 days. Aggregate response counts may be retained longer.

How We Review Submitted Data

American Default Research may review submitted data by human review, automated checks, and AI-assisted tools. Review is used for quality control, security, support, product improvement, and error correction.

We do not treat submitted data as public research data unless it has been aggregated or stripped of identifying details. We do not publish private borrower documents, names, contact details, or personal financial facts without permission.

Cookies

American Default does not operate an advertising or retargeting program and does not add social-media advertising pixels. Public-site analytics may nevertheless set Microsoft Clarity cookies: Clarity's normal operation uses first-party and third-party cookies to associate page views, session activity, and browser identifiers. Umami Cloud is cookieless and does not set analytics cookies. If you create an account, a session cookie is used to keep you signed in.

On a direct visit to the assessment entry page at /tools/assessment/, American Default sets a first-party acquisition cookie so a later homeowner lead form can be attributed to that assessment entry. Other public content pages do not currently set this server-verified acquisition cookie; any browser-observed journey information remains separately labeled as client-observed. The cookie is Secure, HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax, available at Path=/, and expires after 30 days. Its signed, bounded context contains a coarse source and trust classification, the landing pathname, the external referrer origin only, UTM source, medium, and campaign, click-marker presence and type but never the marker value, and the capture timestamp. It does not contain UTM term or content values or click-ID values. The conversion pathname is derived by the server from the same-origin form POST Referer header at submission time and is not stored in this cookie.

Public help and tool pages may also set ad_help_page_proof, a first-party HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Strict cookie scoped to Path=/api/ with a 20-minute lifetime. It carries a short-lived proof bound to the request IP and is used to protect the first-party help and tool telemetry channel. The raw IP is not stored in the cookie.

Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services:

• Cloudflare for hosting and content delivery. Cloudflare may collect standard web server logs (IP address, request URL, timestamp). See Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• Buttondown for email subscriptions. See Buttondown's privacy policy.
• Umami Cloud for cookieless public-site analytics and custom events. See Umami's privacy policy.
• Microsoft Clarity for site analytics, heatmaps, and masked session activity on eligible public pages. See Microsoft's privacy statement.
• Google Workspace and Google Drive for storage, intake, and document handling where the homeowner help product uses firm-connected folders.
• Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI service providers where a tool needs AI processing, extraction, classification, review, or drafting.

We may use additional service providers for hosting, email, security, analytics, file storage, communications, payments, and support. American Default does not use those services to run social-media tracking, retargeting, or advertising campaigns.

Data Sharing

We do not sell or rent personal information. We do not share personal information for third-party advertising.

We may share information with service providers that help us run the site, operate tools, store files, send email, secure the service, process payments, or provide AI-assisted features. We may also share information with a participating firm when that firm is using the homeowner help product for its own client work, or when disclosure is needed for legal, safety, fraud-prevention, or security reasons.

All economic data published on this site comes from public sources such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and other originating agencies. Where applicable, data from those agencies are retrieved via FRED, the Federal Reserve Economic Data distribution service of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Retention

We keep information for as long as needed to provide the service, keep audit records, improve accuracy, meet legal or security needs, and maintain business records. Public analytics and MCP usage metrics may be kept in aggregate form. Borrower documents and case records may be kept for the period needed by the product, the participating firm, and applicable recordkeeping requirements.

When we no longer need personal information, we delete it, de-identify it, or keep only aggregate records that do not identify a person.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

Your Rights

You can request access, correction, deletion, or a copy of personal information you provided by contacting us. You can request deletion of your email subscription at any time by unsubscribing or contacting us. If you have an account, you can delete it from your account settings where that feature is available.

Some records may need to be retained for security, legal, audit, fraud-prevention, or firm-client recordkeeping reasons.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update the effective date at the top. Material changes will be noted on the site.

Contact

Questions about this policy: privacy@americandefault.org