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

We use privacy-focused analytics to understand how visitors use the public site. We do not use Google Analytics. Our site analytics do not use tracking cookies and do not track people across other sites. Aggregate data such as page views, referral sources, browser type, and events helps us improve the site.

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

Anonymous poll responses are stored without any identifying information. We cannot connect a poll response to a specific visitor.

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 We do not publish private borrower documents, names, contact details, or personal financial facts without permission.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

This site does not use tracking cookies. If you create an account, a session cookie is used to keep you signed in. No third-party advertising or tracking cookies are set.

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.
• 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. We do not use social media tracking pixels, retargeting, or advertising networks.

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 FRED, BLS, Census Bureau, NY Fed, and others.

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