What we collect when you send the form

Only what the form asks for:

• Your name.
• Your phone number.
• Your email address, if you give one. It is optional.
• Your state and the county where your FSA office is.
• Which of the five situations is closest to yours.
• The date on your most recent USDA decision letter, if you have one and choose to enter it.
• That you ticked the box giving us permission to contact you.

What our server records on its own

When the form is submitted, the server also records:

• The date and time, taken from our server's clock.
• A scrambled version of your internet address. We run it through a one-way calculation with a secret key and store only the result. We do not keep the address itself, and the stored value cannot be turned back into it. We use it to stop one connection from flooding the form.
• Your browser's identifying line, the same one every website sees.
• Which version of the form you filled out.

What we do not collect

• No advertising trackers and no tracking pixels.
• No cookies from us.
• No questions about race, ethnicity, income or household.
• No documents. This form does not accept uploads.
• Nothing about you from anywhere else. We do not buy lists and we do not look you up.

Who sees it

The people running this project. That is it.

We do not sell your information, rent it, trade it or hand it to a mailing list. We do not give it to USDA or any government office. We do not pass it to a law firm without asking you first and getting your say-so.

Two companies handle the information because they run the machinery underneath the site. They process it for us and are not free to use it for their own purposes:

• Cloudflare hosts the site and holds the database, and runs the human check on the form.
• Resend sends the confirmation email, and only if you gave us an email address.

If a court or a government agency demands the information with a subpoena or an order, we have to respond. We cannot promise otherwise. We keep what we collect small for that reason.

How long we keep it

We keep what you send for [retention period]. After that we delete it, unless one of the situations below applies.

How to ask us to remove it

Ask us. Call or write to [name], [phone], [email] and say you want your information taken out. You do not have to give a reason. We will confirm when it is done.

You can also ask us what we hold about you, and we will tell you.

When we cannot remove it right away

There is one exception, and we would rather say it plainly than bury it.

If the information is subject to a legal hold, we have to keep it. A legal hold means that a legal claim, a hearing or a court case is underway or reasonably expected, and the law requires anyone who holds related records to preserve them. In that situation deleting records is not ours to choose. If you ask for removal and a hold applies to what you sent, we will tell you that, we will stop using the information to contact you, and we will delete it once the hold lifts.

Analytics

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits. It does not use cookies, it does not fingerprint your browser, and it does not follow you to other websites. It is the only analytics on this site.

The human check

The form uses Cloudflare Turnstile to tell a person from an automated script. It replaces the picture puzzles other sites use. It is not a tracker.

Children

This site is for adult agricultural producers. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this page

If we change how any of this works, we will change this page and date the change here.

Questions

Ask a person. [name], [phone], [email].

Sending the form does not file an appeal, protect any right, or extend any deadline. If you have a USDA decision letter, read the appeal section of it today. See Your Appeal Rights.