Privacy

Most of this site works without collecting anything. Where it does collect something, this explains exactly what and why. Last updated 17 August 2026.

Who holds this data

NoticeWatch is a trading name of Ananse LLC, 623 Constellation Sq, Unit L, Leesburg, VA 20175. Ananse LLC is responsible for the data described below and is the entity to contact about any of it.

The short version

• Reading this site collects nothing. No account, no analytics cookies, no tracking pixels.
• A one-off case status lookup is passed to USCIS and forgotten. It is never written down.
• If you ask us to watch a case, we keep the receipt number to re-check it. It is encrypted.
• We do not sell anything to anyone, and there are no advertising trackers.

Case status lookups

A receipt number identifies one person's immigration case, so it is treated as personal data throughout. When you check a status it is sent to the USCIS Case Status API and the answer returned to your browser. It is not written to a database, not written to a log, and never placed in the URL where it could leak through a referrer header.

Watching a case

Watching is the one place a receipt number is kept, because a case cannot be re-checked if the number was not kept. Email address and receipt number are encrypted together with AES-GCM, the record is filed under a one-way hash rather than under the address, and every notification carries a link that deletes it outright.

Technical logs

Requests are counted per caller for sixty seconds to prevent automated abuse. That counter is filed under a hash of the IP address combined with the endpoint, never the address itself, and expires within two minutes.

How long anything is kept

Nothing here is kept indefinitely. Every store expires on its own, without anyone having to remember to clear it, and these are the figures actually set in the code rather than an intention.

• A watched case or page — 400 days from the last time it was touched
• Sign-in links — 15 minutes
• A signed-in session — 1 hour
• Rate-limit counters — 60 seconds
• Weekly brief de-duplication records — 45 days
• An alert subscription, including which items it has already been sent — 400 days from the last alert

A watch that is renewed keeps running; one that is left alone disappears. Receipt numbers are never stored in plain form, so an expired watch leaves nothing behind that identifies a case. Deleting a watch removes it immediately rather than waiting for the clock.

Who else is involved

• Cloudflare — hosting, DNS and the sign-in gate on internal pages.
• USCIS — receives receipt numbers you submit, in order to answer.
• Resend — sends notification emails.
• Buttondown — runs the newsletter list, when enabled.
• Stripe — takes payment for a paid plan. Only involved if you start a checkout; the card form is Stripe’s own page and card details never touch noticewatch.org.
• Google Fonts — serves the two typefaces. Your browser fetches them from Google when a page loads, which sends your IP address to Google.

No advertising networks, no data brokers, no analytics suppliers, and none planned.

What you can ask for

You can ask what we hold, ask for deletion, or unsubscribe at any time. Write to [email protected]. Because watches are encrypted and filed under a hash, we cannot search them by email address — use the link in the notification. That design protects you and constrains us in the same stroke.

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Data updated October 2, 2026