Legal Requests

Our approach

• We disclose non-public member information only in response to valid legal process (a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or the local equivalent), served on Anoncracy and specific about the account and the information sought. Requests that are too broad are narrowed or refused.
• We tell the member before disclosing, unless the law forbids it or telling them would endanger someone. We tell them afterwards once that reason has passed.
• Public content (posts, comments, profiles, moderation logs) can be viewed by anyone without asking us.

What we can provide

Only what we keep, as the Privacy Policy describes: an account’s email address, sign-up date, date of birth and settings, its content including deleted content still within our retention periods and its anonymous posts, and, with the right legal process, its direct messages and modmail. We keep no IP address logs. We hold a keyed hash of the network an account signed up from for 365 days, which can confirm that two accounts shared a network but cannot reveal the address.

Preservation

On a valid preservation request we place a legal hold on the named account or conversation for 90 days, renewable once on request. While a hold is in place nothing it covers is deleted by our retention rules or by account closure. Every hold, release and export is recorded in a private log of site-team actions, and every exported conversation in a message access log.

Emergencies

If a request concerns an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose the information needed to prevent it without legal process. Say so clearly in the request and explain the danger.

Content involving children

We report apparent child sexual abuse material as the law requires, and preserve the report’s contents for the period the law sets.

How to send a request

Send it through Report a problem, signed in or not, with an official email address for our reply. Include your name, agency, a way to verify the request, the account (its username or a link to its profile) and what you need.

Members asking for their own data don’t need this page: the Privacy Policy says how to ask.