Privacy Policy
Plain-language summary of how Civitas Lens handles your information. Last updated: October 2026.
What's public
Issue reports are public by design — that's how neighbors verify fixes. A public report shows the condition, its location, its category, its timeline, and any photos attached to it. Your name and email are never shown on a report. Reports are tied to your account internally so the system can prevent duplicate voting and spam.
Photos
Photos you attach to a report are shown publicly on that issue. Before upload, the app strips embedded location metadata (EXIF) from the image file — but the photo still shows the place you reported, so please leave out faces and license plates. If a photo of you appears in a report and you want it removed, contact us and we will take it down.
Your account
Signing in uses Firebase Authentication (Google, email link, or email/password, with more providers as they are enabled). We receive your email address and a user ID from the sign-in provider. We use them to run your account, your reports, your votes, your follows, and your alert settings. We do not sell account information.
Location
The map centers on Baltimore by default. If you tap a distance or directions feature, your browser may ask to share your location — that calculation happens on your device, and we do not store a history of where you have been. Alert Zones you create (for example, "Home") are stored with your account so alerts can be matched to them; you can delete a zone at any time.
Alerts and email
If you turn on alerts or follow an issue, we may send email or in-app notifications about reports near your zones or changes to issues you follow. You can turn alerts off in your Alert Settings at any time.
Sharing with the city
When a report is linked to Baltimore 311, the report's condition, location, and description may be shared with the city the same way any 311 request is. We never share your email address with the city as part of a map report.
Data we keep, and deleting it
Reports and their verification history are kept so the public timeline stays honest — a resolved dumping site shouldn't quietly disappear from the record. You can ask for your account and personal information to be deleted; public reports you made will be detached from your account. Contact us through the project to make a request.