What this site records about you, and what becomes of it

United Police Association, established in District of Columbia, United States of America, at 1300 I Street NW, Washington, DC, United States of America. Write to info@upa-int.org about anything on this page, including a request to see, correct or remove what is held about you.

Each of these is recorded because something you do requires it. None of it is bought, and none of it comes from anywhere but you.

Opening an account records your name, your email address, your chosen language, and your password — the password as a one-way hash, so nobody at the association can read it. The time and network address of your most recent sign-in are kept so that you can be told about a sign-in you did not make. If you switch on the second factor, the secret behind it and your unused recovery codes are held too.

Applying for membership records what the form asks: your name, email address, telephone number, date of birth, service details — your agency, rank, badge number and start date — your postal address, and your photograph if you upload one. This is the record a membership card is checked against.

Every search records the term you searched for, what kind of thing you were looking for, which sources were asked, how many records came back, how long it took, and the network address the search came from. It is kept so that you can find a search again, so a report can be reproduced, and so that misuse can be investigated.

A watchlist entry records the term being watched and the records already seen, so that you are told about a new one and not about the same one twice.

A report records its subject, the query behind it, what was found, which sources answered, and what the search could not cover.

An order records the name, email address, telephone number and postal address the parcel is to be sent to.

A payment records the amount, the currency, PayPal's identifier for the transaction, whether it succeeded, and PayPal's reply. Card numbers never reach this site. Payment happens on PayPal's own pages, and what comes back is a reference and a result.

What administrators do to records is written to an audit trail with their name, the action and their network address. It is kept for 730 days and then deleted automatically.

This is the part most easily missed, so it is said plainly: when you search, the term you typed is sent to the official sources being searched. Those are public registers and published datasets run by other bodies — the ones listed in the source directory — and each has its own terms and its own record of who asked it what. The association does not control what they log.

Every source that may be asked →

Two services, each for one purpose and nothing else:

• PayPal, to take payment. It receives what a payment requires, and returns a result.
• The service that delivers email, to send confirmations, password resets, receipts and watchlist alerts.

Nothing is sold, rented, or handed to anybody for advertising. There is no advertising on this site and no tracking for it.

• The administrators' audit trail is deleted after 730 days.
• Membership records are kept for 7 years after membership ends, because an association has to be able to show who its members were.
• Payment and order records are kept for 7 years, because accounts have to be auditable.
• Everything else — your searches, your search history, your watchlists, your reports — is kept until you delete it or close your account. You can clear your search history yourself at any time, in your account.

You can close your account yourself, from your profile page. It asks for your password, and it is immediate. Be sure before you do it: nothing below is recoverable afterwards.

Removed at once: your sign-in details, every search you have run, your search history, your watchlists, your reports, and your subscription and payment records.

Kept, with the link to your account removed: your membership record and any orders you placed. Both are kept for the periods above, because a membership that existed cannot be unmade and an order that was paid for has to be accounted for.

If you want those removed as well, write to info@upa-int.org and say so. Whether they can be depends on what the association is required to keep.

To see what is held about you, to have it corrected, to have it removed, to be sent a copy of it, or to object to something being held at all. Write to info@upa-int.org. The association will answer, and if it cannot do what you ask, it will say why rather than not reply.

Two, both necessary: one that keeps you signed in, and one that stops a form on this site being submitted from somewhere else. There are no analytics cookies, no advertising cookies, and nothing from anybody else — which is why this site has no cookie banner asking you to accept things.