1. Introduction

CivitasMonitor („the Application“) is a non-commercial political communication monitoring tool operated by IVIP — Inštitút vzdelávania a inovácií v politike („IVIP“, „we“, „us“), a civic research institute based in the Slovak Republic.

This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your rights in connection with that information. By using CivitasMonitor, you agree to the practices described in this policy.

2. What Data We Collect

2a. Public Facebook Page Data

CivitasMonitor aggregates publicly available content from official Facebook Pages of Slovak political parties and elected officials. This includes:

• Post text, publication date and time
• Post images and permalink URLs
• Publicly visible engagement counts (reactions, comments, shares)

This data is obtained via the Meta Graph API and is limited to content that is already publicly accessible to any Facebook user without login. We do not collect personal data of private individuals from Facebook.

2b. Application Users

For users who register to access the analytics features of CivitasMonitor, we collect:

• Name and email address (for account creation)
• Usage logs (pages visited, features used) for service improvement

We do not collect payment information directly. Any paid access is processed by third-party payment providers subject to their own privacy policies.

3. How We Use the Data

We use the collected data exclusively for the following purposes:

• Research and public interest analysis — monitoring trends in political communication, identifying dominant topics and narrative patterns in public political discourse
• Journalistic purposes — providing factual information about public political statements to journalists, researchers, and the general public
• Service operation — maintaining the CivitasMonitor platform and providing analytics to registered users

We do not use collected data for advertising, profiling of private individuals, or commercial data sales. Data is never sold to third parties.

4. Data Retention

Public post data collected from Facebook Pages is retained for a maximum of 24 months from the date of collection, after which it is permanently deleted. User account data is retained for as long as the account is active. Upon account deletion, personal data is removed within 30 days.

5. Data Sharing

We do not sell, rent, or share personal data with third parties for commercial purposes. Aggregate, anonymised research findings (e.g. „Party X published 42 posts in March“) may be published publicly as part of IVIP’s research outputs.

We may share data with:

• Service providers — hosting and infrastructure providers operating under data processing agreements
• Regulatory authorities — if required by Slovak or EU law

6. Meta Platform Data

CivitasMonitor uses the Meta Graph API in compliance with Meta’s Platform Policy and Facebook’s Terms of Service. We access only public page content that does not require user authentication. We do not access, store, or process private messages, user profiles, or non-public data.

7. Your Rights (GDPR)

As a resident of the European Union, you have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Right of access — request a copy of data we hold about you
• Right to rectification — request correction of inaccurate data
• Right to erasure — request deletion of your personal data
• Right to restriction — request limited processing of your data
• Right to data portability — receive your data in a structured format
• Right to object — object to processing of your personal data

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@ivip.sk. We will respond within 30 days.

8. Security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect data against unauthorised access, loss, or destruction. Analytics access is restricted to authenticated users only. Public post aggregation is read-only with no write access to any Facebook account.

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be notified to registered users by email at least 14 days before taking effect. The date of the latest revision is always shown at the top of this page.

10. Contact

IVIP — Inštitút vzdelávania a inovácií v politike
Email: info@ivip.sk
Web: www.ivip.sk
Slovak Republic