Privacy and cookies

What this site stores, where it goes, and how to have it removed.

Last updated 5 September 2026

1. Who we are

This site is the petition to free Bogdan Syrotiuk. It is operated by World Socialist Web Site, Inc., which is the data controller for the petition and for the processing it determines through this site. Addresses for writing to us, our Data Protection Officer, and our representatives in the European Union and the United Kingdom are at the end of this page.

Our email is signed Committee to Free Bogdan Syrotiuk, which is what the campaign calls itself and how you will have met it. Where this page says “the committee”, that is who it means. World Socialist Web Site, Inc. is still the data controller, and answers for everything here either way.

2. What we collect

To sign the petition, we ask for your name, email address, country and visibility choice. Everything else is optional.

First and last name
A petition’s weight comes from being a list of named people.
Email address
To send you the record of your signature, and updates if you ask for them.
Country
Shown beside your name, and it decides the safety default in section 4.
City
Shown beside your name if you choose to provide it.
Phone
We keep it if you type it, and only use it for text messages if you tick the box asking for them. It is never published.
Your statement
Published after a moderator reads it, if you write one. We also record which consent wording you were shown when you posted it.
Your visibility choice
Determines whether and how your signature is published. See section 4.
Your consent choices
We record what you agreed to, when, and which choices you made.

We also store a salted hash of your IP address alongside what you agreed to. We do not store the address itself, and the hash cannot be turned back into one.

Our own mailing system. Your name, email address, country, city and phone are copied into the mailing system we run ourselves for every signature, not only if you ask for updates. It is how the campaign sends anything at all, including the confirmation email you asked for. Ticking the update boxes does not change what is held there, only which tags are put on it and therefore what you are sent. If you write a statement, its text is copied there too, and replaced or removed when you change or withdraw it. If you do receive campaign updates, it also records whether you opened each one and which links you clicked in it. See section 8.

If you do more than sign, we hold what you sent us.

A letter
When you send one you choose how it is published: with your name, as “Name withheld”, or not published at all. If you choose to publish it, we keep what you wrote, the name you gave (or “Name withheld” in place of it), the country from your signature, and your sign-off, and it is published after a moderator reads it. If you choose not to publish it, we keep only a record that a letter was sent: no text, no sign-off, no name and no translation, and nothing from it is ever published. Either way we record which consent wording you agreed to and when.
A video statement
The recording itself, and the name shown with it. A video shows your face and your voice and cannot be made anonymous. Published after a moderator watches it.
A record of what you did
That you signed, wrote, donated or shared, and when. It holds no copy of what you wrote, and it is what the campaign counts.
A donation
The amount, the currency, whether it repeats, and the date. Your card details stay with Stripe. See section 5.

A record of changes. Every time a signature is created, changed or removed we write one line saying which record it was, which fields moved, and when. It keeps no values: not your name, not your address, not a word of what you wrote. The exception is a short list of switches that carry nothing personal, such as whether a statement was approved and whether a name is published. It exists so that if somebody broke into an account we could say what they touched, which is the one question a stolen password makes urgent. It survives the deletion in section 11, holding a reference to a record that no longer has your details in it. Section 10 says how long we keep it.

Signatures gathered before this site. The petition ran on change.org first, and those signatures are counted here alongside the ones made on this site. They are held as private: counted, never listed. The only names shown from that group belong to people who posted a public statement with their signature at the time. If you signed then and want your record changed or removed, write to us at freebogdan@wsws.org.

3. Why we process your data and our legal bases

Different uses of your data have different purposes and legal bases.

Signing the petition and managing your signature. We process the information needed to record and manage your signature on the basis of your explicit consent under Articles 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a) GDPR. Signing a political petition can reveal a political opinion, which the GDPR treats as special category data. This is also the basis for the copy held in the mailing system we run ourselves, described in section 2. That copy is made for every signature, whether or not you ask for campaign updates, because it is how the record of your signature reaches you: it is part of recording and managing the signature rather than a purpose of its own.

Publishing your name or statement. If you choose Public, you deliberately make your name, country and any city you provide publicly available as part of the petition. We process this information under Article 6(1)(a) and Article 9(2)(e) GDPR. The same applies if you choose to publish a statement, a letter or a video statement. You can change your visibility choice or remove your statement at any time.

Campaign updates. We send campaign email or text messages only if you separately ask for them, on the basis of your explicit consent under Articles 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a) GDPR. The same consent covers measuring what happens to those messages — whether you opened one, and which links you clicked in it — which section 8 describes. You can withdraw that consent at any time, and withdrawing it ends the measuring as well as the sending.

Security and abuse prevention. We process limited technical data to keep the site secure, prevent automated or fraudulent submissions, apply rate limits and maintain necessary security logs. We do this on the basis of our legitimate interests under Article 6(1)(f) GDPR.

Analytics. If you allow optional analytics, we use limited information about how the site is used to understand whether the site and signing process work as intended. We do this on the basis of your consent under Article 6(1)(a) GDPR and, where the information may reveal a political opinion, Article 9(2)(a) GDPR. See section 7.

Donations. If you make a donation, we process the information needed to receive and administer it. We do this on the basis of our legitimate interests under Article 6(1)(f) GDPR. We also keep records where required by accounting or tax law under Article 6(1)(c) GDPR.

4. How your name appears, and the safety default

You choose one of three:

Public
Your name, country and city, if provided, are visible to anyone visiting the petition.
Name withheld
Your signature is counted and listed with its country, and your name is held by the WSWS and never published.
Private
Your signature is counted, but not listed. We keep the information you provide as described in section 2, but do not publish it. Nothing about you appears anywhere on the site, not even a country. This is about publishing, not about storing: we hold your email address to send you your own record, to stop the same person signing twice, and to let you get back in and delete it all. Section 11 is how you make us hold nothing.

What happens if you do not choose. In Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States the default is public: those are the countries the campaign is run from and where most of this list already is. Everywhere else the form asks you to choose, and a signature that still reaches us with no choice made is held private: counted, not listed. Holding your signature and publishing your name are two different things, and we would rather ask than assume the second. It is a default and not a rule, either way, and all three options are open to everyone.

Signatures from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus default to private: counted, not listed, with no country shown. People in those countries have been arrested and imprisoned for opposing the war, Bogdan Syrotiuk among them, and a name given publicly can be used against the person who gave it. The default is applied on our server rather than in your browser, so it holds even if scripts fail to load. It is a default and not a rule: if you are in one of those countries and want your name published, you can choose that, and we will honor it.

Your email address and phone number are never published, whatever visibility you choose. Statements are read by a moderator before they appear.

You can change any of this at any time in your signature portal, without asking us.

5. Who else handles your data

We use the following service providers and systems. The table shows what data each service receives or processes for this site.

Vercel Inc., hosting and file storage
Every request to this site, including your IP address while it is being served. It also stores the files you upload, which means the recording behind a video statement and any picture that goes with a letter.
Their role. Our processor. It runs the site on our instructions and does nothing with your data of its own.
Where they are. 440 N Barranca Avenue #4133, Covina, California 91723, United States. Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
How long they keep it. No set period published. Vercel says it keeps information for the minimum period it needs and then deletes or anonymizes it.
Their own documents. Privacy notice, sub-processors. A data processing agreement is in place.
Neon, LLC, database
Everything stored: signatures, statements, consent records, donations.
Their role. Our processor. It stores the data on our instructions and does nothing with it of its own.
Where they are. United States. Neon is part of Databricks, Inc., 160 Spear Street, Suite 1300, San Francisco, California 94105, United States, and Databricks now answers for it. Neon, LLC is named in the Databricks certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
How long they keep it. No set period published. Databricks says it keeps information for as long as you use the service, and for as long as the law or its own business purposes require.
Their own documents. Databricks privacy notice, sub-processors. Neon’s own policy now redirects to these. A data processing agreement is in place.
Cloudflare, Inc., Turnstile
Signals about your browser and how you interact with the form: your IP address, your browser’s TLS fingerprint, the user agent it sends, and which site the check is for. Not your name, your email, or anything you type.
Their role. Our processor for the check on our forms, and a controller in its own right for the security of its own network, which the same signals also serve.
Where they are. 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, California 94107, United States, with servers worldwide. Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
How long they keep it. No period published for Turnstile, and none for the signals above. The general policy says the time depends on the purpose and the risk, and gives no number.
Their own documents. Turnstile Privacy Addendum, privacy policy, sub-processors. A data processing agreement is in place.
Stripe, LLC, payments
Your card details and billing information, only if you donate. This site never sees your card number.
Their role. A controller in its own right, as well as our processor. The law requires it to run its own fraud and anti-money-laundering checks on payments, and it decides for itself how that is done.
Where they are. 354 Oyster Point Boulevard, South San Francisco, California 94080, United States. If you are outside the Americas your payment is contracted with Stripe Payments Europe, Limited, The One Building, 1 Lower Grand Canal Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
How long they keep it. Stripe publishes a period: generally five years or more from the end of the business relationship or the last transaction, whichever is later. Money records have to last that long, which is the same reason section 10 keeps a donation on file after you delete everything else.
Their own documents. Privacy policy, sub-processors. A data processing agreement is in place.
Twilio Inc., transactional email, sent through SendGrid
Your email address and the message we are sending you.
Their role. Our processor. It delivers the messages we send, on our instructions.
Where they are. 101 Spear Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California 94105, United States. In Europe the contract is with Twilio Ireland Limited, 78 Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2, D02 R296, Ireland. Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
How long they keep it. Twilio publishes periods for SendGrid: your address and most other personal data for at most 37 days, and the record of what happened to a message we sent you for up to a year.
Their own documents. Privacy notice, sub-processors. A data processing agreement is in place.
Fireworks.ai, Inc., translation of letters into Ukrainian
The text of your letter, and only if you ask for a Ukrainian translation and tick the box saying where it goes. Your name, your sign-off, and any email address, phone number or link inside the letter are taken out before it is sent and put back afterwards, so what reaches them is the letter without the parts that say who wrote it. Everything else goes as you wrote it. Nothing is sent if you do not ask for a translation.
Their role. Our processor. It translates the text we send it, on our instructions, and its terms say it does not train on that text. The same terms reserve the right to run automated safety screening over what is sent.
Where they are. 900 Concar Drive, Floor 5, San Mateo, California 94402, United States. Not certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, so the transfer rests on the Standard Contractual Clauses in our agreement with them, which is the second of the two routes section 9 describes.
How long they keep it. Fireworks publishes a zero-retention commitment and we rely on it: your letter is not logged for human review and is not kept beyond the time it takes to produce the translation and send it back. That commitment covers translation of this kind and not every part of their service, and the parts it does not cover are parts this site does not use.
Their own documents. Privacy notice, sub-processors. A data processing agreement is in place, and their sub-processors are a schedule to that agreement rather than a page of their own.
Google, the appeal video on the donation page
Only if you press play: your IP address, what your browser tells it about itself, and the fact that this browser watched that video. Nothing whatever if you do not press it — see section 6 for why loading the page sends nothing.
Their role. A controller in its own right rather than our processor, so there is no data processing agreement with it and there could not be one. Putting the video on the page is our decision, which is why this row exists at all; what Google then does with a play is Google’s own affair, under its own policy.
Where they are. Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland for people in Europe, and Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California 94043, United States otherwise. Google LLC is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
How long they keep it. No period published for what watching an embedded video leaves behind. Google states retention by kind of data rather than by a figure that could be given here, except for the 180 days on the cookie named in section 6.
Their own documents. Privacy policy, cookie list.
PostHog, Inc., analytics
Pages viewed and actions taken, only if you allow it. See section 7.
Their role. Our processor. It measures only what section 7 describes, on our instructions.
Where they are. 2261 Market Street #4008, San Francisco, California 94114, United States, but we use the European service, which runs on servers in Frankfurt, Germany, so the data stays in the European Union.
How long they keep it. Seven years. See section 7.
Their own documents. Privacy policy, sub-processors. A data processing agreement is in place.

Our mailing system is not on this list because it is not somebody else’s. We run it ourselves, so what it holds is described in section 2 as data we hold rather than data we hand to a company.

We do not sell your personal data or share it with advertisers. Each service above says which role it holds. The ones acting as our processors may use subprocessors of their own under their data-processing terms, and the list of those is linked on each row. Separately from any of that, we may disclose information where the law requires it of us.

The primary database is hosted in the United States. Transfers from the EEA are protected as described in section 9.

6. Cookies

Ours are these, and each holds a random value or your own choice rather than anything about you.

fb_supporter, 6 months
Set when you submit the signature form, so the site can show you your own signature on this device. It holds a random value and nothing about you, and scripts cannot read it.
fb_verified, 30 minutes
Set when you follow a link we emailed you, and required before you can download or delete everything we hold. Short-lived on purpose, so a shared computer does not leave that open to the next person.
fb_consent, 6 months
Remembers what you chose about cookies, so you are not asked again and the server knows not to load anything you refused. Holds your choice, the date, and a random id that is not tied to your signature.

Stripe sets its own cookies for payment security, and only when the donation form is opened. Nothing from Stripe loads until you begin a donation. Stripe publishes the two it uses to judge whether a payment is fraud: __stripe_mid, which it keeps for a year, and __stripe_sid, which it keeps for 30 minutes. Its cookie settings page is where those durations come from.

Cloudflare Turnstile runs on our forms to tell people apart from automated programs. Cloudflare’s Turnstile Privacy Addendum explains what it collects. It does not say how long anything is kept, and neither does Cloudflare’s general policy, so we cannot give you a figure for Turnstile the way we can for the other two. We would rather say that than print a number we cannot stand behind.

PostHog sets one analytics cookie, and only if you allow it. Nothing analytics-related is fetched or run before you do. The cookie is named ph_ followed by our project code, and PostHog publishes it as lasting a year. Switch analytics off and it is deleted.

YouTube, on the donation page. The appeal video there is a picture with a play button on it, and nothing more until you press it. The picture is served from this site, so loading the page asks YouTube and Google for nothing and tells them nothing. Pressing play is what opens the video, from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player, and that is the moment YouTube sets its own cookies and learns your address. Google publishes two of them: YSC, which lasts as long as the visit, and VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE, which it keeps for 180 days. There may be more than two, and we would rather say so than print a list we cannot stand behind; Google’s cookie list is where it describes them. Closing the video does not take them off your machine again; your browser’s own settings do. If you never press play, none of this happens.

Cookies set by wsws.org. This site is part of wsws.org. Cookies that the main site sets are sent to this one as well, including its Google Analytics and Matomo cookies. We do not use them, read them, or send anything to Google or Matomo from this site. They are covered by the World Socialist Web Site’s own privacy statement.

7. Analytics

We use PostHog, hosted in the European Union, to understand how the site is used: which pages people read, where they leave, and whether the sign form works.

It runs only if you allow it. Nothing is measured before you choose, and you can change your mind at any time from the Cookies link in the footer.

We do not record your screen or what you type. Session recording is switched off and will stay off.

How long it is kept. Seven years.

8. Email

There are four kinds, and they follow different rules.

The record of your signature
Sent to everyone who signs, because you have just given us your address for that purpose. It carries no advertising and asks nothing of you.
A sign-in link
Sent when you ask for one, so you can open your signature portal. It goes to the address you signed with, holds a single-use link, and is the one email we will send even to somebody who has unsubscribed from everything, because it is how you reach your own record.
A confirmation request
Sent only if you ask for campaign updates. You are not added to anything until you press the button in it. If you ignore it, nothing happens and the request lapses after 30 days.
Campaign updates
Sent only after you have confirmed. Every one carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes effect immediately.

The first three carry no tracking. The record of your signature, the sign-in link and the confirmation request do not record whether you opened them or which links you clicked, and they do not rewrite their links, so the address you see is the address you go to. On the sign-in link we can show it: open tracking, link rewriting and the subscription footer are all switched off in the request that sends it.

Campaign updates do record whether you opened the message and which links you clicked in it. That happens in the mailing system we run ourselves rather than at another company, and it is how the campaign can tell whether an update was read and which parts of it people followed. It applies to campaign updates and to nothing else. You are sent them only if you asked for them and confirmed, every one carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes effect immediately.

9. Sending data outside Europe

Some of the providers described above process personal data in the United States. For transfers from the European Economic Area, we rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the recipient is certified under it. Where that framework does not apply, we use the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses under Article 46 GDPR or another legally recognized safeguard. You may contact us for information about the safeguard used for a particular provider and, where applicable, for a copy of the relevant clauses.

10. How long we keep things

Your name on the public list
Until the campaign ends, then removed. See below.
Your email address, phone and city
Twelve months after the campaign ends.
Statements and letters you asked us to publish
Kept as part of the public record, unless you ask us to take yours down.
The count of signatures, by country
Kept, because it holds no names.
What you consented to
Until you withdraw it, then three years, so we can show what was agreed if it is ever questioned.
Email waiting to be sent
The queue holds your address and the message until it goes. A delivered or skipped one is deleted 90 days later, a failed one after 180. A job runs every night and does it.
An unanswered confirmation request
30 days, then the link dies. What is kept is the date we asked, which is the evidence that we asked and you did not answer.
Whether you opened a campaign update, and what you clicked
Held with your contact in the mailing system we run ourselves, and deleted with that contact when you delete your record under section 11. No separate period is set for it.
The record of changes
Kept for the life of the campaign. It holds a reference, a date and the names of the fields that moved, and it is the one thing that outlives the deletion in section 11.
Analytics
Seven years. See section 7.
Donation records
As long as accounting law requires.

What happens when the campaign ends. Everything here is held for one purpose: the campaign for Bogdan Syrotiuk’s release. When that purpose ends, most of this has no reason to exist and will not be kept.

The campaign ends when the Committee to Free Bogdan Syrotiuk says publicly that it has, and this section starts running from that announcement. Within twelve months of it, we delete every email address, phone number and city, and remove every name from the public list. What survives is the count of how many people signed and from which countries, which names nobody, and the statements and letters people deliberately published. Those stay part of the public record of the case, and you can still ask us to take yours down.

None of this waits for the campaign to end. You can delete your petition record at any time, today, from your signature portal. Section 11 sets out what that covers, and what survives it.

11. Your rights, and how to use them

Every signature has a signature portal, a page of your own where you can see and manage the petition data we hold about you. You can do all of the following there yourself, immediately, at your signature portal. Getting in takes a link we email you, so there is no password to remember or lose.

See what we hold
Download a copy of your petition record.
Change it
Your visibility, your contact preferences, your statement.
Withdraw consent
Stop the email, or take your name off the public list, without deleting your signature.
Delete your petition record
What deletion covers is set out below.

What deletion actually does. It removes your signature, your statement, any letter or video you sent, everything queued to be sent about you, and your contact in the mailing system, and it asks Stripe to redact your donor details. A donation stays on file as an amount and a date with nothing attached to it, because the campaign has to account for money it received. The record of changes described in section 2 also survives, holding a reference to a record that no longer has your details in it.

If you would prefer us to make these changes for you, or you no longer have access to the email address you signed with, write to freebogdan@wsws.org. If we have reasonable doubts about your identity, we may ask for additional information reasonably necessary to confirm that the request relates to your signature.

You also have the right, where applicable, to restrict processing, object to processing based on legitimate interests, and receive data you provided in a portable format. The portal covers seeing, changing, downloading and deleting; for the others, write to the address above. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before you withdrew it.

12. If you are in the United States

Where a state privacy law applies to us, residents of that state have rights to see, correct and delete their data, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. You can exercise all of those in your signature portal or by writing to us, wherever you live. We do not ask which state you are in before honoring a request.

We do not sell personal information, share it for targeted advertising, or use it for targeted advertising.

We honor the Global Privacy Control signal. If your browser sends it, we treat that as an instruction to switch off anything non-essential, and we do not ask you again.

13. Complaints

If you think we have handled your data wrongly, you are welcome to tell us first at freebogdan@wsws.org. Most things are quicker to fix directly.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. In the EU that is the authority where you live, where you work, or where the problem happened. In the UK it is the Information Commissioner’s Office.

14. Changes to this policy

When we change something material we will say so on this page.

15. How this sits alongside the WSWS policy

This policy covers processing specific to the petition at freebogdan.wsws.org. The World Socialist Web Site’s general privacy statement covers other processing on wsws.org and the existing wsws.org cookies referred to in section 6.

16. How to contact us

About your signature, or anything to do with this campaign. Changing how your name appears, deleting your record, or a question about the petition: freebogdan@wsws.org

Our Data Protection Officer, for anything about data protection generally, or to make a formal request or complaint. This is our own accountability role under Article 37 of the GDPR, and it is not the same thing as the two representatives below:

Andrew Petrov, Data Protection Officer
World Socialist Web Site, Inc.
PO Box 48377
Oak Park, MI 48237
United States
comments@wsws.org

Our representatives under Article 27. We are established outside the European Union and the United Kingdom, so we appoint a representative in each. A representative is a point of contact, in particular for the supervisory authority of that territory, and you may contact the one for where you are instead of contacting us. Article 27 requires each representative to be established in the territory they represent, so these are two separate appointments and one person cannot hold both.

European Union representative, appointed under Article 27 of the EU GDPR:

Christoph Vandreier
c/o SGP
Neuenburgerstr. 13
10969 Berlin
Germany
free-bogdan@gleichheit.de

United Kingdom representative, appointed under Article 27 of the UK GDPR:

Richard Turner
Socialist Equality Party
Suite 106, 88 Queen Street
Sheffield S1 2FW
United Kingdom
richard.turner@socialistequalityparty.uk