HonestMOS

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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026

We protect your identity absolutely. We use aggregate data to sustain the platform and improve military life. Here's exactly how.

The Two Buckets

Everything Honest MOS does with data falls into two buckets:

Bucket 1: Your Identity — Sacred

Never sold. Never shared. Never exposed. This includes: your email, name, IP address, device info, MOS-rank-base combination when it could identify you, your verification records, and your protected content. Nobody gets this. Not advertisers, not researchers, not the DoD, not partners. Nobody.

Bucket 2: Aggregate Insights — Used to sustain & improve

Population-level trends, anonymized statistics, aggregated scores. Things like “the average QoL score at installations in the Southeast declined 12% this quarter” or “68W is the most-reviewed MOS with an average 3.8 rating.” No individual can be identified from aggregate data. We enforce minimum population thresholds on every data slice.

If we can't present data without risking someone's identity, we don't present it. Period.

What We Collect

Plain English

Your email (for your account), profile info you choose to share, the content you create, and basic analytics about how the site is used.

  • Account info: email address, display name, hashed password
  • Profile info (all optional): branch, MOS, rank, component, duty station, ETS date
  • Avatar: a photo you optionally upload. It's stored publicly and shown on your profile page and on any posts you make as Callsign or On the Record. Ghost posts never show your avatar.
  • Content: reviews, stories, reactions, slang submissions
  • Verification: peer verification status, VA API confirmation (status only — we don't store VA records)
  • Usage analytics: pages visited, features used, device type (collected via privacy-respecting analytics, not invasive tracking)
  • Theme preference and notification settings

What We Don't Collect

  • Social Security Numbers
  • Financial or banking information
  • Real-time location (unless you explicitly use a location feature and grant permission)
  • Contacts, messages, or data from other apps
  • Biometric data
  • Military discharge documents or service records

How We Use Your Data

To operate the platform

  • Display your content, manage your account, run the OPSEC scanner
  • Send emails you've opted into (welcome, SITREP, notifications)

To improve the platform

  • Aggregate analytics to understand what's working and what's not
  • Anonymized trend analysis to prioritize features

To sustain the platform

  • Contextual advertising (based on page content — if you're on an Army IT page, you might see an ad for Security+ certification. This is based on the PAGE, not on tracking YOU.)
  • Anonymized, aggregated data products: research reports, trend analyses, and benchmarking datasets that use population-level insights. These may be provided to defense researchers, policy organizations, academic institutions, or government agencies. No individual is identifiable in any data product we produce.
  • Affiliate partnerships with vetted services, clearly labeled on the platform

To improve military life

  • Aggregated data may power dashboards, reports, and tools used by installations, researchers, policymakers, and advocacy organizations — always at the population level, never at the individual level.

What We Will Never Do With Your Data

  • Sell or share information that identifies you as an individual
  • Give advertisers access to your personal information
  • Run surveillance ads that track you across the internet
  • Use tracking pixels, browser fingerprinting, or cross-site tracking
  • Share protected content with official accounts, partners, or anyone
  • Provide individual-level data to any third party for any reason
  • Allow partners or sponsors to access your personal profile, reviews, or activity

Advertising & Monetization Transparency

We're upfront about this: Honest MOS needs revenue to exist.

How ads work here

  • Ads are contextual (based on the page topic, not your personal data)
  • Ads are clearly labeled as ads
  • Advertisers never see your data, your profile, or your activity
  • Advertisers never influence content, ratings, or review visibility
  • Users can report ads that feel predatory, misleading, or inappropriate

How affiliate links work

  • Some pages (civilian salary sections, certification paths, education resources) may include affiliate links to relevant services
  • These are always labeled (“Affiliate link” or “Sponsored”)
  • Affiliate relationships never affect ratings or recommendations
  • We vet affiliate partners and reject predatory services

How data products work

  • We may produce and sell anonymized, aggregated reports and datasets
  • Examples: installation-level trend reports, MOS satisfaction benchmarks, retention correlation studies
  • These contain population-level statistics only — never individual data
  • Minimum population thresholds ensure no individual can be identified
  • We will publish our anonymization methodology so you can verify our approach

Posting Modes — What Others Actually See

Plain English

Every post has its own posting mode. Ghost on one review, Callsign on another — they are completely independent. Posting On the Record for one MOS review does not link to or affect any other post you've made.

GhostDefault
What others see
  • Nothing that identifies you
  • No name, rank, base, or unit
  • No avatar
  • Month and year only (not exact date)
  • Verification tier badge (e.g., “Peer Verified”) — no identity behind it
What official accounts cannot see
  • The post itself — entirely hidden
  • Database-layer enforcement, not a filter setting
CallsignPseudonymous · Your chosen identity
What others see
  • Your display name (chosen by you, not your real name)
  • Your avatar, if you've uploaded one
  • Verification tier badge
  • Branch and component, if you've added them to your profile
  • Month and year only (not exact date)
What they never see
  • Your real name or email
  • Your specific duty station or unit
  • Rank or MOS unless you've explicitly added them to your callsign profile
On the RecordFull profile · Maximum credibility
What others see
  • Your display name
  • Your avatar
  • Rank, MOS/AFSC, branch, component
  • Verification tier (maximum credibility)
  • Exact post date
Important: this is per-post
  • Posting On the Record here has zero effect on other posts
  • Your Ghost posts elsewhere stay Ghost — no cross-linking
  • Each post's mode is set at creation and stored independently
  • You can't downgrade an On the Record post after publishing

Modes are per-post, not per-account

You might post On the Record with your name and rank on a Rate My MOS review because you want maximum credibility — and on the same day post Ghost on a story about your unit because you want full anonymity. Those two posts are structurally unconnected. The platform cannot link them. Neither can anyone else.

Protected Content — Special Handling

Content marked as “protected” receives the highest level of protection:

  • Excluded from all queries by official accounts (database-layer enforcement)
  • Excluded from any data products where population size is small enough to risk identification
  • Never shared with partners, researchers, or government entities in identifiable form
  • May contribute to large-scale aggregate statistics (e.g., overall MOS rating) only when the population is large enough to prevent identification
  • Protected status can only be changed by the content author

Third-Party Services

We use a small number of third-party services to operate:

  • Hosting: Vercel (your data is processed on their infrastructure)
  • Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL database hosting)
  • Email: Resend (for sending emails you've opted into)
  • Analytics: Privacy-respecting, no cross-site tracking

We choose services with strong privacy practices. We do not use Facebook, Google Analytics, or any service whose business model is surveillance advertising.

Data Requests & Law Enforcement

If we receive a legal request for user data:

  • We comply with valid, specific legal process (subpoenas, court orders)
  • We challenge overly broad requests
  • We notify affected users when legally permitted
  • We provide only the minimum data required by the specific legal instrument
  • We publish aggregate statistics about data requests in our transparency reports

We have designed the system so that protected content is architecturally difficult to expose even under compulsion. We don't build backdoors.

Cookies

We use:

  • Essential cookies: authentication, session, theme preference
  • Analytics cookies: privacy-respecting, no cross-site tracking

We don't use:

  • Advertising cookies or tracking pixels
  • Third-party cookies from ad networks
  • Cross-site tracking of any kind

Your Rights

You can:

  • See what data we have about you (profile settings → data export)
  • Correct inaccurate data
  • Delete your account and personal data
  • Opt out of non-essential emails and analytics
  • Request full content deletion (not just anonymization)
  • Lodge a complaint with a data protection authority if applicable

Contact: hello@honestmos.com

International Users

Honest MOS is designed to meet strong privacy standards regardless of where you're stationed. If you're accessing from a jurisdiction with specific data protection laws (GDPR, etc.), we respect those rights.

Changes to This Policy

If we change this policy:

  • We notify users via email before changes take effect
  • We publish a clear summary of what changed and why
  • Material changes get a minimum 30-day notice
  • We never retroactively weaken protections on existing protected content

Protected by default. Honest by design.

Read our Constitution