We are a project run by a non-profit and realised by volunteers. As such, we rely on the help of people like you. Thank you so much for looking into contributing to datarequests.org!
There are many tasks from different topics that need to be done. Among them, many that are suitable for people who don’t yet have a lot of experience with data protection. On this page, we have compiled a list of the most important ones. If there’s something you want to contribute to, we would greatly appreciate your help.
Also feel free to join our Matrix space. There, you can chat with the community, ask questions and pitch your ideas.
Maintaining the company database
The company database is an important element of datarequests.org. It contains the contact details for privacy-related requests to lots of companies and other organisations.
A database like that of course requires a lot of maintenance, which is why we could really use your help! If you find a company that is missing from our database, you can click the button below and submit it yourself.
You have noticed that the data we have on a company is incorrect or incomplete? At the top of every company detail page, there is a “suggest a change” button that allows you to edit the current data.
If you want to dig in even further, you can also directly contribute to the GitHub repository we use to manage the database.
Internationalisation
Our goal is for datarequests.org to be available to as many people as possible. In order to achieve that, we need to translate the project and adjust the content to different countries.
You know a language we are not yet supporting and would like to help us translate? Great! We manage our translations through the Weblate platform. There, you can easily help us translate—be it a couple of strings or whole components.
In order for us to officially support a new language, in addition to the actual translations, we also need a maintainer for that language, for helping us come up with a name and checking incoming translations for example. If you’re up for that, send us an e-mail.
An equally important task is adding companies from as many countries as possible to the database. Please refer to the information above on how to submit new entries.
We automatically start officially supporting a new country once we have a sufficient number of companies from that country in our database (the threshold is currently set to ten). We would also like to compile a packs with suggestions of which companies people could request.
Writing content
Apart from the generator and company database, we also want to offer comprehensive posts about all topics relating to privacy and data protection. That includes things like explanations on an individuals rights under the GDPR and how to use them, comments on current news about data protection and tutorials on how to use the download features offered by some websites, among others.
You have an article that could be interesting to our users? We would love to publish it!
Furthermore, we are of course also always interested in new translations for existing articles.
Reporting bugs
While using the website, you noticed something that doesn’t work? It would really help us if you report the problem, so we can work on fixing it.
For some problems, we are able to directly display an error message to you. In these cases, please just use the reporting mechanisms mentioned there. That makes the process easier for you and helps us diagnose the issue.
There are however also problems we can’t catch. The best way to report those is through our GitHub issue tracker. But if you don’t want to use GitHub, you can of course also send us an email.
Also know how to solve the problem? Have a look at the Helping with the code section.
Helping with the code
You want to help with the datarequests.org code? We of course also welcome any help here. There’s always a bug that needs to be solved or a new feature that wants to be implemented.
The project is designed as a static website based on Hugo and Preact. The development is done through GitHub. We welcome issues and pull requests through there. There’s also more details on our architecture there.
Donations
datarequests.org will always be offered for free. But running a project like this obviously costs money. And the more money we have available, the more projects relating to data protection we can start and continue.
As such, we are incredibly grateful for all donations.
The project is run by Datenanfragen.de e. V., a public-benefit non-profit from Germany. That means that donations from individuals and companies from Germany are eligible for tax deduction. There’s more details on that on the donation page.
If you want to support us long-term, you can also become a member.
You have another idea on how to contribute? Shoot us message on Matrix or an email!