What the site collects
Case submissions. When you add a case you give us broad categories — endeavor field, applicant profile, premium processing, RFE history, rough timeline, attorney vs. self-filed — optionally a short free-text endeavor line (a phrase like "AI infrastructure", not your proposed-endeavor narrative), optional profile details (career stage, degree, banded citation/publication counts, and country of birth — the country is never shown on your case), and optionally your receipt number. The receipt number is used for exactly one thing: reading your case's status from the USCIS website over time. It is never displayed anywhere, on any page, to anyone. We never ask for your name.
Law firm (optional). If your case was filed with an attorney, you can type the firm's name — or leave it blank. This is something you tell us; it is never read from USCIS or your account. The name is never shown on your case or on any individual row. It will only ever appear in counts by endeavor field, and only once a firm has several cases behind it. You can change or clear it from your case's edit screen.
Accounts (optional). Everything on NIWStats works without an account. If you create one — to claim your case or keep a watchlist — sign-in is handled by Clerk, and we store the account's link to your case, not a profile of you.
Analytics. We use Google Analytics with deliberately coarse events: page views and category-level actions. No receipt numbers, no free-text descriptions, no exact dates ever reach analytics.
How you found us. The first time your browser opens the app, we note a coarse label for how it got here — like "Google", "ChatGPT", "Reddit", or which of our pages you came from — never the address of the page you came from. It goes to analytics, and if you add a case it is stored with it, so we can tell which channels bring real cases. It is never shown on your case or anywhere else.
Abuse prevention. Submissions carry a salted, irreversible fingerprint used only to group submissions from the same source. It cannot be turned back into an address, and we don't try.
NIWStats — Silent Update Check
The extension checks your I-140 case for silent updates through your own logged-in myUSCIS session. It can only talk to two places: my.uscis.gov (to read your case, as you) and the NIWStats API (only if you connect sync). It never sees your USCIS password — it rides the session you already opened.
Stored in your browser only: the receipt number of the case you chose to watch and the latest check's snapshot — event ids, USCIS codes, timestamps, and a few case flags. RFE and notice milestones are kept only as their dates and types. Names, addresses, and documents are never stored. Uninstalling the extension deletes everything held locally.
Nothing leaves your browser unless you connect sync. Syncing is off by default and can only be switched on by you, signed in, on the NIWStats sync page, for your own claimed case. Once on, each successful check sends to NIWStats:
- Silent updates — the dates USCIS touched your file, with their event ids and codes (like FTA0) when they carry one
- Public status and filing date — as your own myUSCIS session sees them
- Case flags — premium processing, whether action is required, whether the case is closed, and RFE and notice records (dates and types)
- The plumbing — the receipt number of the case you linked (so the update lands on the right case) and the time of the check
Never synced, ever: your name, address or documents; your attorney or representative's information; your USCIS credentials. You can stop syncing at any time from the extension — that immediately halts any further sending and destroys the sync key on our side. Silent updates already added to your NIWStats case stay on it; stopping the pipe ends future syncing, it doesn't erase history you've already contributed.
Never sold, never traded
We do not sell, rent, or share your data with third parties. The public site never shows your receipt number or your name, and slices with too few cases are suppressed entirely rather than shown — the same rules described in our methodology. The services we rely on to run the site — hosting, sign-in (Clerk), analytics (Google) — process data only on our behalf.
NIWStats sometimes shows a clearly labeled sponsored link — from a service relevant to the EB2-NIW process — to help keep the site free. Sponsors sit outside the data: they never see your case, and a sponsor receives at most a click, never a person. Anything that happens after you tap a sponsored link happens on that company's own site, under their terms.
Removal and contact
If you want a case you submitted corrected or removed, or have any question about this policy, tell us through the feedback box in the app — if you're signed in we can reply, and we'll handle removal requests directly. You can also write to hello@niwstats.com. Stopping extension sync, as above, takes effect immediately on your side without asking anyone.
NIWStats is not affiliated with USCIS and is not legal advice.