Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

VoteFlip ("we", "our", or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our social polling platform (the "Service").

This policy describes our data practices and the choices available to you. Some optional processing, such as advertising cookies, only happens with your consent.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide

• Account data: Email address, username, display name, authentication provider, and password credentials handled by Supabase Auth
• Profile data: Required country and age group; optional bio, website, avatar/banner images, and gender
• Content and interactions: Polls and images you create, votes you cast, comments, likes, bookmarks, follows, shares, referrals, and vote receipts
• Messages and safety: Direct messages, message requests, blocks, reports, moderation decisions, and account restrictions
• Support and legal notices: Contact form submissions, privacy requests, illegal-content notices, decisions, and correspondence
• Preferences: Theme, language, cookie consent, and notification settings
• Payment data: Subscription tier and Stripe customer/subscription identifiers. Full card details are processed by Stripe and are not stored by VoteFlip

2.2 Information from Third-Party Sign-In

If you sign in using a third-party provider such as Google, we receive basic profile information such as your name, email address, and profile picture from the provider. We do not receive your password from these services.

2.3 Automatically Collected Information

• Aggregate web analytics: Page or route, timestamp, referrer, coarse location, browser, operating system, and device category
• Hosting and security data: IP and network information, request metadata, response status, service errors, and keyed hashes used for rate limits and abuse prevention

We use this data to operate the Service, protect it from abuse, understand performance, and improve the product.

VoteFlip uses privacy-focused Vercel Web Analytics without third-party analytics cookies. Before an analytics event leaves your browser, VoteFlip removes query strings and poll, profile, message, and other dynamic identifiers. Events for private application areas such as messages, settings, notifications, onboarding, and administration are not sent. Vercel describes the remaining page-view data as aggregate and discards its visitor hash after 24 hours.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve the Service
• Create and manage your account
• Display your profile and content to other users
• Send notifications about activity on your polls (if enabled)
• Calculate reputation scores, streaks, and achievements
• Display leaderboards and community statistics
• Personalize your experience (language, theme)
• Apply age-appropriate safety, advertising, and subscription eligibility controls
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and violations of our Terms
• Respond to your inquiries and support requests

4. Cookies & Local Storage

We use the following cookies and browser storage:

Authentication and security storage is necessary to provide signed-in features. Locale, interface preferences, install-prompt state, per-tab translations, and the static app cache support features you request. Referral attribution is stored when a referral link is followed so a qualifying signup or first vote can be credited. You can clear browser-managed storage through your browser; doing so may sign you out, prevent referral credit, or reset saved preferences.

Advertising cookies (Google AdSense): If you are a free-tier user, we may show ads powered by Google AdSense. Google uses cookies and similar technologies to serve ads. These advertising cookies are only loaded after you explicitly consent via our cookie banner. If you decline, no ads are shown. Paid subscribers (Pro and Creator Pro) never see ads regardless of consent. We also do not initialize or display advertising for accounts declared as age 16-17 or for signed-in accounts whose age onboarding is incomplete.

For more information about how Google uses data, visit Google's partner policy. You can also opt out of personalised ads at Google Ads Settings.

5. Data Sharing & Disclosure

We do not sell your personal information. We may share information in the following cases:

• Public content: Your username, display name, avatar, public profile fields, public polls, comments, and aggregate vote results are visible to other users based on your visibility settings. A vote receipt you deliberately share shows the selected option or options but does not include your account identity
• Service providers: We use Supabase for database, storage, and authentication; Vercel for hosting and aggregate web analytics; Stripe for payments; Resend for transactional email; Cloudflare Turnstile for bot protection; Google for optional OAuth sign-in and Cloud Translation; Fontshare for heading-font delivery; and Google AdSense only if advertising is configured and validly consented
• Legal requirements: We may disclose information if required by law, regulation, or legal process
• Safety: We may share information to protect the rights, safety, or property of VoteFlip, our users, or the public

When you request a poll translation, VoteFlip sends the accessible poll text and language codes to Google Cloud Translation. Google states that this text is held briefly in memory to return the translation and is not used to train its translation models. VoteFlip may cache the translated poll until its source changes or the poll is deleted.

6. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), secure password hashing, and access controls. However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Data Retention

We retain account and feature data while your account or relevant content is active. Account deletion starts a resumable cleanup of billing sessions, uploaded images, database content, and your authentication identity. Messages written by the other participant may remain available to that person in a conversation labeled as a deleted account; messages you authored are removed. If a permanently banned account is deleted, we retain keyed hashes of its normalized email and authentication-provider identity, a fixed ban category, and relevant timestamps for 180 days after deletion. This record contains no raw email address, provider identifier, password, message, or device fingerprint and is used only to prevent immediate ban evasion. Translation quota rows linked to an account or keyed IP hash are retained for 30 completed days. Short-lived API rate-limit buckets expire automatically. Support, moderation, payment, security, and provider logs may be retained longer where needed to resolve requests and disputes, enforce rules, prevent fraud, or comply with legal obligations. Browser storage remains until its stated expiry or until you clear it.

8. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correction: Update most profile data in Settings, or contact support to correct a locked age declaration
• Deletion: Delete your account from Settings or request deletion of associated personal data
• Portability: Download your data in JSON format from Settings
• Objection: Object to processing of your data for certain purposes
• Withdraw consent: Withdraw consent for optional data processing at any time

You can export or delete your account data in Settings. To exercise rights that are not available directly in the product, contact us at privacy@voteflip.com. We will respond without undue delay and normally within one calendar month.

For EU/EEA Users (GDPR)

Our legal basis for processing your data includes performance of a contract (providing requested account and social features), legitimate interests (security, service integrity, support, and abuse prevention), legal obligations, and consent where optional processing requires it. You have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

For California Users (CCPA)

California residents have the right to know what personal information is collected, request deletion, and opt out of the sale of personal information. We do not sell personal information.

9. Children's Privacy

VoteFlip accounts are not intended for children under 16. We do not knowingly permit children under 16 to maintain an account. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 16, we will remove it. Users who declare an age of 16-17 remain on the free plan, do not receive advertising, cannot receive first-contact messages from strangers, and are excluded from account suggestions and leaderboards. Public polls, comments, and profile information remain visible when posted publicly. If you believe a child under 16 has provided us with personal information, please contact us at privacy@voteflip.com.

10. International Data Transfers

Our service providers may process data in countries other than your country of residence. Where applicable law requires a transfer mechanism, we rely on the mechanism available for the relevant provider and service, such as an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses. Provider locations and transfer arrangements are reviewed as part of our processor governance.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting the new policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at:

• Email: privacy@voteflip.com