Privacy Policy

1. In short

• You give us a username, an email and a password. That is enough to create an account.
• Your date of birth, profession, gender, country and region are optional, private and never shown on your profile or on polls. They are used to produce group statistics ("what do 25-34 year olds choose?"), only if you consent and only when a group is large enough.
• Your votes are linked to your account as long as it exists.
• We do not ask in your profile for your sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, health, political opinions or biometric data. But what you vote for can say a lot about you (see section 8).
• At launch, we do not sell your personal data, and we have no advertising and no third-party audience measurement tool.
• You can view, correct, export and delete your data, and withdraw your consent, directly in the settings (section 11).

2. Who is responsible

The data controller is the publisher of Versus, identified in the legal notice of the Terms of Use (section 1).

• Contact for your personal data: hello@joinversus.co

We have not appointed a data protection officer; for any question about your data, write to hello@joinversus.co.

3. What data we collect

If you vote before signing up: your choice is kept in your session on the server while you sign up, so it is not lost.

What we do not collect: GPS location, phone number, advertising identifier, payment data, contacts, social login data. We use no third-party audience measurement tool, no advertising pixel and no advertising cookie.

4. Why we use your data, and on what legal basis

Consent is optional. You can create an account, vote and create polls without giving the "group statistics" consent. If you do not consent (or if you withdraw), your profile fields are used nowhere: your vote counts in the poll's overall results, but not in group breakdowns, and you do not see the results of your own group. If you withdraw your consent, your profile fields stay saved (you can erase them yourself in the settings) but are no longer used, and the breakdowns shown in the app are recomputed without you.

We do not use your data for advertising and we do not send promotional emails (service emails only).

5. Who receives your data

Public: your username, your avatar, your polls (and their images) and vote totals are visible to everyone.

Not public: your email, your password, your private profile fields and your individual votes are never shown to other users.

Providers (processors). They process data on our behalf, on our instructions, and do not use it for their own purposes:

We also disclose data when the law requires it, to answer a valid request from an authority, and to defend our rights (for example in a dispute).

Third parties and statistics. We do not hand your individual data to third parties. Aggregated, anonymised statistics might be shared later (section 9); we would tell you first.

6. Transfers outside the European Union

Some of the providers above are US companies, or may allow staff located outside the European Union to access data (for example for support). When data is transferred outside the EU/EEA, we rely on the appropriate safeguards provided with these providers: the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or the provider's participation in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. You can ask for information about these safeguards at hello@joinversus.co.

Users located in the United States should know that their data is stored in the European Union and may be accessed from the United States by our providers; by using Versus, you acknowledge this.

7. How long we keep your data

8. Sensitive data: what we exclude, and what we cannot exclude

We deliberately do not ask for the categories of data that the GDPR protects more strongly: sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, health, political opinions, biometric data. Our profile form has no such fields and group statistics do not use them. If that were to change, we would ask for a dedicated, optional consent.

But we cannot say that Versus holds no sensitive information. Polls are created by users and your votes are linked to your account. A vote on a poll about a public figure, a religion, a health topic or a person can reveal something about your opinions or private life, even though we did not ask for it. This is why our content rules forbid voting-intention polls and polls that ask people to state their religion or sexual orientation. Votes are never shown individually to other users.

Do not put sensitive information about yourself or others in a username, an avatar or a poll.

9. Anonymous statistics and future plans

• Pseudonymised, not anonymous. As long as your account exists, your votes and your profile are linked by an internal identifier. This is pseudonymised data, which remains personal data. We do not claim it is anonymous.
• What is aggregated. Group statistics ("25-34: 71% chose A") are shown only if the group reaches a minimum number of votes, one dimension at a time, never by crossing several criteria, and only from the votes of people who consented to it. They contain no individual data.
• Future plan (not active at launch). Versus is designed to become a consumer panel. At a later stage, we might offer companies or researchers aggregated, anonymised statistics (for example, how a group of people reacts to a topic). This does not exist today. If it happens: (a) we will not pass on your individual data or your email; (b) we will ask, where the law requires it, for a separate, explicit consent with a precise description, which you will be able to refuse or withdraw; (c) we will update this policy and tell you; (d) for California residents, see section 13.
• We do not claim that your data will never be shared in any form; we commit to what is written above and to being transparent when it changes.

10. Cookies and similar technologies

We use only what is necessary for the service to work. We use no advertising cookie and no third-party audience measurement tool, and we do not track you on other sites. For this reason, we do not show a cookie banner.

11. Your rights and how to exercise them

If you are in the EU/EEA (and, as a courtesy, everywhere), you have the right to:

We answer within one month (extendable by two months for complex requests, in which case we tell you). To protect your account, we may ask you to log in or to prove your identity before acting on a request.

12. Age and minors

Versus is for people aged 16 and over. At sign-up you tick "I am 16 or older"; we do not check your age and we do not store any age at sign-up. The optional date of birth in your profile is used only for group statistics and must correspond to an age of at least 16. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 16, we delete it. If you are a parent and think your child has an account, write to hello@joinversus.co.

13. For residents of the United States (including California)

This section supplements the rest of the policy for residents of California and of other US states that have a privacy law (for example the CCPA, as amended by the CPRA).

• Categories of personal information collected (last 12 months): identifiers (username, email, IP address); login credentials (hashed password); activity in the app (votes, polls created, reports); characteristics such as age band, gender, profession (optional, provided by you); general location (country, region, not precise); content you publish (polls, images); inferences for the "For you" feed (interest per category). Account login credentials are "sensitive personal information" under the CPRA; we use them only to provide the service. Votes may reveal sensitive topics (section 8).
• Sources: you and your device. Purposes: section 4. Recipients: the providers in section 5.
• Sale and sharing. To date, we do not sell your personal information and we do not "share" it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we use no advertising pixel. If we ever offer aggregated statistics to third parties in a way that would be a "sale" or "sharing" under US law, we will first show a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link and honour that choice before starting.
• Your rights: to know what data we hold, to access it, to delete it, to correct it, to refuse sale or sharing, to limit the use of sensitive information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. You exercise them in the Settings (export, correction, deletion) or by email at hello@joinversus.co. We answer within 45 days (extendable by 45 days when needed, in which case we tell you). You may use an authorised agent, by giving us proof of their authority.
• Minors. Versus is for people aged 16 and over. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of people under 16.
• Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control: we do not track you on other sites, so these signals have nothing to switch off.

14. Security

Passwords are stored hashed; verification codes are stored only as a fingerprint, expire after 10 minutes and the number of attempts is limited; backups are encrypted before they are uploaded; access to private profile data is restricted; group statistics are computed without exposing individual rows; sensitive actions (sign-up, code, vote, creation) are rate limited. No system is 100% secure. In case of a data breach likely to put you at risk, we will notify the competent authority and you as the law requires.

15. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy in a significant way (new purpose, new recipient, new data), we tell you in the app or by email and, where the law requires it, we ask for your consent again. The version and date in force are shown at the top of the page.

16. Contact

For any question about your data or to exercise your rights, write to hello@joinversus.co.