Privacy Policy

Privacy at a glance

• Choose audiences for profile sections and photos.
• Community summaries do not name the members who voted on your pairs.
• Use the helper setup to vote without appearing in Discover or pairs, subject to reader eligibility.
• Photo links are short-lived; an issued link or a photo already on a screen may remain visible for a time.
• Export your data or request account deletion in Settings. Account deletion instructions explain retained data and the email option.

About this policy

This policy explains what personal data Vote collects when you use the Vote: Better Together app (“Vote”) and its web pages, why, on what legal basis, who receives it, how long it is kept and what your rights are. Vote is a dating app in which the community reads pairs of people, and nobody is introduced to anyone without saying yes. It is only for adults aged 18 or over.

Who is responsible

The data controller responsible for your personal data is the business that runs Vote:
Name: VOTEBT
Legal form: a sole proprietorship registered in Ontario, Canada
Address: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Contact: support@votebettertogether.com
In the app you can reach us at any time under Settings › Help & support.
VOTEBT has designated a Privacy Officer who is accountable for Vote’s compliance with Canada’s PIPEDA and the other privacy laws that apply to it, and who is also the person in charge of the protection of personal information under Quebec law. To reach the Privacy Officer, write to the contact above with “Privacy” in the subject line, or choose “Privacy and my data” under Settings › Help & support.

What we collect

• What you give us: your sign-in (Apple, Google or e-mail), first name, birth date, gender and pronouns, who you want to see, what you are looking for, relationship style and family plans, your photos, your city, and the answers, prompts, interests and tastes you add to your profile.
• Optional answers that are sensitive: your beliefs (spirituality, religion, politics), your habits (drinking, smoking, cannabis), a diet that can reveal a religion (such as halal or kosher) and an identity beyond woman or man (for example trans or non-binary). See “Sensitive information and your explicit consent”.
• What you do in Vote: likes, notes and passes, matches, messages and chat photos, your reads of pairs (your answer, how strongly you felt it, what you noticed, a first date you imagined and how long you looked before answering), the pairs you propose or follow, introductions and your answers to them, your answers after a date, blocks, reports and your requests to our support team.
• Your settings: who can see each part of your profile, whether you are looking for someone, taking a break or not looking, your community, notification and privacy settings, the consents you gave or withdrew, and when you made the Vote promise.
• From your phone: two random IDs made by the app (an installation ID, sent with the platform, app version, language and time zone, and an install ID kept in the phone’s secure storage, of which Vote’s servers keep only a one-way hash), a push token if you turn on notifications, and an approximate position, rounded to about 1 km on your phone, only if you choose “Use my current location”.
• Technical data: your IP address and the details of each request your phone sends to Vote’s servers, and crash reports if the app crashes.
• From other members: what they do that involves you, such as liking you, reading a pair you are in, proposing you or reporting you. You only ever see these as counts or results, never who.
• From Apple or Google, if you sign in with them: an identifier, the e-mail address they share (with Apple this may be a private relay address) and, if they share them, your name and, with Google, a profile picture. Our sign-in system keeps what they share. After an Apple sign-in on iPhone, Vote also keeps a token from Apple, sealed so only Vote’s servers can use it, to revoke Vote’s access when you delete your account. Vote uses only your first name, to start your profile.
• From how you connect: the network part of the address each request comes from, kept only as a one-way hash for 30 days (see “Crash reports and technical data”).

Why we use it, and our legal bases

We use your data only for these purposes, each on the legal basis given (article 6 of the GDPR, article 5 of Türkiye’s KVKK):
• To run your account and the service you asked for: sign-in, your profile and its audiences, Discover, likes, matches and chat, community reading, introductions, the notifications and optional features you turn on, and help and support. Basis: performance of our contract with you (GDPR art. 6(1)(b), KVKK art. 5(2)(c)).
• Sensitive information: only with your explicit consent (GDPR art. 9(2)(a), KVKK art. 6), see the next section.
• To keep Vote safe and fair: handling reports, moderation and appeals, refusing threatening words, preventing fake accounts, spam and manipulation of reads, limiting how much each account can do, security logs and crash reports. Basis: our legitimate interest in a safe community and a working service (GDPR art. 6(1)(f), KVKK art. 5(2)(f)), and our legal obligations where they apply (GDPR art. 6(1)(c), KVKK art. 5(2)(ç)).
• Usage statistics: in the EU and EEA, the UK and Türkiye only with your consent (GDPR art. 6(1)(a), KVKK art. 5(1)). Elsewhere, our legitimate interest in improving Vote, and you can turn them off.
• To establish, exercise or defend legal claims and to answer lawful requests from authorities. Basis: our legitimate interest and legal obligations (KVKK art. 5(2)(ç) and (e)).
Where we rely on legitimate interest, we have weighed it against your rights and you can object (see “Your rights”). Giving us your data is voluntary, but without the basics (your sign-in, first name, birth date, gender, who you want to see, what you are looking for, two photos and your city) Vote cannot show you to anyone or anyone to you. To only read pairs and help others meet, your sign-in, first name, birth date and city are enough.

Sensitive information and your explicit consent

Some information is special under data protection law because it can reveal your religion or beliefs, political opinions, health, sex life or sexual orientation. In Vote that is your beliefs and politics, your habits including cannabis, a diet that can reveal a religion, an identity beyond woman or man, and who you want to see, which together with your gender can reveal your sexual orientation. A pair you appear in can also show readers who you are interested in, for example a pair of two women.
Vote processes this information only with your explicit consent. The app asks for it separately, before you add the information, and says exactly what each consent covers. Belief and habit questions are optional and you can skip them. You can withdraw a consent at any time in Settings. Withdrawing deletes those answers from your profile and stops their use from then on, and it does not affect what happened before. Who you want to see is needed for matching, so without that consent Vote cannot show you to anyone or anyone to you.
These answers are shown only to the audience you choose for each part of your profile. At first, beliefs are shown to your Connections and habits to Potential dates, so readers do not see them. They appear in the Bond, which compares only what the person looking can see of both people. They are never used to order Discover, to choose pairs or to rank anyone, and never in usage statistics.
In countries that criminalise same-sex relationships, Vote offers fewer identity choices, does not show readers pairs of two people of the same gender or pairs with a non-binary person, and lets only nearby members read pairs unless you choose otherwise.

Who sees your profile

You choose an audience for each part of your profile: Everyone, Potential dates, Connections or Only me.
• Community readers see the photos you allow in Vote and the parts set to Everyone.
• People who see you in Discover, among the people who liked them or in an introduction also see the parts set to Potential dates.
• Your connections (a match or an accepted introduction) also see the parts set to Connections.
• Only me is never shown to anyone.
Your first name is always shown, and Vote never asks for your last name. Your birth date is never shown: people see your age, unless you hide it, and your zodiac sign only if you choose to show it. Readers never see your distance or when you were active. “Incognito” shows you only to people you like and keeps you out of community pairs. In Settings › Looking for someone, “Take a break” hides you from Discover, pairs and new introductions until you come back, and “Not looking” does the same until you choose to look again. Either way you can still read pairs, and your chats go on.

Community reading

While you are looking for someone (Settings › Looking for someone), other members may be shown you and another person as a pair and asked whether the two of you make sense together. Being in Discover and being read in pairs go together, so you are in both or in neither. This is how it works:
• Readers see your first name, the photos you allow in Vote and the parts of your profile set to Everyone, which at first include your age, gender, city, what you are looking for, height, personality answers, tastes, prompts and interests. They never see your distance, your activity or who else read.
• A read belongs to the pair, never to one person. Vote gives no one a score, rating or rank for how they look or how readers see them. As a reader you have a standing that only Vote’s servers use, to weigh your reads: of the answered introductions that came from pairs you read, how many led to a conversation. It is never shown to anyone, and it is in your data export.
• A pair’s result is shown only once at least five people have read it, as a share rounded to 5% together with a word such as “Most”, “About half” or “Few”. Once at least ten other people have read a pair you read, you also see the exact share of them who answered as you did. Until then it says the result isn’t clear yet. Readers are counted so that several accounts on one phone count as two at most, and a result changes only in steps of five readers, so two results seen one after the other never show what one reader said.
• You never learn who rated, proposed or followed you. Readers and followers see that you were introduced and both accepted, or that you met or are still talking, only while both of you enable “Share our story with the people who rated us” in Settings › Looking for someone. Either person can withdraw permission at any time. Your own pair counts are rounded down to steps of five and updated once a day. No individual answer is shown.
• Nobody is introduced or connected without both people saying yes.
• You choose who may read your pairs (anyone or people nearby, and only verified members once Vote offers verification), which photos appear in Vote, and whether you allow proposals and follows. “Incognito”, “Take a break” and “Not looking” take you out of pairs at any time.
• Every member 18 or older whose account is set up can read pairs, whether or not they are looking themselves. People you blocked, or who blocked you, never read your pairs. Someone who is only here to help others meet gives Vote just a first name, birth date and city, and never appears in pairs or in Discover. A read made before a block stays in the result others see, so a block never shows who read, but it no longer counts toward an introduction.
Because a pair can show readers who you are interested in, the app asks for your explicit consent before you appear in pairs.

Location

Vote shows your city or neighborhood, never your coordinates. Its servers store your location only as the nearest point of a grid about 5 km wide, used to work out rounded distances and who is within each other’s distance. Once your profile is set up you can change your city but not remove it, and your city and Discover filters can be changed only a limited number of times a day, so nobody can use the distance Discover shows to work out where someone lives. If you choose “Use my current location”, Vote asks your phone for its approximate location once and sends the rounded coordinates to the BigDataCloud reverse geocoding service to find your city, and nothing else about you. The app may offer this once, in a short sheet after you start, and you can say no. Setting up your account and Discover need your city from your phone. Vote never follows your location in the background. Readers see only your city, never your neighborhood, and the closest distance Discover shows is “within 10 km”. When you move to another city, the pairs you read nearby, and who reads yours nearby, follow your new city after a week. A city whose name doesn’t match where it is on the map is refused.

Permissions

Vote asks your phone for a permission only when you use something that needs it: approximate location only when you tap “Use my current location”, the camera only if you choose to take a photo, and notifications only if you turn them on. To add a photo you choose it in your phone’s own photo picker, which shares only the photos you pick, so Vote never asks for your photo library. Vote never asks for your contacts, your precise location, your microphone or permission to track you.

Photos

Your phone encodes every photo again before sending it, which removes its location data, and Vote’s servers check it and encode it once more. Photos are stored privately. Someone gets a link to one of your photos only while your settings and your relation to them allow it, and each link, made only by Vote’s servers, works for at most about three minutes (one minute for a photo in chat). After a block, or when you hide a photo or turn on “Incognito”, no new link is issued. A link already issued keeps working until it runs out, and a photo already on someone’s screen may stay there until they leave it. Every new profile photo is checked by a person on Vote’s team before anyone else sees it, and your first photo must clearly show your face. Vote uses no automated face recognition or image classification. Your dating profile can also have a cover photo, which is never your Community cover. It is checked like your profile photos and shown to the people who see you in Discover, among the people who liked them or in an introduction, and to your connections, never to community readers.

Messages and chat photos

Messages are stored so the two of you can read them, and only the two people in a conversation can open it. Vote’s safety team cannot open a conversation. If one of you reports the other, a copy of the last 20 messages is kept for the safety team (see “Safety, moderation and support”). When you both have read receipts on, members whose plan includes read receipts see when you read their messages. Turning read receipts off hides yours and theirs. A message that has not reached Vote yet is kept on your phone so it can be sent again without being sent twice. After 24 hours it is no longer used and it is deleted the next time you open Vote. Signing out removes it at once.
A photo sent in chat stays in the conversation, where the two of you can open it until the conversation ends (an unmatch, a block or a deleted account). Then Vote deletes it. A photo sent as “View once” can be opened by the other person one time. While it is open, Vote asks the phone to block screenshots and screen recording, but nobody can prevent a photo of the screen, so send only what you are comfortable with. Once it has been opened nobody can open it again, and Vote deletes it within 24 hours (it is kept that long only so it can be reported). If someone reports a chat photo, it is kept for Vote’s safety team until the report is closed, and every time the team opens it is recorded.

Your sky and The sky between you

Both are optional, for fun only, and off until you turn them on. Astrology never affects who you see, who you are paired with or any ranking.
• Your sky is a short daily reading on your own profile, calculated on Vote’s own servers from your birth date and, only if you add them, your birth time and birth place (the city, its approximate coordinates and its time zone). Only you see it. Each day’s reading is kept for 30 days.
• “The sky between you”, in a chat, compares your birth chart with the other person’s. It opens only once you have both turned it on for that conversation, and the other person is not told when you turn it on. Either of you can turn it off at any time, which closes it for you both. Neither of you ever sees the other’s birth date, time or place, although a reading can hint at a little of them, for example that the other person gave a birth time. The reading is kept unchanged while it is open, deleted when either of you turns it off, and all of it is deleted within a day after the conversation ends.
Your birth time and place are used only for these two features, are never shown to anyone and are never used for matching. You can remove them at any time. The words you read are written in advance by Vote and chosen by the calculation: no AI writes them and nothing about you is sent to an AI provider.

After a date, and first dates readers imagine

A few days into a conversation in which you have both written, Vote may ask you, and only you, whether you met, whether you are still talking and whether you would like to see them again. Answering is up to you. Your answers are kept with the conversation and never shown to the other person, who does not learn whether you answered. Vote uses them, counted together with everyone else’s, to learn which introductions really work. If you turn on “Share how my dates go” (Settings › Looking for someone), people who follow a pair you are in can see “they met”, “still talking” or “want to meet again”, but only when both of you have it on and both said yes. A no, or one person’s answer, is never shown. What you see for the pairs you follow doesn’t depend on this setting. Readers who said Together to your pair see, on their own matchmaking card, how many of the pairs they read talked, met or want to meet again. Only pairs where both people have “Share how my dates go” on count there, shown as ranges such as 5+, and each pair only a random one to three weeks after its introduction, so nothing points to one pair. Once a week, Community may also say in words such as “a few” or “dozens” how many introduced pairs met in your city, or across Vote, the week before. Only pairs where both people said they met and both have “Share how my dates go” on count there, never fewer than five, and the card never says which pairs.
When you read two people together you may imagine their first date from three choices (when, what and where), kept with your read. Once at least five readers imagined one, the two people see the date most of them chose, part by part, with their introduction and at the top of their conversation. Never a date only one reader chose, never how many or who.

Other records

Vote also keeps when you last opened “What your ratings led to” on the Vote tab (the day and the time, not what it showed), whether you read pairs nearby or worldwide, the phrases you saved with the earlier “Saved phrases” feature, how many likes, notes and reads you have used in the current period, and, so that the people with the fewest possible pairs are paired first, about how many people your preferences and theirs allow you to be paired with (a number, never who) and when Vote last found no one new to pair you with.

Notifications on your phone

If you turn on notifications, your phone’s push token is stored for this installation and sent, with each alert, to Apple’s push notification service, or on Android to Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging. Vote sends its alerts directly to these services and uses no other push service. An alert says only what happened, such as “You have a new message”. It shows a first name only if you turn on “Show names in alerts”, and the start of a message only if you turn on “Show message text in alerts” (Settings › Notifications). Signing out or turning notifications off removes the token.

E-mails from Vote

Vote sends e-mails only when you need them: to confirm your address, to sign in or reset your password, and to answer a request you made, for example to support or to delete your account. Vote sends no newsletters or promotional e-mails. If it ever wants to, it will ask for your express consent first, and each such e-mail will say who sent it, how to reach us and how to unsubscribe in one step, as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) and similar laws require. An unsubscribe takes effect within 10 business days at the latest.

Usage statistics

Vote counts how the app is used (for example that a vote or a match happened, or that a screen was loaded) in its own database, never at an analytics company and never for advertising. It records no message text, photos, profile answers, gender or orientation, beliefs, locations or what you answered on a pair. The counts are linked to your account and are part of your data export. In the EU and EEA, the UK and Türkiye they stay off until you turn on “Help improve Vote” (Settings › Privacy). Elsewhere they are on until you turn that off. While it is off, nothing is recorded. The counts are deleted after 13 months and lose their link to you when you delete your account.

Crash reports and technical data

When crash reporting is set up and the app crashes or hits an error, a report with technical details (what failed, the app version, the device model and system version, and your account’s random ID) is sent to Vote’s crash reporting service, Sentry. Names, e-mail addresses, messages and locations are removed on your phone before it is sent, and links keep only their address, without their details. The app also tells Sentry when a session starts and ends, to count sessions without a crash. No screenshots or recordings of your screen are taken, and Sentry is set not to store IP addresses.
When you sign in, Vote records a random installation ID created by the app, with the platform, app version, language and time zone, to keep your sign-in and notifications tied to the right device. The app also keeps a random install ID in your phone’s secure storage, so on iPhone it stays after the app is deleted and reinstalled. Vote’s servers keep only a one-way hash (SHA-256) of it with your account, and use it against ban evasion and clusters of fake accounts. Neither ID is derived from your phone’s hardware or advertising identifiers, and neither affects what anyone sees in Vote.
Our hosting provider processes your IP address and the details of each request to deliver the service and protect it, and keeps security logs of sign-ins. Vote uses no advertising identifiers, does not track you across other apps or websites, and stores on your phone only what the app needs: your sign-in in the phone’s secure storage, the installation ID, your settings and temporary copies of what you have seen. Vote’s web pages set no cookies and load nothing from other sites.
To resist fake accounts and coordinated voting, Vote’s servers also note which network each request comes from. They keep only the network part of your IP address (the first three of its four numbers, or the first part of a newer IPv6 address), never the full address, as a one-way hash that only Vote’s servers can make, with your account. It is noted when you sign up, when the app reports its install ID and with each read, and deleted after 30 days. Reads of one pair from the same network count as at most three readers, and when several accounts are made from one network within an hour, their reads count a little less for six months. On iPhone, Vote may also ask Apple to confirm that the app is the genuine Vote app (App Attest): the app makes a key in the phone’s secure chip, Apple vouches for it, and Vote’s servers keep only a one-way hash of the key’s ID with your account. None of this is used for matching, shown to anyone or used to work out where you are.

Safety, moderation and support

A report keeps the reason you chose, any note you add and, for a photo sent in chat, that photo until the report is closed. When a report is filed, Vote also keeps a copy for the safety team of the last 20 messages between the two people, the reported profile’s text and state (first name, bio, job, prompts, interests, age, whether it was verified and the state of the account) and the IDs of its photos, so that a decision can still be made if the conversation or an account is deleted. In that copy each person is shown only by a code that is not their account ID. Only Vote’s safety team can open it, and every opening is recorded. It may not appear in the standard self-service data export. If you make a privacy request about safety or moderation records, Vote will review and respond as required by applicable law. It is deleted 90 days after the report is closed. It is kept longer only while the report is still open, or if the safety team must keep it for a legal or safety reason. By default, reporting someone also blocks them. Vote’s safety team sees the report, the reported account and its history of reports. Every decision, and every time the team opens a reported photo, is recorded with who did it and why. Nobody is told who reported them. Decisions are made by people on Vote’s team, never by software alone.
When Vote’s team bans an account, one-way hashes (SHA-256) of its normalised e-mail address, its Apple or Google sign-in identities and its install IDs go on a ban list, with the reason. Nobody can read an address or an ID from the list. It is kept after the banned account is deleted, until the ban is lifted. A new account that matches it is suspended until a person on Vote’s team has looked at it. Hashes of the networks the banned account used in its last week are added for 90 days. A new account from one of them is never suspended for that, but its reads count a little less for a month.
Before a message, a caption or a like’s note goes, the app on your phone checks it against short lists of words. For insults it asks “Are you sure?”, and you decide. Under a message you receive with such words it asks whether it bothers you, with a way to report it. These checks happen only on your phone, and nothing about them is sent or recorded. Vote’s servers refuse a message, note or profile text with a threat of sexual violence, words telling someone to kill themselves or a slur on a short list, and a refused text is not stored.
When you write to Vote from Settings › Help & support, or appeal a suspension, your message and our answer are kept with your account so you can see them in the app. Only Vote’s staff can read them, and they are deleted with your account.
If a reported account is deleted before Vote’s safety team has decided, and the report was not dismissed, one-way hashes of its normalised e-mail address, its Apple or Google sign-in identities and its install IDs are kept with that report’s copy, never its networks, and never longer than the copy. Keeping them bans no one. If the team then bans the account, they go on the ban list as described above: a new account that matches is suspended until a person on Vote’s team has looked at it, and so is an account the same person already made again with the same e-mail address or sign-in. A dismissed report keeps none of them.

Paid plans

Vote is free to use, with the Vote Free plan. Paid plans, Vote Plus and Vote Max, are not on sale yet. If Vote offers them where you live and you buy one, Apple handles the payment and Vote never sees your card or Apple ID details. Vote keeps what the App Store reports about the subscription (the product, its transaction IDs, its status and dates, and whether it renews) and a random token that ties the purchase to your Vote account, so your plan follows you and can be restored.

Automated processing and profiling

Some parts of Vote are worked out by software. None of them makes a final decision about you with legal or similarly significant effects.
• Discover: people are ordered by how much your two profiles make sense together on paper (what you are each looking for, relationship style, family plans, distance, age, shared interests and tastes, and your “this or that” answers), by a daily random draw and by whether they already liked you. Nobody is ranked by attractiveness, and being liked by many people raises no one.
• Pairs: software chooses which plausible pairs readers see. Everyone gets the same kinds of places, nobody is in more than a small number of pairs at once, and parts of a profile set to Only me are never used.
• Reads: to resist fake accounts and coordinated voting, how much a read counts can depend on how new the account is, whether it is verified, whether the reader has interacted with one of the two people, how quickly and how uniformly the reader tends to answer, and bursts of new accounts reading the same pair. These weights are never shown and only change how much a read counts in a pair’s result. The one thing kept is your standing as a reader, which is in your data export. With each introduction, Vote keeps the pair’s result and how the pair was found, to learn over time which results really lead to conversations. Message content is never used for this. Reads of a pair from the same phone or the same network count as a few readers at most, an account that never reported its install ID counts a little less, and the reads of a new account, or of an account that only reads, start counting after a few days and a few reads.
• Kind words: Vote’s servers refuse a short list of threatening words and slurs (see “Safety, moderation and support”).
• Ban list: a new account that matches a banned account’s hashed e-mail address, sign-in or install ID is suspended automatically, until a person on Vote’s team has looked at it.
Introductions come from what people, the readers, say, and happen only if both people say yes. Moderation decisions are made by people. You can object to this processing, or ask a person on our team to look at something that affects you, through Settings › Help & support.

Plan a date

When you use Plan a date in a match’s chat, Vote asks Google Places for places near an approximate point halfway between you and the other person. This point is rounded to a grid of 0.05 degrees, roughly 5 km. Google receives the search area, the category you choose and the app’s language. Vote does not send either person’s own location, name, account ID or conversation ID to Google. Vote uses its own stored location for your distance and a rounded location for the other person’s approximate distance. The app receives places and distances, never either person’s coordinates.
A plan you send keeps the place ID, name, address and Google Maps link, the day and time, your optional note and the other person’s answer with the conversation. The plan is deleted with the conversation or either account. Your data export includes the plans you sent. Google processes the requests under its own privacy policy.

Private rooms, photos and answers

A room can be private. Everyone may see its name, description, icon, room photo and member count, but only members can read its posts. Joining a private room requires its password. Vote stores a salted hash of the password, never the password itself. A room’s maker can change its photo and password. Posts can include photos and one level of answers. Like counts are visible to people who can read the post, but only the post’s author can see who liked it. Mentions and answers may appear in the recipient’s Activity when they can read the room. These do not send Community push notifications.

Community and your dating profile

Vote offers three experiences: reading pairs in Vote, finding potential dates in Discover and connecting socially in Community. Your Community profile is separate from your dating profile. Your Community name, @username, audience, follows and posts do not give other members access to your dating profile, your dating photos, your age or your distance. Blocking or unmatching someone limits contact in all three, for safety and to keep reading fair.
You make your Community profile yourself, the first time you need one. You choose your name and @username, and nothing is taken from your dating profile. Then you choose who can see it, with Everyone selected to start. After your first @username you can change it once every 7 days, and your name at any time.
Your Community profile can show your name and @username, a profile photo and a cover, an About, a city you add to Community, one website, your followers and who you follow, your posts and rooms, and the sides you choose to show. Who sees them depends on your audience: Everyone, Only people I approve (others see only your name, @username and profile photo) or Nobody.

A limited shared use of your city

Vote uses the city on your Vote and Discover account (the city name and its country) for two things in Community: to choose which weekly city card you see, and to group answers to the weekly question by city. Both show group figures only. A city figure appears only when enough people took part, otherwise you see the figure for all of Vote, and answers are shown as shares only from 5 picks, in steps of 5%. This never shows your dating profile, or where you are, to anyone. It is not the city you may add to your Community profile, which is shown according to your audience and used for “New in your city” in People you may know.

Following, friends and suggestions

We use follows, follow requests, friend requests and their answers, friendships and your audience to provide these features. Your Followers and Following lists, and how many there are, are shown according to your audience. So is how many pairs you have rated, rounded down to steps of five and updated once a day, never which pairs or how you rated them.
People you may know suggests public profiles because they follow you, you have people in common, or they are new in the city on their Community profile. It uses nothing from Discover or your dating profile.
Who was suggested to you is kept for 30 days, to spread suggestions and keep daily limits. A friend request that ended is deleted 90 days later. Declining a request, removing a follower and unfriending do not notify the other person. When someone follows you, sends you a request, answers your post, mentions you or sends you a pair, you see it in Activity with their Community name. Community sends no push notifications.

Sides, photos, rooms, posts and friends’ messages

Earlier weekly questions are no longer available in the app. Your historical choices and comments remain subject to account export, deletion and retention rules.
Community photos and covers are separate from dating photos. Vote processes every upload to remove hidden data such as location. When review before publishing is on, a new Community photo, room photo or post photo is shown only to you until a person on Vote’s team accepts it. Photos are shown through temporary links that check who may see them.
Rooms have a name, a description, an icon, a photo, posts and answers. A post shows its author’s Community name, @username and profile photo to people who may see that card.
Messages between friends are text only and are kept for the two of you while you both have an account.
Posts and comments you save are kept so you can find them again. Only you see them, nobody is told, and they are deleted with your account. They are also in your data export.
Your profile posts, reposts and quotes appear on your Community profile and in Feed according to your audience. Others see only the original content they may still access. Saving and muting are private, and nobody is notified of them.
When a post contains a web link, Vote’s server opens that page once to make a preview card: it reads the page’s title, short description and image, and keeps a copy of the image, without hidden data, in Vote’s storage. The linked site sees a request from Vote’s server, never your device, your account or who posted or read the link. Vote’s team can remove a card. Your device contacts the linked site only if you choose to open the link.
Under a Community post in another language you can tap “Show translation”. The translation is made on your device by its system (Apple’s Translation on iOS, Google’s ML Kit on Android); Vote does not send the post or the translation anywhere and keeps nothing about it. The first time, your device may download a language from Apple or Google. Apple and Google may collect usage information about their translation feature, such as the language pair, but not the text.

Reports and moderation in Community

You can report a Community profile, a room, a post, a comment or a message from its menu, and block from the same place. A report keeps, as evidence, the reported profile’s words and up to the last 20 messages between the two of you, as described under “Safety, moderation and support”. People on Vote’s team review reports, and every decision is recorded with who made it and why. We do not tell the reported person who reported them.
Moderation can mean removing a photo, a post, a comment or a room photo, resetting part of a Community profile or an @username, closing a room, limiting features or suspending an account. When we remove or reset something of yours, you are told in the app, and every decision about your content, with its reason, is in your data export. You can ask about a decision, or ask a person to review it, through Settings › Help & support.

Community: deleting, and what stays

You can delete your posts, comments and photos, or your whole account. Deleting your account deletes your Community profile, photos, sides, follows, friendships, likes, room memberships, posts, comments and answers. Answers other people wrote to your posts and comments are theirs and stay: where yours was, Vote shows “This post was deleted” or “This comment was deleted”, without your name, words or photo. The same happens when you delete a single post. Deleting your account also deletes your Friends chats, for both of you. A room you made stays for its members, with its name and description, without you as its maker. Report evidence and moderation records are kept as described under “Safety, moderation and support” and “How long we keep data”.

Who receives your data

Other members see what your settings allow (see “Who sees your profile”). Beyond them, we share personal data only with:
• Supabase, our hosting provider, for the database, sign-in, private file storage and server functions. Where its servers are: Canada (Central)
• Apple, for Sign in with Apple and its push notification service and, if you buy a plan, for the App Store, which handles the payment.
• Google, for Google sign-in and notifications on Android (Firebase Cloud Messaging), and for Google Places when you use Plan a date. For Places, Google receives an approximate search area between the two people, the place category and the app’s language, never either person’s own location, name or account ID.
• hCaptcha or Cloudflare Turnstile, only if Vote turns on a check against automated sign-ups: the service receives the IP address and device signals of whoever completes the check.
• Sentry, for crash reports, when crash reporting is on in the app you use.
• Open-Meteo and BigDataCloud, which your phone contacts directly to search for your city and, only if you use your current location, to name it. They receive the text you type or rounded coordinates and your phone’s IP address (as any service it connects to does), and nothing else about you.
• Authorities and courts when the law requires it, our advisers where needed to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, and a buyer or successor if Vote’s business is ever transferred, under this policy.
Supabase and Sentry process data on our behalf, under data processing agreements, and may not use it for their own purposes. Apple and Google also process what they receive under their own privacy policies. Vote does not sell or rent personal data, shares none with advertisers or data brokers, uses no advertising or tracking tools, and sends nothing about you to any AI provider.

International transfers

Where Vote’s data is stored: Canada (Central)
Some of our providers, including Supabase, Apple, Google and Sentry, are based in the United States or work with people and systems in other countries, so your data may be processed outside your country. When data leaves the EU or EEA or the UK for a country without an adequacy decision, we rely on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses (with the UK addendum), or on an adequacy framework the provider is certified under, such as the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. For people in Türkiye, transfers abroad follow article 9 of Law No. 6698 (KVKK): we use the standard contracts published by the KVKK Board and notify them to the Authority as required, or another safeguard that article allows. You can ask us for a copy of these safeguards through Settings › Help & support.
Vote is run from Canada and its database is in Canada, so for people in Canada the data Vote stores stays in Canada, apart from what the providers above process in their own countries. For people in the EU and EEA, data that comes to Vote in Canada is covered by the European Commission’s adequacy decision for Canada, which applies to organisations subject to PIPEDA. For people in the UK, it is covered by the UK’s adequacy regulations for Canada.

How long we keep data

We keep your data while your account exists and delete it when you delete your account (see “Deleting your account”), unless a shorter period below applies or we must keep something longer:
• Chat photos: until the conversation ends. A “View once” photo: up to 24 hours after it is opened.
• A message not yet sent, on your phone: 24 hours.
• Your sky readings: 30 days. “The sky between you”: while it is open, and at most a day after the conversation ends.
• Usage statistics: 13 months. The keys that keep an event from being counted twice are one-way hashes, never an account ID.
• Where Vote opened: for each point of the location grid, the day its first set-up account arrived, used to give new places a fair start. At most 90 days, and removed when the last account there is deleted.
• Anonymous records of introductions (the day one was made, how it ended, whether the two talked or met), with no link to anyone, kept when an account is deleted so that Vote’s statistics don’t change when someone leaves: 400 days.
• Records of notifications sent: 14 days. Operational records (job runs and app health counts): 30 days. Counters for limits: 2 days.
• Records of uploads that were rejected or expired: 90 days.
• In Community: who was suggested to you in People you may know, 30 days. A friend request that ended, 90 days. The record of deleting a deleted account’s Community photos, 30 days after the files are gone.
• What the App Store reports about subscriptions: 400 days.
• An open report and a chat photo it concerns: until the report is closed, even after an account is deleted, without the link to the account. Records of moderation decisions are kept so moderation stays accountable, and are no longer linked to an account once it is deleted.
• The copy kept for the safety team when a report is filed (the last 20 messages, the reported profile’s text and state and its photo IDs): 90 days after the report is closed, even after an account is deleted, without the original account ID. Longer only while the report is open or if the safety team must keep it for a legal or safety reason.
• The ban list: until the ban is lifted, even after the banned account is deleted. Hashes of your install IDs: while your account exists.
• Apple’s sign-in token: until it is revoked when you delete your account. If Apple can’t be reached, Vote tries again every hour.
• Security logs kept by our hosting provider: only as long as needed for security.
• Backups: our hosting provider keeps copies of the database for a short period, after which deleted data is gone from them too.
• Hashes of the networks your requests came from: 30 days. The place you lived before a move: 7 days. A note that makes your reads count a little less for a while: 6 months if the account was made with several others from one network within an hour, 14 days after a move of more than 300 km, and 30 days if it was made from a network a banned account used.
• Hashes of the e-mail address, sign-in identities and install IDs of a reported account deleted before the report was decided: as long as that report’s copy, or until the ban is lifted if the team bans the account.

Security

We protect your data with measures that fit the risk: connections only over encrypted HTTPS, rules on every table so each request sees only what its account may see, photos in private storage reachable only through short-lived links, location data removed from photos, staff access by role with two-step verification for sensitive actions and an audit log, and your sign-in kept in your phone’s secure storage. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts your rights at risk, we will tell you and the competent authority as the law requires.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you have the right to:
• Access your data and get a copy. Settings › Your data › “Export my data” makes a file (JSON) that you save or share from your phone’s share sheet. It holds what Vote keeps about you, including the messages others sent you, the actions Vote’s team took on your account with the reason given (never who acted or who reported you), when your devices were seen and, if Vote corrected which search you appear in to match your gender, a note of that. For a conversation that ended, it gives the reason only to the person who ended it. You can ask us for anything it does not include.
• Correct it. Edit your profile, or ask us, for example to fix your birth date.
• Delete it, with Settings › Delete account, or by asking us.
• Take it with you: the export is a machine readable file (JSON).
• Object to processing based on our legitimate interest, including profiling, and ask us to restrict processing in some cases.
• Withdraw a consent at any time, without affecting what happened before.
• Not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that significantly affects you (Vote makes none), and, in Türkiye, object to a result against you that comes solely from automated analysis.
• Claim compensation for damage caused by unlawful processing, where the law provides for it.
• Complain to a data protection authority: in Türkiye the Personal Data Protection Board (KVKK Kurulu, kvkk.gov.tr), after applying to us first, in the EU or EEA the authority where you live or work (listed at edpb.europa.eu), and in the UK the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk).
• Complain in Canada to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca), and in Quebec to the Commission d’accès à l’information (cai.gouv.qc.ca).
To use a right, write to us in the app (Settings › Help & support, “Privacy and my data”) or to the contact under “Who is responsible”. We may ask you to confirm that it is you. We answer free of charge, within one month in the EU, EEA and UK (we may extend this by two months for complex requests and will tell you) and within 30 days under the KVKK.

If you are in Türkiye

Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data (KVKK) applies to your data. Our KVKK Information Notice (Aydınlatma Metni) and our Explicit Consent Notice (Açık Rıza Metni) are published in Turkish, their binding language, and are linked below this policy in the app and on our website. You can use your rights under article 11 of the KVKK by applying to us as described there, and we answer within 30 days. If we reject your application, if our answer is not enough or if we do not answer in time, you can complain to the KVKK Board within 30 days of our answer, and in any case within 60 days of your application.

If you are in Canada

Vote is run from Ontario, Canada. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies to how we handle your personal information, and in Quebec also the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, as amended by Law 25. In plain words, we follow PIPEDA’s ten fair information principles:
• Accountability: VOTEBT is responsible for your information, and its Privacy Officer answers for how Vote follows these principles.
• Identifying purposes: we tell you why we collect information, in this policy and in the app, before or when we collect it.
• Consent: we ask for your consent, and for your express consent for sensitive information. You can withdraw it at any time, subject to legal or contractual limits, and we tell you what withdrawing means.
• Limiting collection: we collect only what Vote needs for the purposes in this policy.
• Limiting use, disclosure and retention: we use and share information only for those purposes, unless you agree or the law requires it, and keep it only as long as “How long we keep data” says.
• Accuracy: you can correct your profile at any time, or ask us to.
• Safeguards: we protect information with security that fits how sensitive it is (see “Security”).
• Openness: this policy explains our practices in plain words.
• Individual access: you can ask what we hold about you, how it is used and who received it, get a copy and have it corrected. We answer within 30 days, free of charge, and tell you if we need more time, as the law allows.
• Challenging compliance: you can question how we follow these principles by writing to our Privacy Officer.
Privacy Officer: support@votebettertogether.com
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca). In Quebec, the person in charge of the protection of personal information is VOTEBT’s Privacy Officer, reachable at the address above. You can also ask for your computerised information in a structured, commonly used format (Settings › Your data › “Export my data”), and complain to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca).
Vote’s database is in Canada. Some providers, such as Apple, Google and Sentry, process information outside Canada and outside Quebec (see “Who receives your data”), where the courts and authorities of those countries may be able to access it under their laws. Before using a provider we check that your information will be adequately protected, and our processors are bound by contracts to protect it. If a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will tell you and the Privacy Commissioner, and we keep a record of every breach.

Notice for the United States, including California

This section is the notice required by the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, and by similar laws in other states.
• Categories we collect, from the sources and for the purposes described above: identifiers (account ID, installation ID, e-mail address), customer records (name, photos), characteristics of protected classifications (age, gender and, if you add them, religion or beliefs and information revealing sexual orientation), commercial information (subscription records, if you buy a plan), internet or other electronic network activity (how you use the app), approximate geolocation (never precise geolocation), visual information (photos), and inferences only in the limited form described under “Automated processing and profiling”.
• Sensitive personal information: account log-in, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life or sexual orientation, and the contents of your messages. We use it only to provide the service you asked for, as the law permits, and never to infer characteristics about you.
• We disclose personal information for business purposes only to the service providers listed above. We do not sell or share personal information (sharing meaning for cross-context behavioral advertising), and have not done so in the past 12 months. Vote is not for anyone under 18.
• How long we keep each category: see “How long we keep data”.
• Your rights: to know and access the personal information we collect, to delete it, to correct it, and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. Because we do not sell or share personal information, or use sensitive information beyond what the law permits, there is nothing to opt out of or limit. You can use your rights yourself or through an authorized agent, as described under “Your rights”. We verify each request and answer within 45 days, which we may extend once by 45 days, with notice.
• Other states, such as Colorado, Connecticut, Texas and Virginia, give you similar rights. We process sensitive data only with your consent. If we decline your request, you can appeal by replying to our answer, and if the appeal is denied, you can contact your state’s attorney general.

Other countries

If you live in Brazil, the LGPD gives you the right to confirmation and access, correction, anonymisation, blocking or deletion of unnecessary data, portability, information about who we share data with, and to withdraw consent, and you can complain to the ANPD. Wherever you live, if local law gives you further rights or requires more information than this policy gives (for example in Japan, South Korea, India or China), we honour them. Ask us through Settings › Help & support.

Adults only

Vote is only for people aged 18 or over. The app checks your age from your birth date when you join, and members can report someone who may be under 18. Such reports are handled first. When we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we close it and delete its data, except what we must keep for safety or by law.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in Settings › Delete account. Deleting it removes, at once and for good, your account, profile, photos, likes, reads, follows, matches, the conversations you were part of and their photos (the other person loses them too), introductions, blocks, your support requests and the reports you made that are closed. Your Community data goes as described under “Community: deleting, and what stays”. If you signed in with Apple on an iPhone, Vote also asks Apple to revoke Vote’s access to your Apple ID, and keeps trying every hour if Apple can’t be reached. Apple sign-ins on Android, or from before this version of Vote, can’t be revoked by our servers: you can remove Vote in your Apple ID settings. Deletion completes either way. If your account was banned, the ban list stays until the ban is lifted. A report still open when you delete your account, one you made or one about you, is kept, no longer linked to any account, until Vote’s safety team closes it, together with a chat photo it concerns, so that a safety review can finish. The copy of the last messages and the reported profile kept when a report was filed also stays, without the original account ID, until 90 days after the report is closed. Usage statistics lose their link to you. Copies may remain in our hosting provider’s backups until those expire. Deleting your account does not cancel an App Store subscription: cancel it with Apple. If you only want a break, choose “Take a break” in Settings › Looking for someone instead. Our page “Deleting your account and data” explains each step, what is kept and why, and how to ask by e-mail if you can’t open the app.
Your introductions stay only as anonymous counts (the day one was made, how it ended, whether the two talked or met), with no link to you, the other person or the pair, so Vote’s statistics don’t change when someone leaves. Your ID is also removed from Vote’s records of moderation decisions.
If there is a report about you that was not dismissed (still open, or closed in the last 90 days) when you delete your account, one-way hashes of your e-mail address, sign-in identities and install IDs are kept with that report’s copy, so that Vote’s safety team can still decide on it, a ban included (see “Safety, moderation and support”).

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when Vote changes or the law requires it. The version and its date are at the end. If a change matters to you, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect, and where a change needs your consent, we will ask for it.

Language of this policy

This policy is written in English and translated into the other languages Vote offers. If a translation and the English text differ, the English text prevails, unless the law where you live requires otherwise. For people in Türkiye, the KVKK Information Notice and the Explicit Consent Notice are authoritative in Turkish.

Contact

In the app: Settings › Help & support, “Privacy and my data”.
Outside the app: support@votebettertogether.com
Address: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This website

votebettertogether.com sets no cookies and uses no analytics, ads or trackers. It is hosted on GitHub Pages, which may keep technical logs such as IP addresses to keep the service secure.