Privacy policy

1. Who we are and how to reach us

Ratify.Vote is a North Carolina company. It runs this site and is responsible for the information described here, and this policy is governed by North Carolina law. Post reaches us at 99 Wall Street #610, New York, NY 10005.

• privacy@ratify.vote for anything in this policy: seeing what we hold, correcting it, deleting your account.
• support@ratify.vote for everything else.

2. What we collect

When you vote

• Your answer, your prediction of the winner, and when you voted.
• Your approximate location at the time: country, region and city. Cloudflare, which serves the site, works it out from your IP address. We store the result, not the address.
• A scrambled, one-way version of your IP address, so one network can cast only one anonymous vote per poll. It cannot be turned back into the address.
• If you are not signed in, a random voter ID kept in a cookie, so the site remembers this browser voted.

When you create an account

• Your email address, which is how you sign in and how we reach you about your account.
• Your password, if you set one, stored only as a slow, salted one-way hash. We never see it.
• A display name, which is required, and an avatar color.
• Optional details: gender, birth year, month and day, country, region, nationality and marital status. Every one is optional, can be cleared at any time on your My info page, and is used only for the breakdowns on results pages, which are totals.
• Two choices about who sees what: whether you appear in the crowds of voters as yourself, and whether friends can see the details of how you voted. Both start on and either can be turned off during sign-up or later.

When you sign in with Google, Discord or Facebook

Your account ID with that service, your email address, whether the service has verified it, and your name. Section 7 has the detail.

When you use friends and invites

• People you add by email address. If they have an account, we send them a request inside the site and email them that it arrived. If they don't have one, nothing is sent and we keep nothing.
• Friend requests and friendships, and how each began.
• Invite links you create, and how often each has been used and accepted.

When you suggest a poll

The question and answers you suggest, and whether you want credit if it runs.

While you use the site

• Sign-in sessions: for each device, when the session started and was last used, the scrambled IP address, and a description of the browser and device. This keeps you signed in and lets you sign out everywhere.
• Your time zone, as your browser reports it, so times show in it.
• Abuse limits: short-lived counts of attempts to vote, sign in or sign up, kept against a scrambled IP address or the email address being tried.
• Server logs: technical records of requests, errors and background jobs, including the addresses we send email to.
• Analytics: see section 3.

3. Cookies, storage and analytics

These cookies are what make the site work as you use it. None of them advertises to you.

The site also keeps three small items in your browser's own storage: a copy of the anonymous voter ID, a vote made just before signing up so it can be cast once you are in, and your display name and color so the header shows them immediately. Clearing your browser data removes all of it. Cloudflare may set its own cookie to tell visitors from bots.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages people use, so we know whether the site is working. It sets the cookies above and sends Google the pages you view, your device and browser type, and an approximate location worked out from your IP address. Google's advertising features and Google Signals are switched off, so what we get is a count of visits rather than material for advertising profiles, and we don't use analytics to identify anyone. You can opt out on every site with Google's browser add-on, or by blocking those cookies.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Browsers can send a Do Not Track signal, and there is still no agreed standard for what a site should do about it, so we don't act on that one. Global Privacy Control is different and we do honor it: when your browser sends it, we don't load analytics at all. Nothing else on the site follows you to other websites, and we allow no third party to collect information about you across sites.

4. How we use your information

• To run your account, record your votes and predictions, and show your history and score.
• To publish results and breakdowns, always as totals, never as one person's answer.
• To run friends, invites and friend requests.
• To stop duplicate votes, spam and abuse, and to keep accounts secure.
• To send email: confirming your address, sign-in links, password resets, and telling you when someone asks to be your friend. That last one can be switched off in your settings. We send no marketing email.
• To count visits, so we know which parts of the site people use.
• To meet our legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

We don't use your information for advertising, and we make no automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

5. What other people can see

Anyone visiting the site

• Results as totals, and breakdowns by the optional details above. A breakdown group stays hidden until at least 20 people are in it.
• A crowd of the day's voters: one group on the home page, and split by answer on a results page. You appear as your initial and avatar color, or as a plain dot if you turned off “Show me in the voter crowd” when you signed up. Anonymous voters appear as a gray “A”.
• Your display name as “Suggested by …” on a poll you suggested, if you asked for credit.
• Your display name on the preview of an invite link you send.
• How you voted, on your personal result card, if you share that card yourself.

Your friends

Your display name and color, and your profile page, which shows how you voted and what you predicted on polls that have closed. Turn off “Friends can see the details of how I voted” and they still count you in totals, and still see you in the crowd, but not the answer and prediction behind it.

Our team

People who run the site can see account details when they need to, for support or to deal with abuse. Every action they take in the admin tools is recorded.

6. Who we share it with

We don't sell personal information and we don't share it for advertising. We share it with the companies that run parts of the site for us, and only what each needs:

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, to protect people's safety or our rights, or as part of a sale or merger of the service, in which case this policy would continue to apply.

7. Connected accounts

Signing in

If you sign in with one of these, we ask it for the least it offers:

We keep the account ID and that email address with your Ratify.Vote account, so you can sign in the same way next time. Your name is used only to suggest a display name, which you can change. We never post anything, and we don't see your password.

We join a service's email address to an existing account only when the service tells us the address is verified. Otherwise we ask you to confirm an email address with us first.

Google user data. Ratify.Vote's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use it only to sign you in and run your account. We never use it for advertising, don't sell it, and don't let people read it, except with your permission, for security, or where the law requires.

You can withdraw access at any time in your Google account, in Facebook under Settings, then Apps and websites, or in Discord under User Settings, then Authorized Apps. That stops future sign-ins; to remove what we hold, see section 9.

Finding people you know

Separately from signing in, you can connect an account so that Ratify.Vote can show you how the people you know there voted. This is optional, and you choose each service yourself. We ask each for the least it offers:

We use this for one thing: to work out which of those people also have a Ratify.Vote account, so that the results page can show you how the people you know voted, as a count and never as a list of who voted which way. We keep the identifiers the service gave us, and the name it gave for each, only for as long as the account stays connected. We never post anything, never send anything to anyone on your behalf, and never share these lists with anyone.

Disconnect a service on your connected accounts page at any time. That deletes everything we imported from it, and everyone we matched you with through it stops seeing you as someone they know. You can also revoke our access on the service's own side: in Steam by regenerating your API key access, in Discord under User Settings, then Authorized Apps, or in Facebook under Settings, then Apps and websites. Removing Ratify.Vote there also disconnects Facebook here: Facebook tells us, and we delete what we imported from it straight away. Anything else we hold is deleted the same way as any other data: disconnect the service, or delete your account, as described in section 9.

8. How long we keep it

9. Deleting your account and your data

Email privacy@ratify.vote from the address on your account, or tell us which address it is and we will confirm by email that the request is yours. We delete it within 45 days and tell you when it is done.

Deleting your account removes your email address, password, profile, connected accounts, friends and friend requests, invite links, suggestions, sessions and scores. Your past votes remain in the results as anonymous totals, permanently separated from you, because otherwise every past result would change.

If you signed in with Facebook, this is also how to have that data deleted. Removing Ratify.Vote in your Facebook settings stops future sign-ins; the address above removes what we already hold.

10. Your rights and choices

What you can do yourself

• Change or clear any profile detail on your My info page.
• On your Settings page, turn off “Show me in the voter crowd”, and you become a plain dot in public crowds.
• On the same page, turn off “Friends can see the details of how I voted”, and friends stop seeing your answer and prediction on each poll.
• Also there, turn off the email telling you that someone has asked to be your friend, or use the unsubscribe link in that email itself. Neither stops the emails you need to run the account, such as a password reset.
• Opt out of analytics with Google's add-on, or by sending Global Privacy Control.

What to ask us for

Email privacy@ratify.vote to see what we hold about you, get a copy of it, correct it, or delete it. We confirm we have your request within 10 business days and answer within 45 days; if it is complicated we may take up to another 45 and will say why. We may ask you to write from the address on the account so we know the request is yours, and someone can act for you if they show your written permission. If we turn a request down, reply and we will look again within 45 days.

California and other states

We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as California's law uses those words, so there is no “Do Not Sell or Share” link. We don't collect sensitive personal information as it defines that either: no government identifiers, no financial details, no precise location, nothing about race, religion, health, sexual orientation or union membership, and none of the contents of your messages. We draw no inferences to build a profile of you. We won't treat you differently for exercising any right here. Under California's Shine the Light law, we disclose nothing to third parties for their own direct marketing. A registered user under 18 who wants something they posted removed can write to us and we will remove it.

Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas and other states with comprehensive privacy laws give their residents much the same rights, plus the right to opt out of targeted advertising, sales and profiling. We do none of those three.

11. Security

The site is served only over HTTPS. Passwords are stored as Argon2 hashes, session tokens and email links only as hashes, IP addresses only in scrambled form, and the tokens from connected accounts encrypted. Cookies the site relies on are signed so they cannot be altered. Access to the systems holding your information is limited to the people who run the site. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

12. Children

Ratify.Vote is not meant for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information. We don't ask your age; the birth year list simply stops at 13 years ago. If you believe a child has an account, tell us and we will delete it.

13. Where your information lives

The site runs on machines we administer ourselves at OVHcloud in Canada. The database runs on hardware we own, racked at InterGlobe Communications in New Jersey. Cloudflare serves the site from wherever you are, Postmark sends our email from the United States, and Google Analytics processes what it collects on Google's own systems.

If you use Ratify.Vote from outside the United States, your information is handled in the United States and Canada, where privacy laws differ from your own. Wherever you live, you can ask us to show, correct or delete what we hold, at privacy@ratify.vote.

14. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we post the new version here with a new date. If a change affects how your information is used in a way you would care about, we will say so on the site or by email before it takes effect. We review this policy at least once every 12 months.

15. Contact

Ratify.Vote, a North Carolina company. 99 Wall Street #610, New York, NY 10005. privacy@ratify.vote