Privacy Policy

Who This Applies To

This Privacy Policy applies to all users of the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Geographic Scope: Our platform at wepinion.com, including any associated applications, websites, or services (collectively, the "Service") is intended for and available only to residents of the United States. We do not knowingly collect information from users outside the United States.

Public Nature of the Platform

Wepinion is a public-facing platform. When you post content (decisions, votes, comments, or profile information), that information may be viewed by anyone on the internet and may be indexed by search engines. Think carefully before posting personal information publicly.

Information You Provide

• Contact/Identifying Information: Name, email address, mailing address, phone number
• Account Information: Display name, profile picture, bio, and demographic information you choose to share
• Content: Decisions you post, votes you cast, comments, and other content you create
• Communications: Messages you send to other users, feedback, and support requests
• Legal Consent: Records of your acceptance of our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, including timestamps and IP address
• SMS Consent: Your consent to receive SMS messages, including the timestamp of consent, IP address at time of consent, and your SMS notification preferences

Phone Number & SMS Information

When you provide your phone number and consent to receive SMS messages, we collect and use your phone number to:

• Send verification codes during account registration
• Send authentication codes when you sign in
• Send account security alerts
• Send optional account activity notifications (if you opt in)

Your phone number is encrypted using industry-standard encryption and is not shared with third parties for marketing purposes. We use Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Notification Service (SNS) to deliver SMS messages.

You can revoke SMS consent at any time by replying STOP to any message or by updating your preferences in account settings. See our Terms of Service for full SMS terms.

Why We Require Both Email and Phone

Wepinion requires both a verified email address and a verified phone number to create an account. This dual-verification approach ensures that each contact method is independently confirmed before access is granted. It also reflects a core belief: that Wepinion works best as a place where real people help real people make decisions. Requiring a unique, verified phone number for every account makes automated or large-scale fake account creation significantly more difficult and costly, helping ensure that the judgment and perspectives shared on Wepinion come from genuine human participants.

Information Collected Automatically

• Device Information: IP address, browser type, operating system, device identifiers, push notification device tokens (assigned by your device's operating system for notification delivery), and hardware settings
• Usage Data: Pages visited, features used, actions taken, time spent, and interaction patterns
• Location Data: General location inferred from IP address (we do not collect precise GPS location)
• Cookies & Similar Technologies: See our Cookie Policy for details

Push Notification Information

When you enable push notifications on your mobile device, we collect and store:

• Device push notification tokens. These are unique identifiers assigned by your device's operating system (such as Apple Push Notification service) that allow us to deliver notifications to your specific device. A device token is not your device's hardware identifier; it is a temporary token that can change when you reinstall the app or reset your device.
• Platform type. We record whether your device runs iOS, Android, or another supported platform so we can format notifications correctly.
• Token registration timestamp. We record when your device token was registered and last used to manage active devices.

Each device token is associated with your Wepinion user account. If you use multiple devices, we store a separate token for each device. You may have up to one token per device associated with your account.

Push notification payloads (the data sent with each notification) may include:

• The profile handle of the person whose action triggered the notification (for example, the person who left feedback on your decision).
• The profile handle of the recipient profile (so the app knows which of your profiles should be active when you tap the notification).
• Content identifiers such as decision titles, group names, or content references needed to route you to the relevant content within the app.
• Notification type and category for the app to display the correct interface.

Push notification content may be visible on your device lock screen and in your notification center depending on your device settings. If you use pseudonym profiles on Wepinion, notification previews on your lock screen could reveal profile names to anyone who can see your device screen. You can control notification preview visibility in your device's Settings under Notifications.

Information from Third Parties

• Social Login: If you sign in using a third-party service, we receive information from that service
• Partners: Information from business partners for advertising and analytics purposes
• Public Sources: Publicly available information that helps us verify or supplement your profile

Legal Bases for Processing

Some jurisdictions require that companies tell you about the legal grounds that allow your data to be used or disclosed. Below are the types of lawful bases that we will rely on to process your Personal Information:

• Legitimate Interest: The purpose of conducting and managing our business to enable us to provide you with the best service, product, and a secure experience. We balance the potential positive and negative impacts on you and your rights. If the impact on your rights outweighs our legitimate business interests, we do not use or disclose your Personal Information without your consent, unless required or permitted by law.
• Performance of Contract: Processing your Personal Information where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
• Comply With a Legal or Regulatory Obligation: Processing your Personal Information where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation.
• Consent: You have given express permission to a particular use of your Personal Information.

For example, we rely on Legitimate Interest for fraud prevention, Performance of Contract for account management, and Consent for marketing communications.

Public Content

Content you post publicly (decisions, votes, comments, profile information) is visible to all users and may be indexed by search engines.

Service Providers

We share information with third-party vendors who provide services on our behalf, including hosting, analytics, customer support, and payment processing. These providers are contractually obligated to protect your information.

Notification Delivery Services

We use third-party notification delivery services to send push notifications to your mobile device, email notifications, and SMS text messages. When we send a push notification, your device token and the notification payload (which may include profile handles and content references as described in Section 2) are transmitted to our notification delivery provider, which then forwards the notification to your device's platform notification service (such as Apple's push notification service for iOS devices) for delivery.

These services process notification data solely to deliver messages on our behalf and are bound by our data processing agreements. Our notification infrastructure is hosted in the United States.

Business Partners

We may share data with business partners for research, analytics, and advertising purposes. In some instances, the data we share is de-identified and/or aggregated.

Legal Requirements

We may disclose information when required by law, to respond to legal process, to protect our rights, or to protect the safety of our users or the public.

Business Transfers

If Wepinion is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction.

How We Use Data for AI

• Model Training: Public content may be used to train machine learning models that improve recommendations, content moderation, and platform features
• Aggregated Insights: We create anonymized, aggregated datasets derived from user activity for research and analytics
• Pattern Recognition: AI systems analyze voting patterns and user behavior to detect trends and improve Expert Score calculations

Data Products

We may create and license anonymized, aggregated data products derived from platform activity. These products do not contain personally identifiable information and are used for market research, trend analysis, and business intelligence.

Targeted Advertising

We display advertisements on the Service. These ads may be targeted based on:

• Information you provide (demographics, interests)
• Your activity on the Service
• Information from advertising partners
• Inferences about your interests

Opting Out

You can control advertising preferences in your account settings under Settings → Privacy & Safety. California residents and residents of other states with privacy laws may have additional rights to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information for advertising purposes.

Submitting a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" instruction does not apply to the use of your personal information to train or otherwise improve or operate AI systems (Section 5).

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device (computer, tablet, or mobile) when you visit a website. They are widely used to make websites work more efficiently and to provide information to website owners.

Cookies allow us to recognize your browser, remember your preferences, and provide you with a personalized experience. For a description of the types of cookies and other technology we use, visit our Cookie Policy.

Managing Cookies

You can control cookies through your browser settings. Most browsers allow you to:

• View what cookies are stored on your device
• Delete cookies individually or in bulk
• Block third-party cookies
• Block all cookies from specific websites
• Block all cookies entirely
• Clear all cookies when you close your browser

Do Not Track & Global Privacy Control

Do Not Track: We do not currently respond to or honor DNT signals or similar mechanisms transmitted by web browsers, as there is no consistent industry standard for compliance.

Global Privacy Control (GPC): We honor Global Privacy Control signals. If your browser sends a GPC signal, we will treat this as a request to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information as required by applicable state privacy laws.

Extended Retention

We may retain information longer than the standard periods when necessary to:

• Comply with legal obligations: Tax laws, regulatory requirements, court orders
• Resolve disputes: Ongoing legal proceedings or potential claims
• Enforce agreements: Terms of Service violations, account abuse
• Prevent fraud: Patterns of abuse, fraud detection and prevention
• Maintain security: Security incident investigations

Content After Account Deletion

Your information may not be deleted when you delete your account:

• Cached versions: Third-party services may retain cached copies
• Shared content: Content shared by others may remain visible
• Aggregated data: Anonymized data may be retained indefinitely
• AI models: Models trained before deletion may retain learned patterns
• Backups: Backup copies may be retained temporarily

De-Identified Information

We may receive or process personal information to create deidentified information that can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. Where we maintain deidentified information, we will maintain and use it in deidentified form and will not attempt to reidentify the information except as required or permitted by applicable law.

International Data Access

Wepinion is based in the United States and processes and stores information on servers located in the United States. Some of our vendors, processors, and/or service providers may be located outside of your state or country. By using the Service, you consent to the processing, transfer, and storage of information in the United States. We take reasonable steps to protect your information wherever it is processed and implement appropriate safeguards in our contracts with service providers.

Account Controls

You can access and manage your information through your account settings (Settings → Privacy & Safety), including:

• Updating your profile information
• Managing privacy and data sharing preferences
• Downloading a copy of your data
• Deleting your account

Communication Preferences

You can manage email, SMS, and notification preferences in your account settings. You may opt out of marketing communications at any time, including SMS messages by replying STOP to any text message from Wepinion. For full SMS messaging terms, see our SMS Terms & Conditions.

Push Notification Choices

You can control push notifications in several ways:

• Device-level control. You can disable push notifications entirely for the Wepinion app through your device's Settings. On iOS, go to Settings, then Notifications, then Wepinion, and toggle Allow Notifications off. This prevents all push notifications regardless of your in-app settings.
• In-app channel toggle. Within the Wepinion app, you can enable or disable push notifications for each of your profiles independently. Navigate to your profile's notification settings to toggle push notifications on or off.
• Per-notification-type control. You can choose which types of activity trigger immediate push notifications and which are batched into digest emails instead. For example, you might choose to receive immediate push notifications for direct feedback but batch new follower notifications into your daily digest.
• Per-group and per-profile muting. You can mute notifications from specific groups or from specific profiles you follow. When muted, activity from that group or profile will not generate any notifications for you, regardless of your other notification settings.
• Channel priority. The notification system delivers each notification through only one channel, using a priority order: push first, then email, then SMS. If you disable push notifications, the system will fall through to email for immediate notifications. You can adjust which channels are enabled for each profile.

Device Token Deletion

Your device push notification tokens are automatically deleted when you:

• Log out of the Wepinion app on a device.
• Delete your Wepinion account.

You can also remove a specific device's token by logging out of the app on that device. We do not retain device tokens after logout or account deletion. If you reinstall the app and log in again, a new device token will be registered.

Email Notification Choices

You can control email notifications in the following ways:

• In-app email toggle. Disable email notifications for any profile in your notification settings. Note that disabling email does not disable push or SMS notifications.
• Digest frequency. Choose to receive digest summary emails daily, weekly, or not at all. Digest emails consolidate batched activity (such as new comments, followers, and votes) into a single summary rather than sending individual emails for each event.
• Unsubscribe links. Every notification email includes a link to manage your notification preferences or unsubscribe from specific notification types.
• Re-engagement emails. If you have been inactive, we may send periodic emails to let you know about activity you missed. You can opt out of re-engagement emails in your notification settings.

Non-Discrimination

We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights. You will not be denied goods or services, charged different prices, or provided a different level or quality of service for exercising your rights under applicable privacy laws.

Submitting Privacy Requests

If you cannot complete your request through account settings, you may submit a request via email to:

Email: privacy@wepinion.com

Request Types and Required Subject Lines:

• Data Access Request: Subject line "Data Access Request" - Request a copy of personal information we hold about you
• Data Deletion Request: Subject line "Data Deletion Request" - Request deletion of your personal information
• Data Correction Request: Subject line "Data Correction Request" - Request correction of inaccurate information
• General Privacy Inquiry: Subject line "Privacy Request" - Questions about our data practices

U.S. State Privacy Rights

Residents of California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Oregon, Texas, and other states with privacy laws have additional rights regarding their personal information, including rights to opt out of data sales/sharing.

U.S. State Privacy Rights

State-specific rights, Do Not Sell requests, Authorized Agents, and Appeals

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Notice at Collection

Categories of Personal Information Collected:

• Identifiers: Name, username, email address, phone number, IP address, device identifiers
• Internet/Network Activity: Log data, device information, browsing history, interactions with content
• Geolocation: Approximate location inferred from IP address
• User Content: Posts, comments, votes, profile information, messages
• Inferences: Information generated about your interests and preferences based on your activity, Your Content, and your personal information
• Commercial Information: Transaction data (if applicable)
• Sensitive Information: Account credentials (username/password)

Purposes for Collection: Provide and secure the Service; personalize content and recommendations; communicate with you; research and development; legal compliance; business operations; AI training in deidentified/aggregated form; advertising.

Categories of Recipients: Service providers who assist with hosting, analytics, customer support, and payment processing; advertising and analytics partners (subject to your settings and opt-outs); business partners (aggregated/deidentified data only); legal and safety disclosures; business transferees in corporate transactions.

Retention: See Section 8 (Data Retention) for periods by category. We retain information only as long as reasonably necessary for disclosed purposes.

Financial Incentives: We do not offer financial incentives for the collection, sale, retention, or sharing of personal information.