Privacy Policy

TheySay LLC
Website Privacy Policy
theysayapp.org
Effective Date: April, 2026
Last Updated: June 27, 2026

TheySay LLC (“TheySay,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), a Colorado limited liability company, operates the TheySay mobile application (“App”) and related services (collectively, the “Service”). This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, how we share it, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights you have.

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. Our Privacy Philosophy

TheySay is built around a single promise: the people decide, anonymously. Minimal data collection is not a feature we added — it is the foundation of how the Service is designed.

We do not ask for your email address, phone number, real name, or any third-party login. We do not track your location, read your contacts, access your photos, or follow your activity outside the App. We do not run third-party advertising or analytics trackers.

Most importantly: the votes you cast are not linked to your identity, and they cannot be — not by us, not by anyone with access to our database, and not in response to a government or legal demand. Section 4 explains exactly how this works and why it is true at the structural level rather than as a matter of policy.

2. Information We Collect

We collect only the following information.

Information you provide when you create an account:

• Username. A self-selected display name shown on the questions you post. It is not your real name, and we do not ask for your real name.
• PIN. A 4-digit code you choose to access your account. Your PIN is cryptographically hashed (using bcrypt) before it is stored. We never store your PIN in readable form and we cannot read, recover, or reset it.
• Age confirmation. At signup you confirm your date of birth solely to verify that you are 18 or older. Your date of birth is used only to perform this age check on your device at that moment. It is not stored, transmitted to our servers, or retained — once your age is confirmed, the date of birth is discarded.

Information created as you use the Service:

• Questions (debates) you create. The text of the questions you post, the answer options, and the category you choose.
• Votes you cast. Recorded anonymously and stored in a way that is not linked to your account. See Section 4.
• Flags you submit. If you flag a question as inappropriate, the flag is recorded anonymously and is not linked to your account. See Section 4.
• Feedback you send us. Messages you submit through the in-App feedback feature. Unlike votes and flags, feedback is intentionally tied to your account so that we can reply to you.

Information collected automatically:

• Device account-uniqueness identifier. When you first install the App, the App generates a random identifier and stores it on your device. We store only a one-way cryptographic hash of this identifier on your account record. We use it for one purpose: to enforce our one-account-per-device policy and make mass fake-account creation harder. It is a random value generated by the App — it is not derived from your device hardware, advertising identifiers, or any cross-app tracking technology, and it is not “device fingerprinting.” See Section 4 for why this identifier cannot be used to trace your votes.

That is the complete list. We do not collect anything else.

3. Information We Do Not Collect

To be unambiguous, TheySay does not collect:

• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Real names or legal names
• Physical addresses or geolocation data
• Contact lists or address books
• Photos, videos, camera, or microphone data
• Browsing or app-usage activity outside TheySay
• Advertising identifiers or cross-app tracking data
• Third-party analytics (we do not run usage-analytics SDKs)
• Financial or payment information

4. How Anonymous Voting Works (The Core Privacy Guarantee)

This section describes the central privacy property of the Service in plain language. It is the technical basis for our promise that your votes cannot be linked to you.

Two separate, unconnectable identifiers. When you install the App, it creates one random device identifier. From that single value, the App derives two different one-way hashes that serve two different purposes and that cannot be reconciled with each other:

• An account-uniqueness hash is stored on your account record. It lets us detect that “a device already has an account here” so we can enforce one account per device. It is never attached to any vote.
• A separate voting hash, computed differently for each individual question, is attached to a vote. It lets the system prevent the same device from voting twice on the same question. It is never stored on your account record and never contains your username or account identifier.

Because these two hashes are produced by different one-way calculations, there is no mathematical way to start from a vote and arrive at the account that cast it, or vice versa. Reversing either hash would require defeating the underlying cryptography, which is not feasible.

What this means in practice:

• A vote record contains the question it was cast on, the option chosen, an anonymous voting hash, and a timestamp. It contains no username, no account identifier, and nothing that points back to you.
• Even with complete read access to our entire database, it is not possible to determine how any individual person voted on any individual question. The link simply does not exist in the data.
• This is true for us as well. TheySay itself cannot look up how you voted. It is not that we have a policy against doing so — it is that the information needed to do so is not stored anywhere.

The consequence for legal demands. Because we do not possess a link between accounts and votes, we cannot produce individual voting records in response to a subpoena, court order, or other legal demand, regardless of who asks or why. We cannot disclose what we do not have. See Section 7.

Flags work the same way. When you flag a question, the flag is recorded with an anonymous hash rather than your identity. We can see that a question received a number of flags, but we cannot see which users flagged it. Flagging is a private civic action by design.

The honest limitations. No system is perfect, and we describe the edges plainly:

• Someone with physical access to your unlocked device could, in principle, use it to act as you within the App, as with any app on an unlocked phone.
• A factory reset of your device clears the device identifier, which means a determined person who fully wipes their device could create an additional account. We accept this trade-off because the alternative — hardware-level device fingerprinting — would be more invasive to every honest user.

5. How We Use Information

We use the limited information we collect to:

• Operate the Service — display questions, record anonymous votes, show aggregate results, and run features like the daily featured debate;
• Authenticate your account when you sign in with your username and PIN;
• Enforce one account per device and prevent double-voting and abuse;
• Operate community moderation — review flagged content and take action on questions or accounts that violate our Terms of Service;
• Respond to feedback you send us;
• Maintain the security and integrity of the Service; and
• Comply with our legal obligations.

We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not send your content to any third-party artificial-intelligence service. (We may use AI tools internally and offline to help draft seed questions that we review before posting; no user-submitted content is sent to an AI service to do this.)

6. Aggregate Results

The Service displays aggregate vote counts and results for each question — for example, the percentage of people who chose each option. These aggregate results reflect the collective input of participants and do not identify any individual. Because votes are anonymous and unlinkable (Section 4), aggregate results cannot be decomposed back into individual choices.

Reserved use of aggregated and anonymized data. TheySay may compile aggregated and anonymized data derived from activity on the Service — such as overall voting patterns, trends across questions, and category-level results — and may use, share, license, or sell that aggregated and anonymized data for research, commercial, or other purposes. Aggregated and anonymized data does not identify any individual user and, because of the anonymous and unlinkable design described in Section 4, cannot be used to reconstruct how any individual voted. By using the Service, you acknowledge and consent to this use of aggregated and anonymized data. This possibility is disclosed here, and in our Terms of Service, so you can make an informed decision before creating an account. There is no separate opt-out for the collection and use of aggregated and anonymized data while you use the Service.

7. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We share information only in these limited situations:

• Infrastructure provider. The Service runs on Google Firebase (Google Cloud Platform), which provides our database, authentication, and server functions. Google processes and stores data on our behalf as our infrastructure provider and is bound by its own terms and security commitments. Google Firebase is our only third-party data processor in this version of the Service.
• Legal requirements. We may disclose information if we are required to by law, regulation, or valid legal process. However, as explained in Section 4, we cannot produce individual voting or flagging records, because the data linking those actions to a person does not exist. What we hold about an account is limited to a username, a hashed PIN, a hashed device identifier, account status, and account timestamps.
• Safety and enforcement. We may use or disclose information where we believe in good faith it is necessary to protect the safety of a person, investigate fraud or abuse, or enforce our Terms of Service.
• Business transfer. If TheySay is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, account information may transfer as part of that transaction. We will post notice of any such change in the App and on our website.

8. Data Storage and Security

Your data is stored on Google Firebase infrastructure in the United States. We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards, including:

• Hashing of PINs, so they cannot be read in stored form;
• Encrypted transmission of data between the App and our servers;
• Server-enforced access rules, so that sensitive collections (such as the votes collection) cannot be read by client devices at all and are reachable only through controlled server functions; and
• The structural separation described in Section 4, which means the most sensitive linkage — who voted how — is not present in our systems to begin with.

No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Data Retention

• Active accounts. We retain your account information for as long as your account exists.
• Deleted accounts. When you delete your account (Section 10), your private account record and your public profile are permanently deleted, and the questions you posted are anonymized — the author is changed to “[deleted]” and your username is removed from them. The questions themselves, and the anonymous votes others cast on them, remain on the Service so that other people’s participation is preserved. Because votes were never linked to you, there is nothing in a vote to remove. Deleting your account also frees your device so it can register a new account.
• Feedback. Messages you send through the feedback feature, including the account identifier needed to reply to you, are retained for our records even after an account is deleted. 
• Moderation records. Records related to flagged content and moderation actions are retained for the integrity and safety of the Service. 

10. Your Rights and Choices

• Delete your account. You can permanently delete your account at any time from the App’s settings. The effects are described in Section 9. Deletion is immediate and irreversible.
• No password/PIN recovery. For your security, your PIN is stored only as a hash and cannot be recovered or reset by us. If you forget your PIN and become locked out, you will need to create a new account. (See the Terms of Service for the lockout details.)
• Notification settings. You can turn notification categories on or off in the App’s settings.
• Privacy questions and requests. Contact us at theysayllc@theysayapp.org (see Section 14).

11. Children’s Privacy

The Service is intended for adults. You must be 18 or older to use TheySay. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that a user is under 18, we will delete the account and associated account data. If you believe someone under 18 is using the Service, please contact us at theysayllc@theysayapp.org or use the in-App reporting tools.

The Service complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which governs collection of information from children under 13; TheySay does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.

12. State Privacy Rights (including California)

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete personal information, or to opt out of its sale or sharing. Because TheySay collects so little personal information, does not sell personal information, and does not share it for advertising, the practical effect of these rights is limited. The most complete way to exercise them is to delete your account in the App, which removes your account records and anonymizes your authored content.

13. International Users

The Service is operated from the United States and your information is stored in the United States. If you use the Service from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be processed in the United States.

14. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or your information, contact:

TheySay LLC Email: theysayllc@theysayapp.org Web: theysayapp.org

To report abuse or harmful content, use the in-App reporting tools or email reportabuse@theysayapp.org.

15. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last Updated” date above and post the updated policy in the App and at theysayapp.org/privacy. Significant changes will be communicated in the App. Your continued use of the Service after an update means you accept the revised policy.

TheySay LLC
Colorado, USA
Email: theysayllc@theysayapp.org
Website: theysayapp.org