Privacy notice
This is an interim notice. It explains, in plain terms, what PickTonight does with your personal data today. A full privacy policy is being prepared with legal advice and will replace this page. The legal bases and safeguards described here may be stated differently in it.
1. Who we are
PickTonight is run by Forcevolve Ltd., a company registered in Bulgaria (UIC / ЕИК 207839697), registered address: 42 Velizar Velkov St., floor 3, flat 14, Manastirski livadi district, 1618 Sofia, Bulgaria. Forcevolve Ltd. is the controller of the personal data described in this notice ("we", "us").
Privacy questions, data requests and support: support@forcevolve.com
2. What we collect, and who can see it
| Data | What it is for | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Your sign-in identity: you sign in with it (or your username) and your password. At sign-up, and when you reset a forgotten password, we email a 6-digit code to it to confirm it is yours. It also stops the same address from registering twice. If you ask us by email to delete your account and cannot be identified in the app, we may email a one-time code to the address the account is registered with to confirm it is you. | No other user. The app never shows it to anyone else. Our sign-in service stores it with your account, and it is part of your sign-in session on your device. The codes are delivered by our email provider for sign-in codes (see Resend, section 4). We collect no phone number. |
| Terms acceptance: the version of the terms you agreed to, and when | Recording your agreement to the terms, and asking you again when they change. | Only you and us. |
| Password | Signing you in. | Nobody. Our sign-in service stores it only in hashed form. |
| Birth date | Checking that you are 13 or older before an account is created. An account created before this check existed is asked for it once. | The app never shows it to other users. Until a planned database change, your friends, the members of your groups and people you have sent a friend request to could technically read it from our database; after that change, only you can. |
| Username, display name, avatar (an emoji), and the country you watch in | Your profile, and which streaming services are available where you are. Your country is normally suggested from your device's time zone and language during sign-up, and you can change it in Settings → Your services. | Your username is how people find you. Your friends, the members of your groups and people you send a friend request to see your profile, and your name and avatar appear next to what you post. Unless your profile is private, anyone signed in to PickTonight who searches for your username can find you and see your display name, avatar, how many badges you have and how many streaming services you share with them. People who share a friend, a group or a club with you may be shown you as someone they may know, with how many friends, groups and clubs you have in common. Settings → Privacy: a private profile hides you from username search and from those suggestions; a public profile lets anyone on PickTonight open it. Under 18, search and suggestions work differently (section 8). |
| Taste and activity: likes and passes, ratings, watch diary and episode check-ins, watchlist, favourite genres, actors and streaming services, titles you asked to be reminded of when they release, challenge and trivia activity | Recommending titles, building your taste profile, and running the features you use. | Your watch diary, episode check-ins and release reminders: only you. Your friends and the members of your groups can see your swipes (likes, passes and titles you have seen, with your star ratings), the actors you picked, the genres you love and avoid, your streaming services and your badges; the app uses them for match percentages and group picks. Group members can also see your yearly challenge goal. With Public profile on, anyone signed in to PickTonight can see your most recent swipes with your stars, and your actors, genres, services and badges, and, unless you turn off "Show my Top 10" in Settings → Privacy, your Top 10 list when that list is set to Public. |
| Social activity: friends and partner links, groups and their nights, polls and votes, clubs, lists, comments, likes and invites | Running the social features. | Friendships and partner links: the two of you, except that the "people you may know" suggestions tell someone how many of their friends are also friends with the person suggested (a number, never who), and your friendships count towards it. Groups, their nights, polls and votes: the group's members (someone invited to a group also sees the group). Lists: the owner and collaborators; a public list, any PickTonight member. Clubs are open: anyone signed in to PickTonight can see a club, who is in it, and its topics, posts and likes. Public profiles are visible to other PickTonight members. A title's discussion is visible to members who have swiped on or watched that title (an episode's, to those who have logged that episode or a later one in its season). |
| Safety records: reports you file, blocks and mutes | Keeping the community safe and handling reports. | Reports: you and our moderators. Mutes: only you. Blocks: you, and the blocked person's app, which uses them to keep the two of you apart. |
| Error reports: app version, the error and its technical details, your browser's user-agent (browser, version and operating system), and your account ID if you are signed in | Sent automatically when the app hits an error, so we can find and fix it. | Us. |
| Days you used the app: each calendar day you opened PickTonight while signed in, with the time our server first saw you that day | Counting how many people use PickTonight and keep coming back, and how often the app fails per day of use. | Us. |
| Performance measurements: how quickly a page load showed its content and answered your taps, how much its layout moved, the app version, and whether the page was opened, reloaded or reached with Back. They carry no account ID, no browser details and no page address. | Sent automatically once per page load, when you switch away from or close the page, so we can find and fix slowness. | Us. |
| Sign-in sessions: when each session started, and the IP address and browser it came from | Recorded by our sign-in service to keep your account secure. | Us. |
| Usage counters linked to your account | Enforcing fair-use limits on catalogue and rating lookups, comments and posts, reports, friend requests, error reports and performance measurements. | Us. |
| Imported watch history | If you import a TV Time or Letterboxd export, the file is read on your device and never uploaded. Its titles are looked up in the catalogue through our server (see TMDB, section 4). Matched titles are added to your diary and marked as seen, with any star rating from the file. | Diary entries: only you. Seen marks and ratings: as for your other swipes (see "Taste and activity"). |
You need an email address, a birth date, a username and a password to create an account; without them we cannot create one. Everything else comes from how you use the app.
On your device
The app keeps these in your browser's local storage on the web, and in the app's own storage on your device in the iOS and Android apps:
- your sign-in session;
- a copy of changes not yet saved to our servers, until they are saved;
- your recent searches and your place in the swipe deck, kept for your account on this device and removed when you delete your account here;
- whether you have dismissed the swiping tips, and a few display preferences and technical notes, such as the tab you last opened and whether the menu is open;
- if the age check refuses a birth date, this device remembers the day of the refusal and which check refused it (sign-up, or the birthday check for an account created before the age check existed), to stop repeated attempts. It is honoured for 30 days and deleted the next time the app checks it after that. No birth date or other personal detail is kept, and nothing about it is sent to us.
PickTonight sets no cookies of its own and uses no advertising trackers. The days you used the app and the performance measurements above are our own records, kept in our database; nothing is stored on your device for them. On the web app (not the iOS or Android apps) we also use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits and page views and to measure how fast pages load (see Cloudflare in section 4). When you play a trailer or an extra, YouTube's player may store data in your browser (see YouTube in section 4).
Automated decisions
The age check is automatic: a birth date less than 13 years ago stops the sign-up, and any new sign-up in that browser for 30 days; a refusal at sign-up does not affect signing in to an existing account. An account created before the age check existed is asked for a birth date once; if the check refuses it, the account cannot be used (you can still delete it or sign out), and the check keeps refusing in that browser for 30 days (see "On your device" above). Recommendations and match percentages are calculated automatically from your taste data.
3. Why we use it: legal bases
- Providing PickTonight to you: your account, sign-in, the age check, your profile, taste profile, recommendations and the social features. Basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR, processing necessary to provide the service you signed up for.
- Answering your data protection requests: exports, corrections, deletions (in the app or by email) and objections. Basis: Article 6(1)(c) GDPR, our legal obligation to answer them.
- Keeping PickTonight secure and working: error reports, sign-in session records, usage counters, reports, blocks, mutes and moderation. Basis: Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in a safe, working service. You can object to this processing (see section 7).
- Measuring how PickTonight is used and how well it performs: the days you used the app, performance measurements, web analytics on the web app, and a daily count of deleted accounts (a number, never who). Basis: Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in knowing whether the service works and whether people keep using it. You can object to this processing (see section 7).
These are the bases we rely on today. They are part of the legal review, and the full policy may state them differently.
4. Who receives data
We do not sell your data. Other users see what section 2 describes, and our moderators read reports. Where the law requires it (EU Digital Services Act, Article 18: a suspected criminal offence involving a threat to someone's life or safety), we pass a report, a copy of the reported content and the reported account's username and ID to the police or judicial authorities of the EU country concerned, or to Europol. These services receive data when you use PickTonight:
| Service | What for | What reaches them, and where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Our database, sign-in and server functions | All the account and activity data in section 2. Your app connects to our project at a supabase.co address, so Supabase also receives your IP address and browser details. It keeps request logs (IP address, browser, and the address requested, which for a catalogue search includes the words searched) for a period set by our Supabase plan. Where: our database is in the EU, in Ireland (AWS eu-west-1). Our server functions (for example sign-in, account deletion and catalogue lookups) run in the Supabase region nearest to you, which can be outside the EU. Supabase, Inc. is based in the United States. |
| Cloudflare | Hosting the web app, and Cloudflare Web Analytics (visits, page views and page speed) | Your IP address and browser details when you load the web app. For analytics, a script from static.cloudflareinsights.com measures the page, the referring page, the browser and operating system, the country and load-time figures and reports them to cloudflareinsights.com or to our own address. Cloudflare states that this uses no cookies or local storage and does not fingerprint visitors or store their IP address. See the Cloudflare Privacy Policy. Where: Cloudflare, Inc. is based in the United States, and pages are delivered through its global network. |
| Resend | Delivering the 6-digit codes we email for sign-up and a password reset | The address each code is sent to, and the code in the message. Where: we use Resend's EU region, in Ireland; Resend, Inc. is based in the United States. |
| TMDB (The Movie Database) | Film and series details, posters and photos | Your browser loads images from image.tmdb.org, so TMDB receives your IP address and browser details. Our server asks TMDB (api.themoviedb.org) for titles, including the words you search for and the titles of a history file you import, without your account, your name or your IP address. Where: TMDB is operated from the United States and may process data in other countries. See the TMDB privacy policy. |
| YouTube (Google) | Trailers and extras on titles | PickTonight uses YouTube API Services to show these videos. When you open a title with videos, your browser loads their thumbnails from i.ytimg.com; when you play one, YouTube's player loads from youtube-nocookie.com. Google receives your IP address and browser details, and the player may store data in your browser and read it back, for example in cookies or local storage. Where: Google may process it in the United States. See the Google Privacy Policy. |
| OMDb API | IMDb ratings shown on titles | Only our server contacts it, asking for ratings by a title's ID. No personal data is sent. |
| Microsoft | Our email provider | What you send us by email, such as a data request or a request to delete your account, and anything you give us to show that an account is yours. Where: Microsoft Corporation is based in the United States. |
The app's typefaces are served from our own site, so no font service receives your data.
5. International transfers
Our database is in the EU, but our server functions can run in the Supabase region nearest to you, which can be outside the EU. Supabase, Cloudflare, Resend, Google (YouTube), TMDB and Microsoft are based in the United States, so data they receive may be processed in, or accessed from, the United States. The full policy will describe the safeguard that applies to each of these transfers.
6. How long we keep it
| Data | Kept |
|---|---|
| Account, email address, profile, birth date, terms acceptance, taste, release reminders and activity | Until you delete your account. Deletion is immediate. |
| Comments you posted | When you delete your account, the text of a comment you posted (and any rating shown with it) stays in its thread; the author is shown as "[deleted]" instead of your name. |
| Groups, clubs and lists you own | When you delete your account, groups and clubs that have other members, and lists that have collaborators, pass to their longest-standing member. The rest are deleted, including lists other people only follow. |
| What you added to shared spaces, and notifications other people received from you | When you delete your account, titles you added to other people's lists, topics, polls and group nights you started, watches you logged with your partner or a group that others attended, and titles you locked for a group night stay there without your name. Notifications other people already received from you stay until their notification period ends (at most 365 days), but no longer carry your name or your account ID. If you had a partner, your partner group is renamed to Partner group, so neither it nor the notifications about it show your display name. |
| Reports you filed | They stay with our moderators without your name after you delete your account, including anything you wrote in them. No fixed deletion period has been set yet. |
| Reports about you or your posts, and copies of reported posts a moderator saved | They stay in the moderation records, also after you delete your account: a saved copy keeps who posted it, and a report about your profile keeps your account ID. No fixed deletion period has been set yet. |
| Notifications | Read ones for 90 days; any notification for at most 365 days. Some stay longer because the app still needs them: pending invites and friend requests until they are answered, a new-episode alert while that episode is still the next one, and, for as long as your account exists, saga reminders (so the same one is not sent twice) and notices about the outcome of a report. |
| Error reports | 60 days, then deleted. If you delete your account sooner, they are no longer linked to it. |
| Days you used the app | 400 days, then deleted. Deleting your account deletes them at once. |
| Performance measurements | 90 days, then deleted. They are never linked to your account. |
| The daily count of deleted accounts | Kept. It holds numbers only and says nothing about who deleted an account. |
| Sign-in session records | Until you sign out or delete your account. |
| Usage counters | 48 hours, then removed at the next daily clean-up. |
| Search results our server caches (stored by the words searched, not by who searched) | 2 days, then removed at the next daily clean-up. |
| Request logs Supabase keeps (see section 4) | For the period our Supabase plan sets. |
| Emails you send us | No fixed deletion period has been set yet. |
| The email we send to confirm a deletion request by email (the one-time code, see section 2) | No fixed deletion period has been set yet. |
| Data on your device | Your session: until you sign out. Changes not yet saved: until your next sign-in to the same account on this device sends them to our servers; deleting your account on this device removes them. Recent searches and your place in the swipe deck: until you delete your account on this device. The day of a refused age check: honoured for 30 days, then deleted the next time the app checks it. Everything else: until you clear this site's data in your browser (on the web) or the app's data or uninstall the app (iOS and Android), which also removes all of the above. |
A daily automatic clean-up applies these periods.
7. Your rights
- See and download your data: on the web app, Settings → Account → Export my data gives you a file of your account and activity (the iOS and Android apps cannot save it yet). For a copy of anything it does not include, such as the days you used the app, email us.
- Correct it: in Settings you can change your streaming services and country, your taste picks, your privacy and notification settings, and your password, and in Settings → Account your username (which is also your display name) and your avatar. To correct a birth date entered wrongly, email us.
- Delete your account: Settings → Delete account, or on the web at /delete-account. If you cannot delete it there, for example because you cannot sign in, email support@forcevolve.com with your username. We check that the account is yours first, then delete it, normally within one month.
- Object or restrict: you can object to processing based on our legitimate interests, or ask us to restrict processing, by email.
To exercise any right, email support@forcevolve.com. You can also complain to a data protection authority: in Bulgaria, the Commission for Personal Data Protection (cpdp.bg), or the authority in the EU country where you live or work.
8. Children
PickTonight is for people aged 13 and over. Sign-up asks for your birth date and refuses anyone younger. If you are under 18, only your friends and the members of your groups can find you by username, you are never suggested to anyone as someone they may know, and your profile cannot be made public. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, tell us at support@forcevolve.com.
9. Changes to this notice
We update this page when what PickTonight does with your data changes, and the full privacy policy will replace it. The date at the top shows the last change.