Live Topic Voting

The short version

Live Topic Voting is designed to be anonymous. We do not collect personal data or personally identifiable information (PII) from participants. You do not create an account, and we never ask for your name, email address, phone number, or any profile information to submit or vote on topics. There are no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

What the app stores

To run a voting session, the app keeps only the following:

• Event content. The event title and description created by the organizer, the topics submitted during the session, and the vote tallies for each topic. Topic text is free-form — please do not include personal or sensitive information in the topics you submit.
• An anonymous session identifier. A random identifier (a UUID) is generated in your browser and saved in your browser's local storage. It is used only to stop the same browser from voting twice on a topic and to apply fair-use rate limits. It is not linked to your identity, and it never leaves your device except as an opaque token attached to your vote and topic submissions.
• Session preferences. Which topics you have voted on and your chosen display mode (Basic, Modern, or Fun) are stored in your browser's local storage as part of the same anonymous session as your session identifier above. This is session-based information kept on your device — it is tied to the random session ID, not to your identity, and it is never used to recognize you as a person.

None of the above identifies you as a person. Clearing your browser's site data removes your session identifier, voted-topic markers, and display preference.

Content moderation

To keep sessions safe, the text of each submitted topic is checked for toxic content using Amazon Comprehend. Non-English text may first be translated using Amazon Translate so it can be moderated. These services process the topic text you submit; they do not receive your identity because we do not have it.

Security and abuse prevention

Like virtually all web services, our servers process your network (IP) address as part of each request. We use it only to protect the service — to enforce rate limits and prevent abuse — and it appears in standard, short-lived operational logs. Rate-limiting records expire automatically. We do not use IP addresses to build profiles of participants or to identify individuals, and we do not sell or share this information.

Organizer (admin) accounts

People who create and manage events sign in through Amazon Cognito using an email address as their username. That email is used only to authenticate the organizer and to send operational alerts (for example, when a topic is flagged by moderation). This applies to organizers only — not to participants who join and vote.

Where data is processed and how long it is kept

The application runs on Amazon Web Services. Event content persists until the organizer resets or deletes the event, after which it is removed. Anonymous rate-limiting records expire automatically. Data stored in your browser stays on your device until you clear it.

Cookies and tracking

We do not use advertising cookies, third-party analytics, or cross-site trackers. The only browser storage we use is the local storage described above, which is essential to the app's core voting function.

Questions

If you joined a session, the event organizer is your point of contact for any questions about how a specific session's content is handled.