Privacy Policy

Last updated 24 October 2026

This policy explains what Sociograph collects about you, why, who can see it, how long it is kept, and what your rights are. Sociograph is built to collect as little as it can: no e-mail address, no real name unless you choose to show one, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking.

Who is responsible

TaoSoft AS (organisation number [FILL: org. no.], [FILL: postal address], Norway) runs Sociograph and is the controller of your personal data under the GDPR. Write to us about anything in this policy at contact@taosoft.org.

What we collect

Your account

• Sign-in. You sign in with Google, and we ask Google for nothing but proof of who you are. All we receive and keep is the identifier Google uses for your account: never your name, e-mail address or Google picture. Google knows that you signed in to Sociograph; its own privacy policy covers that.
• Your profile: your handle, plus a display name, a bio and a picture if you add them. Pictures are re-encoded when you upload them, which removes everything stored inside the file, such as the place it was taken and the camera used.
• Joining: when you confirmed that you are 18 or older and accepted the Terms of Service.
• Your settings: your theme, and which of your stats other members may see.

What you do on Sociograph

Your posts, debates, the side you take in them, your arguments and replies, questions and answers, votes, follows, blocks, bookmarks, the links you suggest for the directory, your personality test answers and result, the reports you make, and the notifications sent to you.

Keeping the site working and safe

• Cookies. We use two, both needed for the site to work: SID, which keeps you signed in and protects forms from forgery, and lasts 30 days from your last visit; and oauth, which lasts at most ten minutes while you sign in. Your browser also remembers whether you last viewed bookmarks as a list or a picture. Nothing tracks you, here or elsewhere, so there is nothing to consent to.
• Nothing from other companies. Fonts, scripts and the face-tracking model all come from our own server, so loading Sociograph tells no one else that you visited.
• Rate limits. To stop spam and scraping we count actions such as posting, searching and opening pages, recording the action, the time, your IP address and your account. These records are deleted after 24 hours.
• Server logs. Our web server logs each request: your IP address, the time, the page asked for and your browser's name. We use them to find faults and attacks, and they are deleted after [FILL: 14] days.

Face verification

Face verification is optional. It shows that your profile picture is of you and that you are 18 or older, and dating will require it once dating opens. Because it uses biometric data, we only do it with your explicit consent, which you give by ticking the box on the verification page before the camera starts.

• On your device: the page runs a face-tracking model (MediaPipe) in your browser to tell when your face is centred and when you turn your head and blink. What it measures stays on your device.
• What is sent: a photo and a video of a few seconds, both taken by the page, go to our server.
• What our server does: it finds the face in the photo, in the video and in your profile picture, turns each into a face template (a set of numbers describing the face) and compares them. It checks that the video shows the head turns and the blink asked for, in order, so that it was filmed live. It also estimates your age from your face. All of this runs on our own server with open-source models, so no other company ever sees your face.
• What is kept: only the time you passed. The photo, the video, the face templates and the age estimate exist only in memory and in temporary files while the check runs, which takes at most a minute, and are deleted when it ends, whether you pass or not. The checker's own log notes only whether a check passed, and why not, without saying whose it was. We never use your face to train models, or to recognise you anywhere else.
• Attempts: you can try 5 times a day, which we count like other rate-limited actions (deleted after 24 hours).
• Decided automatically: no person looks at your photo or video. Age estimates can be several years off, so the check only passes faces that look clearly older than 18, and it may refuse someone who is in fact older. If you think the check got it wrong, you have the right to have a person look into it: write to us.
• Withdrawing consent: you can do so at any time. Since nothing biometric is kept, there is nothing of your face to delete; ask us and we remove your verified status, which also goes whenever you change your picture.

Who can see what

• Anyone, including people without an account and search engines: your Public bookmarks, under your handle, and the directory's links, which do not say who suggested them. Everything else on Sociograph is for members only.
• Members: your profile (handle, display name, bio, picture and follower counts), your posts, debates, arguments, replies, questions and answers, and the stats and personality results you choose to share in Settings. Blocking someone hides your profile and content from them, and theirs from you.
• Only you: your Private bookmarks, your personality test answers (never shown to anyone), your notifications, who you blocked, your settings, and the stats you don't share.
• Moderators and admins: reported content and the reasons given, but not who reported it. Admins also see bans and the moderation log (see below).

We do not sell your data, share it with advertisers, or show ads.

Why we may use it (legal bases)

• To provide Sociograph to you (GDPR art. 6(1)(b)): your account, profile, content, follows, bookmarks, stats, tests and notifications, which are the service you joined for.
• Our legitimate interests (art. 6(1)(f)) in keeping Sociograph secure and free of abuse, and in being fair to other members: cookies, rate limits, server logs, reports, moderation and its log, bans, and keeping debates and questions others took part in after you leave. You can object to this, see your rights below.
• Your explicit consent (art. 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a)): face verification.
• Legal obligations (art. 6(1)(c)): when the law requires us to keep data or hand it over.

How long we keep it

• Your account and content: until you delete them. Deleting your account (at /leave) deletes your profile, picture, sign-in identifier, content, follows, votes, blocks, bookmarks, test, notifications and reports, and your rate-limit records, with two exceptions. A debate or question others took part in stays, credited to "Deleted member", so their words are not lost with yours. Directory links you suggested stay too, credited to no one.
• Sign-in sessions: 30 days after your last visit, or until you log out.
• Notifications you have seen: 90 days.
• Reports: as long as both the reporter's account and the reported member's account exist.
• Moderation log: every action moderators and admins take is logged, with who acted, the member concerned, a copy of the reported content and of the reports (their reasons and dates, never who sent them), and the reason given. Entries are kept for 3 years, even if the accounts or content are deleted earlier, so that decisions can be checked and repeat abuse recognised.
• Bans: for as long as the ban lasts. A banned member cannot sign in, so to have a banned account deleted, write to us. We then keep only what is needed to stop the same Google account from joining again.
• Backups of the database are deleted after [FILL: 30] days, so deleted data can last that long in them.
• E-mails you send us: as long as it takes to deal with what you wrote about.

Who else handles it

• Our hosting provider, [FILL: provider name], whose servers in [FILL: country, in the EEA] store everything, on our behalf and under a data processing agreement.
• Google, for sign-in only, as described above.
• Authorities, when the law requires it, such as the police with a court order, or when someone's life or safety is at risk.

Your data is kept within the EEA.

Security

Sociograph is only served over an encrypted connection. Sign-in sessions are stored only as a one-way hash, so a stolen copy of the database could not be used to log in. Ids in addresses are random, so accounts and content cannot be found by counting. Profile pictures are only served to signed-in members.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask to see the data we hold about you and get a copy of it, have it corrected or deleted, restrict how we use it, object to uses based on our legitimate interests, and receive the data you gave us in a portable form. You can withdraw consent at any time. Much of this you can do yourself: edit your profile and settings, delete anything you posted, or delete your whole account at /leave.

For anything else, write to contact@taosoft.org. Since we don't know your e-mail address, we will first make sure the request comes from the account's owner, for example by asking you to post a code from your account. We answer within a month.

You can also complain to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (Datatilsynet), or to the data protection authority where you live in the EEA.

Age

Sociograph is only for people 18 or older. If we learn that a member is younger, we delete their account.

Changes

When we change this policy we update the date at the top, and we announce important changes on Sociograph before they take effect, for example before dating opens, since it will involve more personal data.