This policy explains what Cringe collects, why, and what you can do about it. Cringe is a satirical product, but this is a real description of how we handle your data.
Who we are
Cringe is operated by Nuits, a sole trader business (toiminimi) based in Finland. Nuits is the data controller for the information described here. For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, write to hi@becringe.org.
What we collect
We collect only what the service needs to run:
- Account details: your email and your confirmation that you are 18 or older.
- Your profile: display name, age, short bio, photos, prompt answers, and the profile details you fill in, including any you choose to keep off your profile.
- Your activity: likes and the comments you attach to them, skips, matches, messages, bot calls, and nudge responses.
- Pilot operations: event type, date, internal profile identifiers, and whether an interaction involved a Plant. These receipts never contain profile text, message content, photos, email, or device data. We use them to count exposure, likes, replies, matches, and qualified conversations separately for people and Plants.
- Things other people write about you: a like sent to you can carry a comment, which reaches you before you have matched. We screen it before you see it, you can report it, and it is included in your data export.
- Technical data: device and log information, crash reports we send to Bugsink on servers we operate, and the cookies described in our cookie policy.
- Product analytics (optional): page views, referrers, and basic device and browser information collected by OpenPanel on servers we operate, only if you allow it. We do not record session replays, and we do not use this for advertising or cross-site profiling.
Why we collect it, and our lawful bases
We process your data to provide the service you asked for, which is our contract with you. We process some data to keep people safe, prevent abuse, confirm that users are over 18, and measure whether the limited pilot produces conversations between people rather than only Plant activity. Those uses rest on our legitimate interests and our legal obligations. Optional first-party OpenPanel analytics runs only with your consent. Declining it does not stop the smaller operational pilot counts described above. We do not run advertising or behavioural profiling for ads.
AI and your content
The honesty engine sends your prompt answers to our AI provider, OpenRouter, to rewrite them. Automated moderation scans text and images for safety using OpenRouter and Cloudflare. We keep honesty originals only long enough to show you the rewrite, up to about 24 hours, and then delete them. See the AI and bots page for detail.
How long we keep it
We keep your data while your account is active. When you delete your account, we delete your profile, photos, prompts, matches, and messages. Pilot event receipts remove your internal profile identifier and re-key the fingerprint from the receipt itself, retaining only that opaque receipt fingerprint, event category, date, frozen person-or-Plant classification, and a deleted-participant marker. Daily aggregate counts are not linked back to an account and are not reduced by deletion. Honesty originals are deleted within about 24 hours of the rewrite. Limited residual copies in encrypted backups expire on a rolling basis. The one exception is material we are legally required to preserve, such as evidence of child sexual abuse, which is held separately for at least one year as the law requires.
Your rights
You can ask us to access, export, correct, or delete your data, and you can object to or ask us to restrict certain processing. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. To use any of these rights, write to hi@becringe.org or use the controls in your account. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman, the Finnish supervisory authority, at tietosuoja.fi.
California privacy rights
If you live in California, you have the right to know what we collect, to delete it, to correct it, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. We do not sell or share personal information. We honor Global Privacy Control signals. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any right. See your privacy choices.
International transfers
Your data may be processed in countries other than your own, including the United States, where some of our providers operate. Where it is, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
Security
We protect data in transit and at rest and limit who can access it. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise otherwise.
Children
Cringe is for adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. See our child safety standards.
Changes and contact
We may update this policy and will post the new date at the top. For privacy questions, write to hi@becringe.org.