Privacy Policy - Dissidence

This policy explains what Dissidence collects, why, who else receives it, how long it is kept, and what you can do about it. It applies to the website and to the Dissidence apps. The operator is named in the Imprint; for privacy questions write to privacy@dissidence.net.

1. Information We Collect

Account: your email address (stored encrypted), username, and password (stored only as a one-way hash). If you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive the email address and account identifier they share with us.
Profile: anything you choose to add, such as a display name, bio, avatar, or banner.
Date of birth (optional): stored encrypted, and used only to decide whether adult content may be shown to you.
Security settings: two-factor authentication secrets (encrypted) and passkeys.
Public content: posts and comments in communities, and the media attached to them. These can be read by our servers and by other people.
Private messages and calls: direct messages, group chats, server channels, and voice and video calls are end-to-end encrypted on your device. We cannot read their content. We do see who is in a conversation, who sent a message, and when.
Anonymous posts: an anonymous post is linked to your account, visible only to platform moderation, for 30 days (longer while the post is under an open report). After that the link is removed permanently.
Uploaded files: location, camera, and time details are removed from photos and videos before they are stored, unless you choose to keep them. End-to-end encrypted files are cleaned on your device and stored only in encrypted form.
Connection data: IP address, browser or device type, and sign-in times, used to keep your account secure and to stop abuse. This is stored encrypted.
Notification tokens: if you allow notifications, the token your device gives us to deliver them (stored encrypted).
Payments: if you subscribe, Stripe handles the payment. We never see your card number; we keep your plan, its status, and its dates.
Reports and moderation: reports you file or that are filed about you, and the moderation actions taken.
Usage: basic product events (such as which feature was used), linked to your account but without IP address or device details. On the website only, we also run self-hosted analytics (see section 7).
Error reports: when the website or an app hits an error, a technical report is sent to our own error-tracking server. Cookies and sign-in tokens are removed from it first.

2. How We Use Information

To run the Platform: your account, your communities, your messages, and notifications you have turned on
To keep accounts secure and to prevent spam, fraud, and abuse
To enforce our Terms and Content Policy, including reviewing reports
To process payments for subscriptions
To fix errors and improve the Platform
To meet legal obligations

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

3. Who Receives Information

We share only what each service needs for its task:

Hetzner (Germany): hosts our servers, database, file storage, and backups.
Bunny.net (EU): delivers uploaded files quickly from servers near you.
Scaleway (France): sends our emails and stores our encrypted offsite backups.
Sightengine (France): automated content moderation. Photos and video frames that are not end-to-end encrypted, and the text of public posts and comments, are checked automatically for illegal or prohibited content. End-to-end encrypted content is never sent.
Have I Been Pwned: checks whether a new password appears in known data breaches. Only the first five characters of a hash of the password are sent; the password itself never leaves our server.
Apple and Google push services: deliver notifications to your devices. Notifications may include a sender's name, but never message content.
Stripe (United States): processes subscription payments. Stripe receives your email address and account identifier along with the payment details you enter.
Apple and Google sign-in: only if you choose to sign in with them.
Embedded media: videos and other media from sites such as YouTube load only after you press play. The site then receives your IP address, and its own privacy policy applies.
Spotify: only if you connect your Spotify account to show what you are listening to.
Link previews: our server fetches the linked page, so the site sees our server, not you.
Encrypted DNS (apps only): the apps look up our addresses through encrypted DNS resolvers (Mullvad, Quad9, and dns0.eu), which see only the address being looked up. If you turn on Tor in the apps, your connection goes through the Tor network.
Legal requirements: we disclose information when required by valid legal process. Child sexual abuse material is reported to the authorities responsible, such as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Providers marked United States process the information they receive there.

4. How Long We Keep It

Connection data (IP addresses, device details): erased after 30 days, or after 365 days for an account under a legal hold or a child-safety investigation.
Your account: kept until you delete it. Accounts that never verified their email and have no content are removed after 7 days.
Deleted messages: permanently removed 30 days after deletion.
Notifications: removed when they expire.
Reports and moderation records: kept as long as needed to keep the Platform safe and to meet legal obligations.
Backups: encrypted backups are kept for up to 90 days, so deleted information can remain in them until they expire.

5. Deleting Your Account

You can delete your account in Settings → Account & security. Deletion takes effect after 30 days; signing in during that time lets you cancel it. When it takes effect we remove your account, profile, sessions, and devices, and replace your posts and comments with a placeholder. Encrypted messages you sent stay in the conversations of the people you sent them to, with no author attached; we cannot read them. If you own a community, transfer it to someone else first. An account under a legal hold is kept until the hold ends.

6. Your Rights and Choices

See and change your information in Settings
Download a copy of your data in Settings → Account & security
Delete your account (section 5)
Turn notifications on or off in Settings or in your device's settings
Disconnect Spotify at any time
Turn on “Do Not Track” in your browser to be left out of website analytics
Ask us to access, correct, or erase your information, to restrict or object to how we use it, or to move it elsewhere, by writing to privacy@dissidence.net
Complain to a data protection authority

7. Cookies, Local Storage, and Analytics

We use cookies only to keep you signed in and to protect sign-in. We use local storage for preferences such as your theme. We do not use third-party tracking cookies.

On the website, we run our own analytics software (Matomo) on servers we control in the European Union. It sets no cookies, anonymizes IP addresses, sets no advertising or cross-site identifiers, removes identifying parts of page addresses, and honors your browser's “Do Not Track” signal (with it on, you are not counted at all). The apps do not run this analytics.

8. Data Security

We encrypt data in transit and at rest, encrypt identifying fields such as email and IP addresses in our database, offer two-factor authentication and passkeys, and end-to-end encrypt private messages and calls. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Age Requirement

The Platform is for people aged 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. Accounts found to belong to someone under 18 are banned.

10. Changes

We may update this policy. We will tell users about significant changes on the Platform, and the date at the top shows the latest version.

11. Contact

For privacy questions or requests, contact us at privacy@dissidence.net.