Privacy policy
Effective October 29, 2026
The short version
- No accounts. We don't ask for your name, email or password to play, host or answer.
- We don't sell personal information.
- Results are shown as group totals. Nobody else sees how you answered.
- We may publish, share or license anonymized statistics built from answers to HTruths' own questions, including commercially, such as "62% of people aged 25–34 in Canada prefer working from home". They can't be traced back to you, and they never include a figure for a group of fewer than 10 people.
This policy covers htruths.com: trending topics, live games, and polls. "HTruths", "we" and "us" mean the people who run the site.
What we collect
When you visit any page
- Technical information your browser sends to every website: IP address, browser and device type. Our hosting provider uses it to deliver pages and block attacks.
- Usage statistics through Google Analytics: pages viewed, buttons clicked, rough location (country or city), device type and how you arrived.
Trending topics
- A random ID created in your browser, so we can count each person's answer once and show your results over time. The same ID is used in live games and polls, so your answers across HTruths can be counted together. It doesn't identify you.
- Your answers and guesses.
- Your age group and country, if you choose to give them. They are optional.
- Challenges: the name you type, your answers and your result.
Live games
- Hosts: a Host PIN (a random code, not linked to your identity), the game's title, questions, theme and settings, and, if you set one, a recovery question with a scrambled (hashed) answer.
- Players: the nickname you type, your random HTruths ID, your answers and guesses, your answers to any profile questions the host adds (for example "Which team are you on?"), and a random player ID for that game.
Polls
- Poll creators: your questions and settings, and an email address if you ask for a reminder before your poll closes.
- People who answer: a random ID created in your browser, your answers, guesses and scores.
- A scrambled version of your IP address (a one-way hash, not the address itself) when you create, answer or report a poll. We use it only to stop spam, for example to limit how many polls can be made in an hour.
- The reason you give if you report a poll.
When you contact us
Your email address and what you write, so we can reply.
What we don't collect
No names (unless you type one as a nickname), passwords, payment details, precise location, contacts or photos.
How we use it
- To run the games: count votes, work out results and scores, show leaderboards, and let you pick up where you left off.
- To show how your answers compare with others, including by age group and country if you shared them.
- To send the one reminder email a poll creator asks for.
- To prevent spam and abuse, and to keep the site secure.
- To understand how the site is used and improve it.
- To create anonymized statistics, described below.
We don't use your information for advertising, and we don't build profiles of you across other websites.
Anonymized statistics
HTruths is about what people really think. We may combine answers to HTruths' own questions (trending topics and our ready-made question packs) into anonymized, aggregated statistics, such as the share of people in an age group or country who chose each answer. We may publish these, share them with partners, or license them, including for commercial and research purposes.
- They contain no random IDs, nicknames, IP addresses or individual answers, and we don't try to re-identify anyone.
- We never report a figure for a group of fewer than 10 people.
- Questions that hosts and poll creators write themselves belong to them. We don't share their wording or answers outside HTruths, apart from overall counts such as the total number of votes cast on the site.
- Games played with our Classroom pack are left out of these statistics.
- Statistics already published or shared can't be withdrawn. If you ask us to delete your data, it's left out of any statistics we make afterwards.
Who sees what
- Other players and voters see group totals. In live games, the leaderboard shows nicknames and scores.
- Hosts and poll creators see group totals and, in live games, nicknames, scores and the totals for their profile questions. They don't see how a named player answered each question.
- We can see stored data to run and fix the site.
Anyone with a poll link or game code can open it, so share them with care. Your private poll link and Host PIN give control over your poll or games, so keep them to yourself.
Service providers
We use a few companies to run the site. They handle data on our behalf, under their own privacy and security terms:
- Cloudflare: hosting, database, security, and the code library that draws QR codes.
- Google: Google Analytics for usage statistics, and Google Fonts for the site's typefaces.
- Resend: sends poll reminder emails.
These companies may store or process data outside Canada, including in the United States, where it can be subject to local laws. We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or transfer it to a company set up to run HTruths or to a buyer if HTruths is ever sold. In each case, this policy's commitments go with it.
Cookies and browser storage
| Name | What it's for | How long |
|---|---|---|
respondent_id | Your random HTruths ID, used in trending topics, live games and polls | 2 years |
| Age group and country | Remembers what you chose, so you aren't asked again | 2 years |
| Browser storage (not cookies) | A copy of your random ID, answers you've given, polls you've made, and live games you're hosting or playing, so you can come back to them | Until you clear it |
_ga, _ga_* | Google Analytics usage statistics | Up to 2 years |
You can clear cookies and site data in your browser settings at any time. HTruths still works, but it will forget your past answers, polls and games. To stop Google Analytics on every site, use Google's opt-out browser add-on.
How long we keep it
- Scrambled IP addresses: cleared after 90 days.
- Reminder email addresses: deleted within two days of the reminder being sent or the poll closing.
- Answers, games and polls: kept so results and statistics stay accurate, until you ask us to delete them or we no longer need them. We then delete them or anonymize them.
- Google Analytics data: kept for up to 14 months.
Children and classrooms
Trending topics and polls are meant for people aged 13 and over. Our Classroom pack is for teachers running live games with students. Students only type a nickname: no accounts, emails or age questions. Teachers, please:
- ask students to use first names or made-up nicknames;
- avoid profile questions that could identify a student;
- follow your school's rules on online tools.
If you think a child has given us personal information they shouldn't have, email us and we'll delete it.
Your choices and rights
You can ask to see, correct or delete information about you. Because there are no accounts, we may need something that shows it's yours, such as the game code, Host PIN or private poll link. We'll reply within 30 days.
Depending on where you live, you may have further rights, such as objecting to some uses. If you're not happy with our answer, you can complain to your privacy regulator. In Canada, that's the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Security
Data travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Private links and Host PINs are long random codes, and we store recovery answers and IP addresses only in scrambled form. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep what we store to a minimum.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If a change affects how information we already hold is used, we'll say so clearly on the site before it takes effect.
Contact
Questions or requests go to our Privacy Officer: customerservice@htruths.com.