Privacy policy

1. About this policy

This policy explains how Thoughtz Pty Ltd ACN 626 307 177 (Thoughtz, we, us) handles personal information when you use the Thoughtz App, the Business Portal, Thoughtz Codes, thoz.io links and thoughtz.com (together, the Platform). It forms part of our Terms of Service, and the terms defined there have the same meaning here.

We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). If you are in the United Kingdom, section 15 also applies to you.

Everything in this policy applies to everyone, except that section 3.2 applies only if you answer Surveys, section 3.3 only if you run Surveys for a business, and section 15 only if you are in the UK.

2. How anonymity works on Thoughtz

When you answer a Survey, the business or person who runs it never receives your identity. They see your answers only as part of the Survey's results, alongside everyone else's, together with any demographic details you chose to give (such as gender and age group), the country each answer came from, and how many responses arrived each way (see section 3.2).

Thoughtz itself can connect an answer to the account or device it came from. We need that connection to:

• stop the same Survey being answered more times than it allows;
• show you your own Survey history; and
• deal with abuse.

We do not disclose that connection to anyone, except where the law requires it (see section 7).

Discussions. If you post in a Survey's discussion, your post appears under your chat name: a name we make up automatically from two words and a number, not from your name. Your chat name and your posts can be seen by the other people who can take part in that discussion, by the Survey's owner (a business can read the discussion but not post in it) and by us. A post also shows those people that you answered that Survey, or that you created it. You use the same chat name in every discussion, so posts you write in different discussions can be connected to each other. Your chat name is never shown with your answers.

3. What we collect

3.1 From everyone

• Technical information: your IP address, browser and device type, and the pages and features you use. We record this in security and server logs.
• A session cookie that keeps you signed in (see section 10).
• What you send us: messages to support, including the email address you send them from.

3.2 If you answer Surveys

Without an account (as a guest):

• A device identifier. This is a one-way code calculated from characteristics of your browser and device, such as its type, screen size, language and time zone, together with your IP address. We use it only to stop the same device answering a Survey more times than the Survey allows. We store only the code, not those characteristics or your IP address.
• Your answers, and any gender and birth year you choose to give.
• Your country. When you submit a Survey, we record the country your internet connection appears to be in. Our network provider, Cloudflare, works this out from your IP address, and we do not store the IP address with your answers. We then show you that country: you can correct it, or choose Prefer not to say to remove it.

With an App account:

• Your name and email address. The email address is the one the Apple, Google or Microsoft account you sign in with gives us, unless you give us another, which we confirm by emailing it a code. There is no PIN or password.
• Your gender and birth year, if you give them.
• Your country, which you choose when you register. We suggest one from your internet connection, and you can change it before you continue. Each answer records the country your account held when you gave it.
• Your answers and Survey history.
• Any Survey you create.
• Flags you raise, with the reason you give.
• Your chat name, which we create when you register, and any chat name you have replaced. We keep every chat name that has been used, so that it is never given to anyone else.
• Your discussion posts, including replies, and when you wrote them.
• Reports you make about discussion posts, and the people you block in discussions.
• Account records: for example, how many times your own Survey has been refused by our content screen, how many flags your Survey has received, and any restriction placed on your account, such as a suspension from posting in discussions.
• The Apple, Google or Microsoft account you sign in with: a scrambled code made from that account's number, which of them you use, and when you joined. We use it to sign you in, and so that one Apple, Google or Microsoft account signs in to only one Thoughtz account. From them we receive your email address (if you sign in with Apple and choose to hide your email, it is a private address that Apple forwards to you, and we use it as it is) and nothing else: not your name, photo, birthday or contacts. If you sign in with Apple, we also keep a token Apple gives us, encrypted, and use it only to tell Apple when you delete your account.

Either way:

• How you reached the Survey. We record whether you scanned its Thoughtz Code, followed a shared link (and, where we can tell, the site or app it was shared on and whether the business or another App user shared it), or started it from the App's Browse menu. We work this out from the link itself, from the name your browser or app gives itself, and from the address of the page you came from; we do not keep that name or that address. The business sees only how many responses arrived each way, and any way with fewer than five responses is grouped with others.

3.3 If you run Surveys for a business

• Your details: name, email address, country and mobile number.
• Business details: business name and address, ABN or company registration number, the result of checking it against the public register, and GST registration status.
• Sign-in security: if you turn on two-step sign-in, what we need to check it's you: the secret your authenticator app shares with us (stored encrypted), the public part of each passkey and the browser it was added on (a passkey's private part never leaves your device, or your Apple, Google or Microsoft account), your recovery codes (stored only in a form that can't be turned back into the codes), and a record of the browsers you ask us to remember (browser type, IP address and when each was last used).
• Purchases: what you bought and when, and your customer reference with our payment provider, Stripe. We never see or store your card details; Stripe handles those directly.
• Your Surveys: your questions, settings, logos and branding.

3.4 From other sources

We receive payment status from Stripe. We check business details against public business registers, such as the Australian Business Register and the UK's Companies House. Our network provider, Cloudflare, tells us which country your internet connection appears to be in (section 3.2). If you choose to verify your App account, Apple, Google or Microsoft confirms the account number of the account you signed in with, which we keep only as the scrambled code in section 3.2.

3.5 Sensitive answers

Some Surveys ask about sensitive matters, such as your sex life or sexual orientation, your health, your political opinions or your religious beliefs. The law treats this kind of information with extra care, and so do we.

• You will know before you start. A Survey that asks about sensitive matters says so before its first question.
• Answering is up to you. Nothing is recorded until you finish the Survey, so you can leave at any point and none of your answers is kept. By finishing it, you agree to us collecting your answers and handling them as this policy describes.
• It is handled like every other answer, with the same protections. The business or person who runs the Survey never learns who you are (section 2). Results are shown only in combined form (section 5). Demographic breakdowns appear only once enough people have answered, and results narrowed to the people who gave one answer appear only once enough people gave it, with any group of fewer than three people left out of their breakdowns.
• Some of these Surveys are for adults only. See section 13.
• We use your answers only for the Survey's results and our aggregated findings (section 5). We do not use them to decide anything about you, to advertise to you, or to build a profile of you.

4. How we use personal information

• To run the Platform: accounts, Surveys, results, purchases and support.
• To keep it safe and fair: stopping repeat or fake answers, screening Survey content, reviewing flags, and preventing abuse and fraud.
• To run discussions: deciding who can take part (including using your birth year to apply the age limit in section 13), showing posts under chat names, applying the word filter, reviewing reports, and removing posts and restricting accounts that break our rules.
• To decide what you can see and take part in: using your birth year to apply the age limits in section 13 (Adults only Surveys, and discussions).
• To produce aggregated results, as explained in section 5.
• To contact you about your account and your Surveys (see section 9).
• To improve the Platform.
• To meet our legal obligations.

5. Answers, results and aggregated use

Answers given through the Platform, and the results built from them, belong to Thoughtz under clause 4 of our Terms of Service. We may use them in aggregated form for any purpose, including publishing public-opinion findings, research and benchmarking. When we do:

• we never disclose the identity of anyone who answered;
• we never publish results for a group of fewer than three people, so a small group cannot reveal one person's answer;
• we do not name the business or person who ran the Survey as the source unless they agree, or the results are already public through the Platform; and
• if a Survey's results are private, we use them only combined with the private results of Surveys run by at least five different businesses or people, never on their own, and never in a way that points to who ran it, unless they agree.

Inside the Platform: a Survey's results are shown to its owner, and they are public in the App if the owner chose public results. Results appear only once a Survey reaches a minimum number of answers.

Written answers appear exactly as you type them. Please do not include your name, contact details or anything else that identifies you or someone else.

6. AI and automated decisions

6.1 Where we use AI

• Content screening. Before any Survey goes live, and whenever its wording changes, its questions are checked by an automated system that uses AI. The check can refuse a Survey. A refused Survey stays unpublished, and its owner is told why.
• Flag review. When a Survey receives flags, AI may summarise them to help the person at Thoughtz who reviews them. Decisions on flags are made by a person, apart from the automatic temporary suspension described in 6.2.
• Survey Assistant. This suggests how to word Survey questions.
• AI Analysis. This writes a plain-English summary of a Survey's results when the Survey owner asks for one.
• Duplicate check. When someone using the App is about to publish their own Survey, we compare its questions with Surveys already live in the Browse list, and AI judges whether one already asks the same thing. If it does, we suggest that Survey. The check never stops a Survey being published.

6.2 Decisions made automatically

Three decisions can be made by software without a person:

• Refusing a Survey at screening. This uses the Survey's wording. We also keep a count of refusals against the author's account.
• Temporarily suspending a Survey when enough different people flag it, relative to how many people answered it. The Survey stays suspended until a person reviews it.
• Refusing a discussion post that contains a word on our filter list. This uses only the words in the post. The filter is a fixed list of words, not AI.

The first two can affect you if you run the Survey, and the third if you wrote the post. If you think one is wrong, contact us (section 16), and a person will review it.

6.3 What we send to our AI providers

Our AI provider is Anthropic PBC, in the United States. For screening, flag review and the Survey Assistant, we send the Survey's wording. For AI Analysis, we also send the Survey's answers, including a sample of written answers. For the duplicate check, we send the new Survey's wording and the wording of the few live Surveys closest to it. We do not send the name, email address, account details or device identifier of anyone who answered. Our provider may not use this content to train its models.

To compare Surveys by meaning, we also send each Survey's wording (its questions and answer options, nothing else) to Voyage AI, a MongoDB service, which turns it into a list of numbers. We store those numbers with the Survey. We never send it answers or any account details, and MongoDB does not use what we send to train its models.

7. Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information. We share it only as follows:

• Survey owners receive answers as part of results, never the identity of the person who gave them (section 2).
• Other people in a discussion, and the Survey's owner, see your chat name and your discussion posts (section 2). A business sees them in the Business Portal and never receives your name or contact details.
• The public can see Survey results where the owner has left them public, and our aggregated findings (section 5).
• Service providers who run parts of the Platform for us, listed below. They may use the information only to provide their service.
• Apple, Google or Microsoft, whichever you sign in to your App account with. It sees that you signed in to Thoughtz, and nothing about your answers. If you delete an App account that signs in with Apple, we tell Apple, so that Thoughtz is removed from the apps using your Apple ID.
• Authorities, where the law requires it or where it is necessary to prevent a serious threat to someone's life, health or safety.
• A buyer of all or part of our business, who would be bound by this policy.

8. Overseas disclosure

Some of our providers store or process information outside Australia, mainly in the United States (see section 7). We choose providers that protect information to a standard comparable with Australian law. If you are in the UK, see section 15.

9. Emails we send

We send emails you need in order to use the Platform: codes that confirm your email address or recover your account, security codes, receipts, and notices about your Surveys, such as low-response or low-credit warnings. We will send marketing emails only if you have agreed to receive them, and every one will include a way to unsubscribe.

10. Cookies and similar technology

We use a cookie to keep you signed in and to protect your session. We also use the device identifier described in section 3.2. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party analytics trackers.

11. How long we keep it, and deleting your account

• Account details are kept while your account is open.
• You can delete your App account at any time in the App. We then delete your account details.
• A business can delete its account at any time, on the Account screen. We then delete the account holder's name, email address, mobile number and sign-in, and the business's address. We keep the business's name, its registered business number and its purchase records as the "Business and purchase records" point below describes. Its Surveys close, and they and their results stay, so the people who answered can still see their own answers and the results that were public.
• Answers you have already given remain part of Survey results after your account is deleted. They stay together under a random code, with any demographic details recorded with them, but that code is not linked to your name, your email address or any account. See clause C3 of our Terms of Service.
• Discussion posts are treated the opposite way. We keep your posts until you delete them or your account, and when you delete a post its text is deleted straight away. If we remove a post for breaking our rules, it is no longer shown to anyone, but we keep its text as the record of that decision until you delete your account. When you delete your App account, we delete your posts, the reports you made and the list of people you blocked, and we take you off other people's block lists. If one of your posts started a conversation that other people replied to, it is replaced by an anonymous "Comment deleted" marker so that their replies keep their place. If one of your posts was reported, the copy we were sent so that a person could review it may be kept with our moderation records.
• Chat names you used are kept after your account is deleted, only so that they are never given to anyone else. They are no longer linked to you.
• Your Apple, Google or Microsoft sign-in is deleted with your account, and if it was Apple, we tell Apple. That Apple, Google or Microsoft account can then sign in to a new Thoughtz account.
• To prevent abuse, when an App account is deleted we keep a record of its name, email address, the IP address it was deleted from, and any restriction that applied to it. That way the restriction can be applied again if the same person re-registers. We keep this record for two years. If a restriction applied to the account, we keep it for as long as the restriction needs to be enforced.
• Business and purchase records are kept for as long as the law requires us to keep financial records, which is usually five years.
• Security logs are kept only as long as they are needed.

12. Security

We protect personal information with encryption in transit, hashed passwords for business accounts, access controls, and two-step sign-in, which business accounts can turn on and our own staff accounts must use. App accounts have no password: you sign in with Apple, Google or Microsoft. No system is completely secure. If a data breach is likely to cause you serious harm, we will tell you and the regulator as the law requires.

13. Children

You must be at least 14 years old to use the App. If you are under 18, you need your parent's or guardian's permission. Discussions are only for people aged 16 or over. We apply that limit using the birth year you gave when you registered, and we do not otherwise check your age.

Adults only Surveys. A business can mark a Survey Adults only (18+). Only people signed in to a Thoughtz account whose birth year shows they are 18 or over can find, open or answer it, or see its results. Guests cannot. Because we keep only the year you were born, you can take part from 1 January of the year you turn 19, the first date on which you are certainly 18.

We do not knowingly collect information from children under 14. If you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.

14. Access, correction and complaints

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it. We do not charge for this. We will respond within 30 days.

If you have a privacy complaint, contact our Privacy Officer first (section 16). If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

15. If you are in the United Kingdom

If UK data protection law applies to you, Thoughtz Pty Ltd is the controller of your personal information.

Our lawful bases for using it are:

• contract, to provide the Platform to you;
• legitimate interests, for security, preventing abuse, content screening and producing aggregated results;
• legal obligation, for financial records;
• consent, for any marketing email; and
• explicit consent, for answers to a Survey that asks about special category information, such as your sex life or sexual orientation, health, political opinions or religious beliefs. You give it by finishing a Survey that told you beforehand what it asks (section 3.5). You can withdraw it by deleting your account. Answers already combined into results stay in them, but are no longer linked to you (section 11).

Your rights: you can ask to access, correct or erase your information, restrict or object to how we use it, or receive it in a portable form. You can object to any use based on legitimate interests. You can also ask a person to review a decision made automatically (section 6.2).

Transfers: your information is transferred to Australia and to our providers' locations (section 7). We rely on the safeguards or exceptions UK law allows for those transfers.

Complaints: you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

16. Contact us

Privacy Officer, Thoughtz Pty Ltd (ACN 626 307 177)
Level 1, 241 Adelaide St, Suite #1187, Brisbane QLD 4000
privacy@thoughtz.com

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will tell you by email or in the Platform before it takes effect. The effective date and version number at the top show which version applies.