Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

OmeBate (“OmeBate”, “we”, “us”, “our”) operates the debate platform at omebate.com. We are the data controller for personal information processed through this site. For privacy enquiries, contact privacy@omebate.com.

2. What we collect

• Account data: email address and optional profile details you provide when registering.
• Debate content: messages, arguments, topic choices, and reaction signals submitted during debates.
• Usage data: pages visited, features used, session duration, debate room metadata, and engagement signals.
• Technical data: IP address (hashed for anonymous users), browser type, device type, and error logs needed for security and reliability.
• Payment data:billing details processed directly by Stripe — we never store full card numbers.
• Consent records: your cookie consent choice and the timestamp it was recorded.

3. Why we collect it & our legal basis

Under the UK GDPR and EU GDPR we process personal data on the following legal bases:

• Contract performance (Art. 6(1)(b)): to create and operate your account and provide debate room services.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): to maintain security, prevent fraud and abuse, improve platform quality, send essential service emails, and analyse anonymised usage trends. We have assessed that these interests are not overridden by your rights.
• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)): for advertising cookies (Google AdSense) and, where required by law, for use of your content in third-party data licensing. You may withdraw consent at any time via privacy@omebate.com.
• Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)): where we are required to retain records by applicable law.

For California residents, these same purposes serve as the business purpose for collection under the CCPA/CPRA.

4. AI processing and automated decisions

Debate transcripts are sent to an AI model to generate verdicts. This is a core feature of the service. The verdict is an automated output and does not produce legal or binding effects. You may request human review of any AI output by contacting us, though reversal is at our discretion given the entertainment nature of the feature.

5. Advertising

When ads are enabled and you have consented, Google AdSense may process limited usage data to deliver and measure ads. Google acts as an independent data controller for its own ad systems. You can manage ad personalisation via Google Ads Settings or your browser's cookie controls.

6. Payments

Premium subscriptions are billed through Stripe, Inc. Stripe processes your payment card details as an independent data controller under its own privacy policy. We receive only non-sensitive billing confirmation (subscription status, last-four digits, expiry month/year).

7. Data sharing and third-party licensing

We do not sell your personal information (name, email, or other directly identifying data) to third parties.

We may share anonymised, aggregated, or pseudonymised datasets derived from platform usage (such as debate transcripts with account identifiers removed) with third parties including AI companies, research organisations, and commercial data partners for purposes such as AI model training, language research, and behavioural analytics.

If you object to your content being included in such datasets, you may opt out at any time by emailing privacy@omebate.com with the subject “Data licensing opt-out”. We will honour opt-outs for future sharing within 30 days.

We also share data with service providers acting on our behalf (e.g. Supabase for database hosting, Cloudflare for infrastructure) under data processing agreements that restrict them to acting on our instructions only.

8. International data transfers

OmeBate uses infrastructure hosted in the EU (Supabase, eu-west-1 region) and Cloudflare's global edge network. Where data is transferred outside the UK or European Economic Area we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission and the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) as appropriate safeguards.

9. How long we keep data

• Account data: for as long as your account is active, plus up to 90 days after deletion to resolve disputes.
• Debate content:indefinitely by default, as this forms part of the platform's public record. Deletion requests are honoured where technically feasible.
• Technical/security logs: up to 90 days.
• Billing records: 7 years, as required by tax and financial regulations.

10. Your rights

Depending on where you are located, you may have the following rights. To exercise any of them, email privacy@omebate.com. We will respond within 30 days (UK/EU GDPR) or 45 days (CCPA/CPRA).

• Access: request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction: ask us to correct inaccurate data.
• Erasure / Deletion: ask us to delete your personal data where there is no overriding legal reason to keep it.
• Restriction: ask us to pause processing while a dispute is resolved.
• Portability: receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format (UK/EU GDPR).
• Object: object to processing based on legitimate interests, including profiling.
• Withdraw consent: where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.
• Opt out of sale / sharing (CCPA/CPRA): California residents may opt out of the sharing of personal information for cross-contextual advertising by emailing us.
• Non-discrimination: exercising your privacy rights will not result in worse service or pricing.

11. Supervisory authority complaints

If you are in the UK, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

If you are in the EU, you may contact your national data protection authority. A list of EU supervisory authorities is available at edpb.europa.eu.

We would prefer the opportunity to address your concerns first, so please contact us before raising a complaint with a regulator.

12. Children

OmeBate is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal data, please contact privacy@omebate.com and we will delete it promptly. Users between 13 and 17 should use the service with parental awareness.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date above. Continued use of OmeBate after changes are posted constitutes acceptance, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

14. Contact

For any privacy enquiry, data subject request, or complaint, please email privacy@omebate.com.