Privacy Policy
UCultured — ucultured.volynska.dev
Effective date: April 2, 2026 · Last reviewed: April 2, 2026
1. Introduction
UCultured operates ucultured.volynska.dev, a community-driven cultural platform where locals and diaspora nominate the books, music, and art that define their country's culture. This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, store, and protect your personal information, and explains the rights available to you under applicable law, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for users in the European Economic Area.
By using UCultured, you agree to the practices described in this Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the platform.
2. Data Controller
The data controller responsible for your personal information is:
For all privacy-related requests or questions, including requests to exercise your data rights, please contact us at the address above.
3. Information We Collect
3.1 Account and Profile Information
When you create an account, we collect the following:
- Email address and encrypted password, or Google account credentials if you choose to sign in via Google OAuth
- First and last name (used internally for moderation purposes only — never displayed publicly)
- Public nickname (the name displayed on your profile and nominations)
- Pronouns (optional, visible to other users)
- Birth country and current country of residence (used to verify eligibility to nominate cultural content for a given country)
- Cultural affinity — your self-reported area of expertise (Books, Music, Visual Art, or Other)
- Cultural background summary — an optional personal statement about your connection to your culture, displayed on your public profile
3.2 User-Generated Content
When you participate in the platform, we store:
- Cultural nominations including title, creator name, category, context notes, genre tags, cover images, and external links
- Upvotes on other users' nominations
- Comments posted on entries
- Feedback submitted through the platform's feedback form
3.3 Automatically Collected Data
- Usage analytics — We use PostHog to understand how people interact with UCultured. PostHog collects page views, feature events, browser type, device type, and approximate geographic location. A device identifier is stored in your browser's localStorage to provide continuity across sessions.
- Performance metrics — Vercel Analytics collects anonymous technical data including page load times and web vitals. This data is not tied to individual user accounts.
- Session cookies — Supabase, our authentication infrastructure provider, sets cookies strictly necessary to maintain your authenticated session. These cannot be disabled without signing out.
3.4 Referral Data
Each registered user receives a unique invite code. When a new user registers via your invite code, we record this relationship to support community growth tracking.
4. Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)
For users in the European Economic Area, we rely on the following legal bases:
| Processing Activity | Legal Basis |
|---|---|
| Account creation and authentication | Contractual necessity (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Displaying your public profile and nominations | Contractual necessity (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Sending transactional emails (welcome, account notifications) | Contractual necessity (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Product analytics via PostHog | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — understanding usage to improve the platform |
| Performance monitoring via Vercel | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Content moderation | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — maintaining a safe and accurate platform |
You may object to processing based on legitimate interests at any time by contacting us at tanya@volynska.dev.
5. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect for the following purposes:
- To operate the platform — creating your profile, displaying your nominations and contributions on the map, and enabling community interaction
- To enforce eligibility rules — verifying that nominations are made by users with a genuine connection to the relevant country
- To communicate with you — sending a welcome email following registration and essential service notifications via Resend
- To improve the platform — analyzing aggregated, anonymized usage patterns through PostHog and Vercel Analytics
- To moderate content — reviewing nominations, comments, and user feedback to maintain community standards and platform accuracy
- To prevent abuse — detecting and addressing behavior that violates our Community Guidelines
6. Third-Party Services
We share data only with the services required to operate UCultured. We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to any third party.
| Service | Purpose | Data Shared |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Authentication and database infrastructure | Account credentials, profile data, all user-generated content |
| Google OAuth | Optional social sign-in | Email address and name, only if you choose Google sign-in |
| PostHog | Product analytics | Page views, feature events, device and browser information |
| Vercel | Hosting and performance monitoring | Anonymous web performance metrics |
| Resend | Transactional email delivery | Email address, first name, birth country |
Each third-party provider is bound by their own privacy commitments and applicable data protection law. We encourage you to review their respective privacy policies.
7. Cookies and Local Storage
Essential cookies — Supabase authentication cookies are strictly necessary to maintain your session while signed in. These are set automatically and cannot be disabled without terminating your session.
Analytics storage — PostHog stores a device identifier in your browser's localStorage to track usage patterns across sessions. This is not a cookie and is not transmitted unless you interact with the platform. You may clear this at any time through your browser or device settings.
We do not use advertising cookies or tracking pixels of any kind.
8. Data Retention
We retain account and profile data for as long as your account remains active. User-generated content, including nominations, upvotes, and comments, remains on the platform unless you request deletion or it is removed by a moderator in accordance with our Community Guidelines.
Analytics data is retained according to the default retention policies of PostHog and Vercel, which we have configured to the shortest practical period.
Upon account deletion, we will remove your personal profile information within 30 days. Some anonymized content contributions may be retained where removal would materially degrade the platform for other users.
9. Your Rights
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the following rights with respect to your personal data:
- Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- Rectification — request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information
- Erasure — request deletion of your account and associated personal data
- Restriction — request that we limit the processing of your data in certain circumstances
- Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
- Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests
EEA residents — In addition to the above, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority if you believe we have not handled your data in accordance with the GDPR. A list of EEA supervisory authorities is available at edpb.europa.eu.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at tanya@volynska.dev. We will respond within 30 days.
10. Security
We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your data, including HTTPS encryption for all data in transit, secure authentication managed by Supabase, role-based access controls limiting administrative access to authorized personnel, and regular review of third-party service providers.
No system is entirely immune to risk. In the event of a data breach that affects your rights, we will notify affected users and relevant authorities in accordance with applicable law.
11. International Data Transfers
UCultured's infrastructure is hosted on servers located in the European Union (Supabase EU region, Vercel EU edge network). Some third-party providers, including PostHog, may process data outside the EEA. Where this occurs, we rely on approved transfer mechanisms including Standard Contractual Clauses to ensure adequate protection.
12. Editorial Policy — Country Availability
UCultured exercises editorial discretion over which countries are represented on the platform. Certain countries may be restricted or excluded based on the platform's values and policies. This is an editorial decision and does not affect how we collect or process personal data from users in those jurisdictions.
13. Children's Privacy
UCultured is not directed at individuals under the age of 13 and does not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe that a child has registered on the platform, please contact us at tanya@volynska.dev and we will promptly delete the relevant account and associated data.
14. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to our practices or applicable law. When material changes are made, we will revise the effective date at the top of this page. For significant changes, we will notify registered users by email. We encourage you to review this page periodically.
15. Contact
For any questions, concerns, or requests relating to this Privacy Policy or your personal data, please contact: