Privacy Policy

Last updated 2026-10-01. This is the plain-language version and it is the only version. If something here is unclear, write to hello@washudiwa.com and we will fix the wording.

Who we are

Washudiwa is run by Lior Schinagel in Denver, Colorado. When a company is formed to run it, that company takes over this policy and nothing else changes.

What we collect

• Your email address, and your name if Apple or Google passes it to us when you sign in. We use the email to send you a sign-in code, to reply if you write to us, and to tell you when a party you joined has its picks. You can turn that last email off under You → Account + data.
• Your ratings, the titles you skipped, your watchlist, and your streaming services and country. City is optional and only if you enter it.
• The titles you mark as seen without rating them, and the ones you say you have seen but don't remember. If you tell us, roughly when you saw a title: recently, a while ago, or as a kid.
• If you link a Letterboxd account: the username you give us, the public ratings feed for that account, and any export file you upload. We do not ask for your Letterboxd password and cannot post to your account.
• If you refer a friend or join a watch party: who referred whom, and which group you joined.
• If you buy Premium: your plan and billing dates, and Stripe's customer and subscription ids. Stripe holds your card details; we never see the number.
• The lines you type into "In the mood for…" when you press Find it, and how we read them, kept for 90 days.
• Feedback you send, with the screen you sent it from and the app version.
• Usage data through PostHog: the screens you open, the buttons you tap, your device and browser type, and an approximate location from your IP address. This is how we learn which parts of Washudiwa work and which do not.
• Cookies: one for your session, one that remembers a beta password, and one that carries a referral or watch-party link until you have signed up.

How we use it

• To build your recommendations. Your ratings become pseudonymous rows in the taste graph and are compared with other people's. Nobody sees your username, your ratings or your watchlist. Other people may see how many profiles like theirs rated a title. In a watch party, the other members see your name and how closely your taste overlaps with theirs.
• To bill Premium, send sign-in codes and reply to feedback.
• To understand how the product is used, in aggregate, and to fix what breaks.
• To run the beta: which testers came through a password and which through a friend.

What we never do

We never sell your personal data. We never show ads. No film or show pays to appear in your recommendations. If we ever work with a partner, for example a streaming service that shows your recommendations inside its own app, it happens only with your permission, and we say so here first.

Who else handles your data

We use a small number of services to run Washudiwa, each under its own privacy terms: Neon (database), Vercel (hosting), Stripe (payments), Resend (email), PostHog (analytics), Apple and Google (sign-in). To fetch posters, runtimes and where a title is streaming we call TMDB and OMDb with title ids only, never with anything about you. The taste graph also includes three public ratings datasets (listed in the Terms); they contain no usernames and we add none. It also includes ratings published by named professional critics, from the CC0 Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic datasets on Kaggle, shown by name because their reviews are public. To read a line you type into "In the mood for…" we send it to TypeSafe, a language-understanding service, together with the names, years and languages of the titles you loved; to sort titles by tone and to tell which sequels stand alone, we send TypeSafe public title descriptions. Nothing we send TypeSafe carries your name, your email or your account. The lines you type are kept for 90 days, then deleted.

How long we keep it

As long as your account exists. Deleting your account from You → Account + data removes your account, ratings, watchlist, Letterboxd link and feedback. Rows copied into the taste graph are detached from you and are no longer used for matching. Analytics events already collected are kept in aggregate, without your account. Stripe keeps billing records for as long as tax law requires.

Your choices

• Delete your account any time, from You → Account + data.
• Unlink Letterboxd any time; we stop reading the feed.
• Turn off TV, change services, change your ratings.
• Turn off the email we send when a party you joined has its picks, under You → Account + data.
• Email us at hello@washudiwa.com to ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or to have it removed. We answer within 30 days.

Children

Washudiwa is for people 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger; if you think we have, tell us and we will delete it.

Security

Everything travels over TLS. Data is stored with the providers named above in the United States. We keep no card numbers. No system is perfectly secure; if something goes wrong with your data we will tell you.

Changes

When this policy changes we update the date at the top. If a change matters to you, we say so in the app before it takes effect.