Privacy

Who we are

Top5 (top5.global) is a site of collaborative rankings: each person makes their Top 5 of a topic, and together they make the ranking of each country and of the world.

Top5 is responsible for the data described here. For any question about your data, write to privacy@top5.global. We answer within 30 days.

What data we keep

If you vote without an account, we keep a cookie with a random identifier, so your Top 5 stays in that browser, and the country your IP comes from. We don't know who you are.

If you have an account, we keep:

• your email address;
• your display name: the one on your Google account or, if you sign in with a code, the part of your email before the @. You can change it whenever you want;
• your nationality: we suggest the country of your IP and you choose whichever you want;
• if you sign in with Google or Bluesky, the identifier of that account.

And what you do on Top5: your Top 5s (with their earlier versions), the texts you write as options, the topics you create, your comments and your votes on comments, the email addresses of the people you invite, who invited you, and who you follow.

If you vote in a session (a group that votes live, during a stream for example), we keep what you voted in each round and a fingerprint of your browser or account that doesn't say who you are. When the session ends we delete the votes: only the totals remain.

If you write in the Kick chat of a channel that uses a session, Kick sends us your messages from that chat. We look for the names of the options in them and keep which ones you named, with a fingerprint of your Kick user that doesn't say who you are; we don't keep the messages. When the session ends only each option's total remains.

We don't ask for or keep your photo, your date of birth, your phone number or your contacts.

Your IP address

We use your IP at that moment for two things: to know which country you're visiting from, with a database that lives on our own server (we don't ask anyone else), and to stop anyone making too many requests.

We don't store it, except when you ask for a sign-in code: then it's kept with your email to limit requests, and it's deleted after 24 hours.

What we use it for

• To make the site work: your session, your votes, your profile and your sign-in code.
• To calculate the rankings of each country and of the world, and the names each country uses for the options.
• To protect the site from cheating and abuse.
• To know how many people use it, with totals that don't identify anyone.

Nothing else. We don't run ads, we don't sell or rent data, we don't build profiles for others and no machine makes decisions about you.

What is public

Anyone can see your profile and what you publish on Top5:

• your name, your nationality, your member number, since when you've been a member and who invited you;
• the changes you made to your name and nationality: they stay visible so nobody can inflate another country's ranking unnoticed;
• your Top 5s, except the ones you mark as private: those count in the ranking but don't show on your profile;
• your comments.

If you're on the waitlist, members see your name, your country and your place in line.

Who you follow isn't public either: only you can see it, and each member sees how many people follow them, but not who. Your email is not public. Only the person who invited you (because they typed it) and the people who run Top5 can see it.

Who we share data with

We use a few outside services to run Top5. Each one gets only what it needs:

• DigitalOcean: the server where Top5 and its backups live.
• SMTP2GO: sends the email with your sign-in code. It gets your email address and the code.
• Google: only if you choose to sign in with Google. It gives us your name, your email and your identifier, and Google knows you signed in to Top5. We don't ask it for anything else.
• Bluesky: only if you choose to sign in with Bluesky. It gives us your handle, your name, your email (you can only sign in if you confirmed it on Bluesky) and your identifier. We don't keep access to your Bluesky account: the permission is revoked as soon as you're in.
• Kick: if a channel uses a Kick chat session, Kick sends us the messages from that chat. We don't send it anything about you.
• Plausible: counts visits, on a server of our own that doesn't pass the data on to anyone. It uses no cookies, doesn't store your IP and only gives totals.

We don't share data with anyone else, unless a law or a court requires us to.

Cookies

We only use the cookies the site needs to work. There are no advertising or third-party cookies, which is why we don't show you a cookie banner.

• top5_session: your session, while you're signed in (30 days).
• top5_anon: your Top 5 if you vote without an account (2 years, or until you sign in).
• top5_lang: the language you chose (2 years).
• top5_code, top5_flow and top5_bsky: a sign-in in progress, with a code, Google or Bluesky (10 minutes).
• top5_live_voter: to count one vote per browser in a session (1 day).

The browser also keeps a random identifier (top5_visitor) to count how many people are viewing a topic. Our server forgets it after a minute.

How long we keep it

• Your account data, for as long as you have the account.
• Sessions, 30 days: then they're deleted.
• Sign-in codes, together with the email and the IP, 24 hours.
• An invitation nobody used is deleted after 14 days, with the invited email.
• Backups, 14 days on our server and up to 4 weeks in the provider's.
• A session's votes, until it ends (or after 30 minutes without activity); then only the totals remain.

Your rights

Everyone gets the same rights, wherever they live:

• See and correct your data: your name and nationality can be changed from your profile.
• Download your data: write to privacy@top5.global and we'll send you a file with everything we keep about you, within 30 days.
• Delete your account: from your profile, right away. We delete your email, your name, your history, your Top 5s, your comments, your invitations and who you followed, and the rankings are recalculated without your votes. It disappears from backups within 4 weeks at most.
• Ask, object to any use, or request anything else: write to privacy@top5.global.

If you think we're not taking proper care of your data, you can complain to the authority in your country: for example, the Agencia de Acceso a la Información Pública in Argentina, your country's data protection authority in the European Union, or the ANPD in Brazil.

Minimum age

You must be at least 16 to have a Top5 account. If we find out an account belongs to someone younger, we delete it.

Security

All traffic is encrypted (HTTPS). We don't use passwords: for your sessions and codes we keep only a fingerprint that can't be used to sign in. The admin panel requires a passkey on top of the email.

If there's ever a breach that affects you, we'll tell you by email and explain it here.

One site for the whole world

Top5 is used in many countries and has one policy for everyone. The server is in New York (United States), as are several of the services above, so your data may be processed outside your country.

If a country where Top5 is used requires something specific, we add it to this page and it shows up in the history of changes.

Changes to this policy

Every change has a date and a version number, and at the very bottom you'll find what changed in each section. If a change is important (for example, if we're going to use your data for something new), we'll let you know on the site before it takes effect.

This page is available in several languages. If a translation says something different, the Spanish version prevails.