Privacy notice

Who we are

KinRate is run by Tide Shift Investments (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2022/593153/07), based in Hermanus, Western Cape, South Africa. Tide Shift Investments (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for your personal information under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). For any privacy question or request, email hello@kinrate.com.

What we collect

• Your display name, and the email address or phone number on the invite we issued, if it has one.
• Your Telegram user id, your Telegram @username (if you have one) and, depending on how you joined, your Telegram first name, and the id of a Telegram group if your household links one.
• A language setting (for example en-ZA) on each account you link. Your Telegram link takes it from your invite, or en-ZA otherwise. If you join on the web form, the language you choose is stored with the email or phone number on your invite. We do not store the language code your Telegram app reports. KinRate replies in English.
• Household membership, consent status, ratings (with the message you sent to rate), and titles recommended in your household.
• Activity in your household room, such as what you asked, searched, looked up, and which picks were shown to you or tapped.
• Operational data such as whether a reply was sent, queued or failed, audit records and API logs.

Background taste profiles

Each night KinRate works out taste profiles from your household's ratings: what each member tends to like (for example genres and creators), how each member scores, where members agree or differ, and which titles your household rates together. These profiles are kept per household. They are used only to shape picks and “More like” suggestions for that household, and are never shown to or shared with other households.

Private by default

Your household's ratings stay with your household unless your household asks us to share; then they can also count in combined, anonymised data. A household can use KinRate without joining any combined score.

Your ratings and taste profiles are never used for ads.

Sharing a wider score

Sharing is off by default. Only if your household asks us to switch it on may its ratings count towards combined, anonymised scores. Taste profiles are never shared with other households. In future we may share or sell aggregated, anonymised rating data from households that have asked us to share, such as how well a title is rated across many households. We never sell data that identifies you, your household or your messages.

Children and family picks

KinRate can suggest family and kid-safe shows. When you ask for family or kids picks, KinRate filters suggestions using US age ratings from TMDB: a title rated R, NC-17, TV-MA or TV-14 is left out, PG-13 is also left out when you ask for kids picks, and a title with no known US rating is suggested only if TMDB lists it as Family or Kids. This is a guide only, and no filter is perfect. Parents and guardians decide what their children watch.

• KinRate is for adults 18 and over. We don't verify age.
• Children's ratings and taste profiles stay within their household. Taste profiles are never shared with other households, children's ratings are never shown to other households, and neither is used for ads. If a household asks us to switch on combined scores, its ratings, including children's, count only towards anonymised totals.
• The same rules for leaving a room and for deletion apply to children.
• Telegram's own age rules also apply.

How we use data

• To save and show your household's ratings and family scores.
• To answer your questions, suggest picks and build your household's taste profiles.
• To run invites, support, security, and abuse prevention.
• To produce combined scores, and in future aggregated, anonymised rating data that we may share or sell, only from households that have asked to share.
• To improve the product.

Who else processes data

Telegram carries the messages between you and KinRate. To look up a show or film, we send the title text to TMDB, and the title's IMDb id to OMDb and MDBList; we do not send them your name or Telegram id. When KinRate can't read a message on its own, and this step is switched on, it can send that message's text and a language code (such as en-ZA) to Anthropic to work out what you meant. It does not send your name, your Telegram id, or earlier messages. The website runs on Vercel. The API and its Postgres database run on Railway. If an invite has an email address, Postmark sends that invite. The message includes the name on the invite, the room name, the join link, and a Telegram link.

What KinRate is for

KinRate is for rating shows and films. We do not want households using KinRate to store or compare sensitive, regulated, harmful, or rights-affecting judgments.

• Health, medical, mental health, medication, supplement, or clinical decisions.
• Financial, investment, credit, insurance, tax, legal, immigration, or professional-advice topics.
• Politics, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or trade-union status.
• Rating or profiling children. (Family picks filtered by age rating are fine.)
• Dating, sexual content, adult services, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, weapons, or illegal activity.
• Employment, housing, lending, education access, eligibility, risk scoring, or other decisions affecting a person's rights or opportunities.
• Harassment, shaming, ranking people, blacklists, surveillance, or profiling that could harm a person or group.

How long we keep data

We keep your data until you ask us to delete it. Email hello@kinrate.com and we delete your ratings, history, taste profile, identities and account.

We also keep words you type, as follows.

• With a rating, we keep the message you sent. Asking us to delete your account removes it. Leaving a room does not.
• When you search, ask, or look up a title, we keep those words, tied to you in that room. Leaving the room removes them there. Asking us to delete your account removes them.
• When a question leads to a saved suggestion, we keep the message that led to it, tied to you. Asking us to delete your account removes it. Leaving a room does not.
• On Telegram, a title that does not match the catalogue is not saved as a show. Some other KinRate tools can save that typed title as a shared catalogue entry that is not tied to your account. Asking us to delete your account removes that entry when the only ratings, suggestions, questions, nudges, or message logs that point at it are yours. It stays if anything else still points at it, such as someone else's rating, suggestion, question, nudge, or message log. It also stays if the title only appears in the words of a message and no record points at the entry. Leaving a room does not remove it.
• We keep a log of messages we handle, including the message and how we read it. On Telegram, a message we could not read is stored as a code of those words, not of your phone number, so we cannot use that code to find the log. Leaving the room removes your logs there that carry your account id, or the phone number or Telegram id saved for your WhatsApp or Telegram chat, written exactly as saved. Leaving does not look for other ways of writing your number or for sender fields; only account deletion does that. Asking us to delete your account removes a log tied to your account, and a log with no account id when the sender is your phone number (with or without a plus, or with spaces or dashes), your Telegram id, your @username, or a sender field we stored. A log that only contains your name, or your number inside the message words, can stay.
• WhatsApp deliveries are stored as received. Telegram updates are not stored that way. Asking us to delete your account deletes a delivery that is only yours, or removes your parts when it also holds other people's messages. We match the sender, the WhatsApp id, the group-message author, and the delivery receipt, including a phone number written with a plus, as digits only, or with spaces or dashes. A delivery that does not carry one of those, or that only mentions you in the message words or a profile name, can stay. Leaving a room does not change them. Other people's messages that mention you are not searched or removed.
• A feedback note stored for your account is removed when you leave that room or ask us to delete your account. Telegram has no command that saves a feedback report.

After a deletion, we delete your account and your own messages and records, and rebuild household summaries immediately from the ratings of people who remain. Other people's messages that mention you are not searched or removed, and other members' own ratings and comments are not changed. Invites we issued to you have the name, email address and phone number removed. An invite that shows only a name stays if another member of the same room has the same name, in which case we can't tell whose it is. One note records the erasure: a random token that does not identify you, the time, the role of the person who carried it out, and counts of what was removed or changed. Our other audit records about your account stay, with your account id, email address, phone number, Telegram id and display name replaced by that erasure token. Free text in an audit record, such as a reason our team typed, an error message or a room name, is not searched and can still mention your name or number. A rating rate-limit record stores your account id, and a WhatsApp send record stores the phone number the message was sent to, even when that send record has no account id. Both are found, and those values are replaced by the erasure token. An automatic-reply record or a failed-send record does not store that phone number, so if it also has no account id it can stay. A display name can stay in an audit record that names no one else if another member of the same room has the same name, in which case we can't tell whose it is. A sign-up record that holds only an IP address may stay. Webhook records of your own messages are deleted, or your parts are removed when a record also holds other people's messages.

Your controls

• Send /undo to remove your latest rating in a room.
• When you send /leave, we remove your membership and taste profile in that room, and the drafts, nudges, sent-message records and activity log that are personal to you there. Ratings you saved stay with the household, keep counting in its scores and top list, and show as "former member" instead of your name. Your name and Telegram id stay on your account until you ask for deletion. Account deletion removes your ratings.
• You can ask for an export of your data.
• KinRate only messages you first to tell you that someone in your own household rated a title. It names that member, the title and the household scores, and goes to members of that household only. Nobody outside your household is told.

Contact

Tide Shift Investments (Pty) Ltd, Hermanus, Western Cape, South Africa.

For privacy requests (access, export, correction or deletion), email hello@kinrate.com.

If you are not happy with how we handled your request, you can complain to the Information Regulator, South Africa's authority under POPIA.