Terms of ServicePrivacy PolicyPrivacy by Design

PRIVACY AND ANONYMITY POLICY

Last updated: July 20, 2026

This Privacy and Anonymity Policy explains the procedure for the processing, storage, and deletion of technical data by the "Vector Test of Identity and Orientation" (VTIO) service (the copyright for which is registered in Ukraine under the name "Векторний Тест Ідентичності та Орієнтації «ВТІО»", hereinafter referred to as the "Service") when utilizing the website.

1.General Provisions

1.1. The Owner and Administrator of the Service is Oleh Volodymyrovych Tsulun (hereinafter referred to as the "Administration"). Given that the Service fundamentally does not collect or store personal data of Users, the Administration does not act as an owner (controller) of personal data within the definition of applicable legislation.
1.2. By using the Service (including clicking the "Start Test" button, submitting answers, or making a payment if paid features are integrated), the User expresses their full consent to the terms of this Policy.
1.3. In the event of disagreement with the terms of the Policy, the User is obliged to immediately cease all use of the Service.
1.4. This Policy has been developed taking into account the principles of the current legislation of Ukraine, in particular the Law of Ukraine "On Personal Data Protection" (in the context of data de-identification standards), as well as international standards in the field of privacy and digital data protection (Privacy by Design).

2.Principle of Absolute Privacy (Privacy by Design)

2.1. Ensuring user privacy is the primary priority of the Service. The platform is designed to completely exclude the collection of personal data: we fundamentally do not collect, process in persistent logs, or store information that can directly or indirectly identify your identity.

3.What is NOT Collected or Requested

Throughout the use of the Service, the following information is not collected, requested, or recorded in persistent logs:
- The User's first name, last name, age, contact phone numbers, or email addresses;
- Precise IP addresses and precise geolocation data;
- Marketing cookies or tracking pixels of social networks used for identity tracking.

4.Procedure for Processing and Storage of Technical Data

4.1. Temporary Technical Data and Local Storage (localStorage)At the moment of visiting the website, taking the test, and viewing results, the Service processes a limited set of technical data.The Service is based on the principle of minimalism and does not use advertising, marketing, or analytical cookies. All work with user state is built on the secure local storage of the browser (localStorage) and minimal technically necessary files:
- Browser Local Storage (localStorage) — client-side functionality:
  All active data of the testing process is stored exclusively on the User's device and is not transmitted to the server in the background. The following are stored in localStorage:
- - Draft of answers: intermediate responses to test questions to prevent their loss during an accidental page reload or network failure.
- - Result Identifiers (UUID): saved keys of completed or manually entered results to ensure the possibility of their re-opening by the User.
    ⏳ Retention Period and Management: Data in localStorage is stored locally on the User's device until manually deleted by the User (via browser settings or the 'Forget result and erase from server' function in the interface) or until the browser cache is cleared.
- Language cookie file: The only functional cookie file is set exclusively to remember the interface language (lang) selected by the User. It does not contain personal data, does not assign unique identifiers, and is not used to build a profile.
  Processing and logging of data on the server side are strictly divided into two levels:
- Web Server Level (Nginx) — protection and stability:
  To protect network infrastructure from DDoS attacks, detect failures, and prevent abuses, the web server maintains short-term system logging. The log files record: masked IP address, rounded time, request string, server response code, size of transmitted data, and User-Agent. Referrer source information (HTTP Referer) is not recorded in the log files.
  Anonymization and protection against fingerprinting: IP addresses are masked before being written to disk (without the last octet, e.g., 194.28.112.0), and the request time is forced to be rounded to 1 minute (without saving seconds and milliseconds), which excludes the possibility of timing attacks.
  ⏳ Retention Period: Web server logs are stored locally in isolated text files and are automatically and irreversibly deleted/overwritten after 7 days using the system log rotation mechanism (logrotate).
- Short-Term Database Level (Redis) — operational protection and telemetry:
  To monitor load and internal analytics, technical metrics are temporarily stored in the secure Redis storage:
- - Anti-spam protection (rate limiting): Masked IP addresses with the last octet completely removed (e.g., 194.28.112.0) are recorded in the database.
    ⏳ Retention Period: Automatically deleted after 25 hours via the built-in automatic session expiration mechanism (TTL).
- - Marketing telemetry (UX analysis): Technical activity metrics (clicks, scrolling, time on page) are processed to assess the convenience of the interface.
    ⏳ Retention Period: Automatically deleted after 48 hours via the built-in TTL mechanism.
    Under irreversible deletion within the framework of this Policy is understood the final destructive purging of records at the RAM level, associated disk snapshots of the database, and system log files upon expiration of the established terms. The specified temporary technical data are stored strictly isolated, are never linked to the User's answers, and do not allow the identification of a specific individual.
4.2. De-identified Test DataUpon completion of the test, only the biological sex, a matrix of responses (as numerical values), the date, the rounded completion time, the country, and the language are stored in the Service's database. This data is completely anonymous, collected for scientific analysis and optimization of algorithms.Real or masked IP addresses are never linked to the User's answers, and the answers themselves are stored architecturally isolated from the final calculation results. Answers are not linked to results, and results are not linked to answers. Technically, linking these arrays with the identity of a specific individual is impossible.
4.3. Storage of Test ResultsDe-identified calculation results and a random unique result identifier (UUID) are stored in the server database solely to allow the User to view them again. The result data is stored separately from the response matrix (clause 4.2), in an isolated table, and has no association with network addresses.They are automatically and irreversibly deleted 31 days after completing the test. The User has the right to request premature destruction of the data at any time by clicking the 'Forget result and erase from server' button in the results interface.
4.4. Long-term Website StatisticsAll long-term statistics of the Service's visits are stored exclusively in an aggregated (generalized) form as daily quantitative metrics. It does not contain timestamps or individual activity markers.
4.5. Research Activity and Algorithm ImprovementThe accumulated de-identified response matrices (clause 4.2) may be analyzed by the author of the Service both at the level of general statistics and as individual anonymous response profiles. This analysis is conducted solely for research purposes, scientific analysis, verification of the mathematical validity of the methodology, calibration of scales, detection of systematic errors, and increasing the accuracy of calculating identity and orientation vectors.

5.Public Commitment

5.1. The Service publicly pledges to maintain all collected technical data solely in a de-identified (anonymized) form and shall never, under any circumstances, attempt to reconstruct the identity of users or match them with real natural persons.

6.Data Processing Location and Security

6.1. Infrastructure Geography
- Server Location: All primary server capacities, relational databases, and information processing procedures of the Service are located on rented equipment of virtual private servers (VPS) within the European Union (EU).
- Jurisdiction: Equipment placement ensures compliance with basic European security standards for infrastructure and data protection.
6.2. Remote Administration and Access
- Communication Channel Security: Remote management of the server operating system, Nginx configuration files, and PostgreSQL and Redis databases is performed by the author of the Service exclusively through secure protocols (HTTPS/SSL, SSH tunnels).
- Cross-Monitoring Mode: During remote administration, no downloading, local saving, or persistent processing of anonymized response matrices and calculation results on the author's home devices takes place. Administrator work sessions occur in real time.
6.3. Logging and Backup Policy (Backups)To ensure fault tolerance, the Service splits backups into three independent levels:
1. Local Long-Term Database Backups:
  Encrypted archive copies of the DBMS, transferred to the author's local media to protect against catastrophic failures, contain only initially anonymized information: anonymized response matrices (clause 4.2), final calculation results and their isolated UUIDs (clause 4.3), and aggregated daily visit statistics. No component analysis, extraction, or post-processing of these is performed on the author's local devices.
2. Automatic Short-Term Full System Snapshots (VPS Snapshots):
  Created at the cloud provider level to protect infrastructure against system crashes. These snapshots "freeze" the entire server disk, which is why they may contain temporary technical data in Redis (masked IPs) and Nginx system error logs (error.log) which recorded real IP addresses at the moment of failure. These snapshots are completely isolated within the technical host perimeter and are irreversibly destroyed during the automatic rotation cycle of the provider (not more than 14–30 days).
3. Manual Server Archive Snapshots (Manual Snapshots):
  Created manually by the author of the Service at the hosting control panel level solely prior to major infrastructure changes, operating system updates, or database migrations to establish critical "restore points." By nature, they record a complete disk snapshot (including technical logs) and are stored in an isolated cloud perimeter until they lose technical relevance (deployment and successful testing of subsequent stable architectural software releases), after which they are subject to manual destruction. Their downloading, exporting, or processing on local home devices of the author is not performed.
6.4. Network Data Security Measures
- Encryption in Transit: All traffic between the User's browser and the Nginx web server is encrypted via TLS/SSL (HTTPS). This completely prevents interception of data by communication providers or third parties while taking the test.
- Separation and Multi-level Access Protection: Access to project management is strictly divided into two independent security perimeters:
- - Operating System and DBMS Level: Access to the server environment, Nginx configuration files, and PostgreSQL and Redis databases is limited and protected by multi-factor authentication mechanisms of the Service's author (use of cryptographic SSH keys secured with individual passphrases).
- - Cloud Infrastructure Level (Hosting): Access to virtual server management, manual and automatic system snapshots (VPS Snapshots) is isolated at the hosting provider platform level OVHCloud and protected according to the strict security standards and access control protocols of the European cloud operator.

7.Data Transfer to Third Parties

7.1. The Service does not sell, lease, or disclose de-identified technical data of Users to third-party commercial companies or advertising agencies.
7.2. Data transfer is possible only in the following limited cases:
- To Payment Providers (in the case of paid features activation): Upon making a payment, the User is redirected to secure pages of payment systems. The Service transmits exclusively the technical data required to conduct the payment (a random order identifier and payment amount) to the payment provider. The Service does not receive, process, or store the bank card details of the User.
- Legal Requirements: Only in response to official requests from state authorities of Ukraine, issued strictly in accordance with applicable legislation.

8.User Rights

Given that the Service operates on the principles of absolute anonymity, the scope and procedure for implementing User rights have specific technical conditions. The system architecture provides for a three-level division of access rights: for the result owner, for third-party viewers, and for aggregated statistics.Therefore, User rights are implemented as follows:
8.1 Full Management of Test Results (by original UUID): Generated calculated scores, scales, and diagrams are linked exclusively to the unique result identifier (UUID) and stored in the database for 31 days. The User has the right to fully control this data: copy the UUID manually to transfer it to other devices, enter it in the interface to restore access to their diagram, and also irreversibly delete the results from the database at any moment before the expiration of the one-month period by clicking the "Forget result and erase from server" button. The deletion and full control function is available only when validated via the author's localStorage or by manual entry of the original UUID.
8.2 Secure Public Viewing (Share Link Identifiers): To demonstrate the diagram to third parties, the Service generates separate, derivative shared access link identifiers that are associated with the result but hide the original UUID. The public link for sharing provides third-party users with access to the diagram exclusively in Read-Only mode. Acquaintances or third parties who follow such a link can view the results, but technically do not have the ability to delete, modify, or compromise the source record on the server.
8.3 Limitation on Extraction and Deletion of Raw Answers: Raw responses to individual questions, which are used to calculate global statistics and calibrate scales, are saved in the database in a completely aggregated and anonymized form. They are irreversibly disconnected from both the original result identifier (UUID) and public sharing links. Since this data technically cannot be matched with a specific natural person or with the UUID of the completed test, it is not subject to manual search, modification, or deletion upon request.
8.4 Withdrawal of Consent During Testing: The User retains the right to terminate the transit processing of their answers at any moment simply by closing the website before submitting the answer to the final question of the test. In this case, the session is terminated, and the intermediate answers are completely destroyed and are not written to the hard drives of the Service.

9.Amendments to the Privacy Policy

9.1. The Administration reserves the right to unilaterally update and amend this Policy when implementing new features or due to changes in legislation.
9.2. A new edition of the Policy shall become effective immediately upon its publication on this page. Users are advised to periodically check this page for changes.

Contact Information: For questions regarding privacy and technical data operations, you may contact the author at: support@vtio.org