Privacy Policy

We are committed to protecting your personal data and being transparent about how we use it.

Data Controller

The data controller responsible for your personal data is:

DirectPoll GmbH
Limmattalstrasse 29
8049 Zürich, Switzerland
info@directpoll.com

This Privacy Policy applies to all services provided through directpoll.com and related domains operated by DirectPoll.

Data We Collect

DirectPoll collects a minimal amount of data to operate the service:

  • Browsing information – IP addresses are anonymized. We cannot identify where you are from or link your usage to other data sources.
  • Poll data – information you enter on the platform, including the e-mail address of the poll creator. Voters do not need to provide any personal information unless the poll is restricted (in which case a token is required).
  • Purchase data – if you buy a paid product or feature from DirectPoll, we store the minimal information needed to provide it. For a DirectPoll Supporter status, that is the e-mail address you bought it for, the dates of your purchases and the date your status runs to, the payment provider’s order references (so that a repeated delivery of the same order cannot be counted twice), and – only if you choose to enter one – the name you want on your badge. That name is used for exactly one thing: drawing your badge. It is never used to address you, never shown anywhere else, and never given to anyone. The payment is handled by our payment provider (see Payments and Data Sharing below); we never receive or store your card or bank details.
  • Server logs – our servers keep operational logs of what the application does: technical events, errors, and the actions needed to run and fix the service. They are not analytics and are never used to profile you or sold to anyone. They normally contain no personal data, but an e-mail address can appear in a rare error record – for example when a payment cannot be matched to an order and somebody has to look into it by hand. These logs are rotated and permanently deleted after about ten weeks, so an incidental entry of that kind disappears with the rotation, including after you have had your data erased.

Cookies

Running a poll sets no cookies from our servers. The cookies the polling app uses are written by the voting page in your own browser: one records which questions you have already answered, so that reopening the page does not offer them again, and in a poll that requires a token a second remembers the token you entered. They belong to that one poll, they are readable only by DirectPoll, and they expire after a year. The result screen remembers your chosen theme in your browser’s local storage in the same way.

There are no advertising or profiling cookies, none belonging to a third party, and none that follow you to another site.

The marketing website and the polling app are counted the same way; we describe them separately because the app has a few counts of its own.

On the website (the pages describing DirectPoll, including this one) we count page views and link clicks with Matomo, an analytics tool we host ourselves at matomo.directpoll.com. We run it in cookieless mode: it sets nothing on your device, so it cannot recognize you on a later visit or follow you anywhere. The data stays on our server and is never sent to an advertising network or sold. This is also why you are not asked to accept cookies when you arrive: there is nothing to accept. See Why is there no cookie banner?

In the polling app – the cockpit, the voting page and the result screen – we use the same self-hosted Matomo in the same cookieless mode, for purely statistical counts: a page being opened, and a vote being cast. They tell us how many votes DirectPoll handles and nothing about who cast them: they set nothing on your device, carry no name and no address, and are never used to recognize you on a later visit, to profile you or to follow you anywhere. Three further counts are sent by our server, not by your browser: a poll being created, a poll being saved and a poll being conducted. Those carry no identifier at all: no poll, no address, no visitor.

Legal Basis for Processing

We process personal data on the following legal grounds:

  • Performance of a contract or pre-contractual actions at your request;
  • Your voluntary consent (e.g. by creating a poll and providing your e-mail address);
  • Compliance with a legal obligation; or
  • Our legitimate business interests in operating and improving the service, where these are not overridden by your interests or rights.

How We Use Your Data

We process personal data for the following purposes:

  • Managing the relationship between you and DirectPoll, and communicating with you about the service;
  • Providing, operating, and improving the service;
  • Sending service-related notifications, such as poll expiration reminders; and
  • Fulfilling legal obligations.

How We Contact You

DirectPoll sends four kinds of e-mail.

  • Your poll’s links – when you save a poll, or ask for them again from its cockpit.
  • An expiry notification – once, shortly before a poll you created is due to expire, so that it does not disappear without notice.
  • A deletion confirmation – only after you ask to have your polls deleted, because that request has to be confirmed from the address itself.
  • A reply – if you write to us.

That is the complete list. We send no newsletters, no product announcements, no offers, no other reminders, no surveys about our survey tool, and nothing at all to voters. There is no mailing list to be added to and none to unsubscribe from, because we do not keep one. We do not sell, rent or share your address with anyone for their own use.

This is deliberate. An address you gave us to run a poll is for running that poll, and quiet is a feature.

Payments and Data Sharing

We do not share your personal data with third parties for their own purposes. Disclosure occurs only when required by law or regulation, or when an authority or governmental body has issued a lawful order requiring disclosure.

If you buy any paid product or feature from DirectPoll (such as the DirectPoll Supporter badge), the payment is processed by our payment provider, Polar Software, Inc. ("Polar", polar.sh), which acts as the merchant of record for the transaction. Polar collects and processes the personal and payment data needed to complete your purchase, invoice you, and meet its own legal and tax obligations, under its own privacy policy. DirectPoll receives only the information needed to deliver what you bought (for a Supporter status, the e-mail address, the purchase date and the order reference); we never receive your card or bank details.

Data is stored and processed on servers located in Switzerland and within the European Economic Area.

Data Retention

Personal data is retained only for as long as it is necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected. A poll expires 30 days after its creation or last save; it is then archived and kept for a maximum of two years, after which it is permanently wiped from the system.

Data related to a paid product or feature is kept only as long as needed to provide it. A DirectPoll Supporter status runs for a year from your purchase, and buying again adds a further year to it. The supporter record we hold – your e-mail address, the purchase and expiry dates, the order references and your badge name if you gave one – is kept until two years after that status ends, and is then permanently removed. It is kept that long so that a lapsed supporter who comes back is recognized rather than treated as a stranger. You can have it erased sooner at any time (see Your Rights). The separate purchase and invoice records held by our payment provider, Polar, are retained by Polar for as long as its own legal and accounting obligations require, independently of DirectPoll.

Security

DirectPoll implements appropriate technical and organizational measures to prevent unauthorized or unlawful access to, and accidental loss or destruction of, personal data. All traffic between your device and our servers is encrypted using HTTPS. Please note that communications via unencrypted e-mail are not guaranteed to be secure.

Your Rights

You have the following rights regarding your personal data:

  • Access – you may request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
  • Correction – you may request that inaccurate data be corrected.
  • Erasure – you may request that your personal data be deleted.
  • Restriction – you may request that we restrict the processing of your data.
  • Portability – you may request your data in a machine-readable format.

From your poll's cockpit you can also request deletion of all polls created with your e-mail address; we then send a secure confirmation link to that address. Opening the link shows a page where you confirm the deletion and, if your e-mail is also stored as a supporter record, remove that record too. The separate purchase records held by Polar are retained by Polar under its own legal obligations and are outside DirectPoll's control.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at info@directpoll.com. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may file a complaint with the relevant data protection authority in your country of residence.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page. We encourage you to review this page periodically. Continued use of the service after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

Last updated: 2026. Questions? Contact info@directpoll.com.