How we handle your information.

Everything below is collected directly from you (or generated by your use of the service). We use it to run the service you signed up for: matching you with another member, scheduling the conversation, and improving how matches are made.

• Name and email — your account, sign-in links, and match notifications.
• City / location and age range — matching inputs (time zones, life-stage context).
• Political viewpoint — an optional matching input, treated as sensitive data (see the next section).
• Topics you care about and your free-text intro — used to pair you on a topic you both chose.
• Conversation feedback — your private post-conversation answers, used to improve future pairings.
• Calendar availability — only if you choose to connect a calendar. We read when you are free or busy (never the contents of your existing events) to suggest times that work, and we add, update, or remove the conversation event itself. See Connected calendars below.
• Attendance and technical data — whether a scheduled conversation happened, plus routine technical logs (IP address, browser type, errors) to keep the service secure and working.

The service exists to create conversations across difference, so we ask where you sit politically. We treat that answer as sensitive personal data and handle it under explicit consent: by choosing to place yourself on the scale at signup (or on your profile), you consent to our using that answer for the single purpose described here.

• It is used solely as a matching input to create balanced conversations between people who see things differently.
• It is never displayed to your conversation partner, your community’s organizers, or your sponsor organization — and never on any profile. Within the platform, only the operator’s matching screen can see it, solely to construct balanced rounds.
• Reporting to sponsor organizations is aggregate-only, with small-group suppression so no individual can be inferred from a small count.
• Providing it is optional. You can leave it blank (“prefer not to say”) and still use the service, and you can change or clear it at any time.

Conversations are not recorded, transcribed, or analyzed. The video call exists for the two of you, and what is said there stays between you. If that ever changes for an optional feature, it would happen only with fresh, specific consent from both participants — never by default.

Connecting a calendar is optional, and none of what follows happens unless you choose to connect one. When you connect a Google calendar, what we access from your Google Account is limited to this, and we use it only to run the scheduling you see in the product.

• What we read — your free/busy times, so we can suggest times that work for both of you, plus the connected account’s email address so we can show you which calendar is linked. We do not read the titles, guests, notes, or contents of your existing events.
• What we write — one event, for your scheduled conversation. We create it when the conversation is scheduled, update it if the time changes, and remove it if the conversation is canceled. We do not add, change, or delete anything else on your calendar.
• Who it is shared with — only Nylas, the provider that makes the connection work (see the sub-processor table below). Calendar data is never shared with your match, your community’s organizers, your sponsor organization, advertisers, or data brokers, and it is never sold.
• What we store — not your calendar password, and not your access tokens. Those stay with Nylas. We keep only a reference to the connection, the connected calendar’s email address, and the id of the event we created, so we can update or remove that event later.
• Turning it off — you can disconnect at any time from your profile. We revoke the connection at the provider and delete the connection reference and calendar email from your record. Any event already on your calendar is yours to keep or delete.

Our use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Calendar data is used only to provide the scheduling features described here. It is never used for advertising, and never transferred or sold for any other purpose.

We do not use Google Workspace APIs, or any data obtained through them, to develop, improve, or train generalized or non-personalized AI and/or ML models. The service does not use AI or machine-learning models to process Google user data at all, and Google user data is never transferred to any third-party AI service.

We use a small set of service providers to run the platform. Each processes data only to provide its service to us:

Sponsor organizations make the service available to their members; they do not operate it. Your community’s organizers administer membership and matching rounds, so they can see membership basics — your name, email, topics, and scheduling status — but never your political viewpoint, and never your individual feedback unless you choose to share it. The one exception is deliberate: at the end of a conversation you may write a single takeaway to be shared with the community, and choose whether it is credited to your first name or to “a member”. Write nothing and nothing is shared. The rest of the organization’s reporting is aggregate participation numbers (for example, how many members joined or completed conversations), with small groups suppressed. We do not sell personal information to anyone.

We hold deliberately little, and protect what we do hold:

• Traffic to the service runs over HTTPS, and the database is encrypted at rest by our hosting and database providers.
• There is no member password to steal. Signing in uses a one-time link sent to your email address, so we never store one.
• We do not hold your calendar credentials. Access tokens stay with our calendar provider; we keep only a reference to the connection.
• Access to member records is limited to the operator and, for membership administration, your own community’s organizers. Every administrative view is scoped to a single community, and your political viewpoint and individual feedback are excluded from what organizers can see.
• Conversations are not recorded, so there is no recording or transcript that could be exposed.
• Application errors are monitored so we can find and fix problems quickly.

No service can promise perfect security. If a breach ever affected your information, we would notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

We keep your information for as long as your membership is active. When you delete your account from your profile page, or ask us to (and we have verified the request came from you), we delete it: your profile, answers and sign-in go, and a conversation you had stays in your partner’s history with your name replaced by “a former member”.

Wherever you live, you can exercise all of the following — we apply the same standard to every member regardless of country:

• Access a copy of the information we hold about you.
• Correct anything that is wrong (most of it you can edit yourself on your profile).
• Delete your account and data, yourself from your profile page or by asking us.
• Export your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Object to or restrict processing — in particular, pausing matching from your preferences is exactly that: an objection to matching-based profiling, honored immediately and reversible whenever you like.
• Withdraw consent for anything consent-based (such as your political viewpoint or a connected calendar) at any time.

Deleting is on your profile page. To exercise any of the others, email privacy@betweenusforum.org. We will verify it is you before acting, and respond within a reasonable time.

The service is operated from the United States, and the providers above process data in the US. If you use the service from outside the US, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States.

The service is for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account.

If we make a material change, we will post the updated policy here with a new effective date and tell active members by email before it takes effect. Minor clarifications may be posted without notice.

The data controller for the platform is Comity Works, Inc. Questions, requests, or complaints: privacy@betweenusforum.org. You also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority.

BetweenUS Forum is an independent, member-built platform operated by Comity Works, Inc. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any sponsor organization (including YPO). YPO Democracy Group is a sponsoring organization — it hosts its community on the platform but does not operate the service. Views expressed in conversations are the participants’ own.

See also our Terms of Use.