Privacy Policy

This is a plain-language starter policy and not legal advice. It explains how openmog (“we”) handles your information when you use the Service.

The short version

• We collect only what we need to run your account and the Service. Nothing is sold to advertisers.
• Posts are public; “anonymous” hides your handle from other users, not from us.
• Every post, reply, sealed payload, and image, video or audio file attached to one is screened automatically before it is published, as are images sent in chat. The screening provider keeps none of it.
• You can access or delete your data, and ask us to delete your account, at any time.
• Chats are person to person. Messages are visible to both participants; anonymous chats hide your handle from the other person, not from us.
• We never see or store your card number. Payments run through Stripe. What we keep is the amount, the status, and Stripe’s reference numbers.
• Who backed, bonded, or revealed a post is not shown publicly. Totals and the backer count are.

Information we collect

• Account information. When you sign in with Google or email, we receive identifiers like your email address and basic profile details, plus the handle and profile you create.
• Content you provide. The posts and replies you share, the media you upload, your likes, your chat messages, reports you submit, any avatar or banner you upload, who you follow, who you have blocked, your bookmarks, and your recent searches.
• Money activity. If you back, bond, or pay to reveal a sealed post, or earn and withdraw money, we record what happened: amounts, the posts involved, the status of each hold, charge, release, refund, credit, and withdrawal, and the reference ids Stripe gives us. See Payments below for what we deliberately do not hold.
• Usage and device data. Log data such as IP address, browser type, pages viewed, and timestamps, used for security, debugging, and improving the Service.
• Cookies and local storage. See Cookies below.

How we use your information

• To operate the feed, likes, replies, search, and chat.
• To screen every post, reply, sealed payload, and attached image, video or audio file for safety before it is published.
• To run sealed posts: placing and releasing holds, charging, refunding, tracking what you are owed, and paying it out.
• To create and secure your account and prevent abuse, spam, and manipulation.
• To moderate content and enforce our Content Guidelines and Terms.
• To analyze and improve the Service, and to communicate with you about it.

Service providers we share data with

We don’t sell your personal information. We share it only with vendors that help us run openmog, under contracts that limit their use of it:

• Our infrastructure provider: authentication, database, and file storage (for example, your account and avatar).
• Sightengine (automated content-safety screening; content is deleted immediately after processing and never used for training).
• Stripe: processes payments, holds, refunds, and payouts, and runs the identity checks required to pay you. See Payments below.
• Google: authenticates you if you choose Google sign-in.
• PostHog (product analytics and session replay: how pages are used, and recordings of interactions in the app, sent through our own domain).

We may also disclose information when required by law, to protect rights and safety, or as part of a business transfer.

Public content and anonymity

openmog is a public platform, so the posts and replies you share are visible to others. Posting anonymously hides your handle from other users, but the content is still public and remains linked to your account internally for safety and moderation. Deleting a post removes it from the feed, from your profile and from search. We keep the underlying record, flagged as deleted, for moderation and dispute purposes rather than erasing it immediately.

A sealed post is a special case. Its teaser is public from the start, while the sealed media stays in private storage. If a crowdfund reaches its goal, that media is published and becomes as public as any other post, permanently. If it stays sealed, it is never published. Pay-to-reveal media is never made public: it is delivered to each person who paid, through links that expire and are re-issued each time they view it.

Payments, and what Stripe handles

Money on openmog runs through Stripe. The split of responsibility is deliberate and worth stating plainly.

• What never reaches us. Card fields on openmog are Stripe’s own, rendered by Stripe inside our pages, and the details you type go straight to Stripe. We never receive, see, or store your card number, expiry, or security code. The same is true of everything payouts need: your bank details and any identity documents are collected by Stripe in its own hosted flow. We never see them.
• What we keep. A Stripe customer id for you, and, if you set up payouts, your Stripe account id and whether payouts are enabled on it. Alongside that we keep the record of the activity itself: amounts, statuses, the posts involved, and Stripe’s reference numbers for each payment, refund, and transfer. When the withdrawal screen shows your bank name and the last four digits of your account, we are reading that from Stripe at that moment, not storing it.
• What Stripe does with it. Stripe is an independent controller of the data it collects and uses it under its own privacy policy, including for fraud prevention and the legal checks it must run before paying anyone. Stripe sends your payment receipts to your account email. If you set up payouts you also enter an agreement with Stripe directly. See Stripe’s privacy policy.
• What other people see. A sealed post shows public totals: how much has been backed, how much is bonded, and how many backers there are. It does not show who they are. Your own stakes, credits, and withdrawals are visible only to you on your balance page. Creators are told the amount when someone backs, bonds, or reveals their post, not who did it.
• Disputes. If a card payment is disputed, we record the dispute, the charge it belongs to and the evidence from our own records, and payments and payouts on that account pause until the dispute closes.

Chats

Chats on openmog are between people. Every message you send is visible to the other participant, and both of you can read the full conversation. Chatting anonymously hides your handle from the other person, not from us: the chat remains linked to your account internally for safety and moderation. Chat messages are not public and are not shown in the feed or in search.

Automated safety screening

Every post, reply, sealed payload, and attached file (text, images, video, and audio) is screened automatically before it is published, sealed, or sold. The screening is done by Sightengine, a purpose-built content-safety classifier. It receives the content only to screen it, deletes it immediately after processing, and never uses it for training. Nothing sealed is published or can take money until it passes: if the screening service is unavailable, sealing is blocked rather than allowed through. Ordinary posts and replies are not held back during an outage; they can publish unscreened, and reports and human review are the backstop. Screening is automated and not a guarantee, so we also rely on your reports and on human review.

Cookies and local storage

We use cookies and your browser’s local storage for a small number of purposes:

• Essential: sign-in sessions and security (handled by our authentication provider). Disabling these breaks the ability to log in.
• Preferences: remembering UI choices, stored locally in your browser.
• Analytics: PostHog stores a random identifier and session state in cookies and local storage on our own domain, so it can tell visits apart and record session replays. To opt out on a browser, open any openmog page with ?ph_optout=1 added to the address; the choice is saved in that browser and stops all capture there, and ?ph_optin=1 reverses it.

We do not currently use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. You can clear or block cookies in your browser settings, with the trade-off that essential features may stop working.

Data retention

We keep your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service, and afterward only as required for legal, security, backup, or dispute-resolution purposes. Public posts remain until you or we remove them.

Money records are the exception. Records of payments, refunds, credits, and payouts are financial records, and we keep them after an account is deleted for as long as tax, accounting, anti-fraud, and dispute rules require. A sealed post that funded, or that someone paid to reveal, also stays on the Service: people paid for it, so it cannot be taken down afterward.

Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live (for example under GDPR or CCPA/CPRA), you may have the right to access, delete, export, or restrict use of your personal information, and to object to certain processing. You can edit your profile and delete posts in the app. In the app you can also choose who may message you (everyone, people you follow, or no one), block accounts, and post or chat anonymously. To delete your account, or to exercise any of these rights, email support@openmog.comand we will handle it. We won’t discriminate against you for asking.

Two limits worth knowing. We cannot delete financial records we are required to keep, and we cannot delete data held by Stripe on its own account. For that, contact Stripe. If you have money in flight or an unwithdrawn balance, say so when you ask us to delete your account.

Children

openmog isn’t directed to children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has given us data, contact us and we’ll remove it. Anything involving money is limited to people 18 and over, as our Terms explain.

International transfers

We and our providers may process your information in countries other than yours, including the United States. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for these transfers.

Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, so we can’t guarantee absolute security.

Changes

We may update this policy as openmog evolves. If changes are material, we’ll take reasonable steps to notify you. The “last updated” date above always reflects the current version.

Contact

Questions or requests about your privacy? Email privacy@openmog.com. See also our Terms of Service.