Privacy

Who is responsible

The data controller is Nazlı Üstünerciyas. You can reach us at iletisim@patiduel.com.

What we keep

• Account: your email address (for signing in) and the username you choose. If you sign up with email, your password is stored in a one-way encrypted (hashed) form that we can't read either. If you sign in with Google, Google also passes your name and profile photo address; these stay in the sign-in service and are never shown on the site.
• Cats: your cat's name, type, colour and city/district (optional), and the photos you upload. Photos are resized on your device before upload, and their location and camera data (EXIF) is removed.
• A street cat's neighbourhood: only for matching similar cats in the future. Nobody can see it and it is never shown on the site.
• Activity: your votes, photo likes, comments, friendships and messages.
• Meowfluencer hearts: when you leave a heart, a random ID cookie (pd_vid) is set on your device. That ID and your IP address are stored only in one-way hashed form, to stop the same person leaving hearts again and again.
• Guest votes: votes you give without signing in stay on your own device and move to your account when you sign in.
• Reports: the content you report, the reason you choose and any note you write. Only the moderation team sees them; the owner of the content cannot see who reported it.
• Notifications: if you turn on notifications, your device's browser subscription details are stored so we can send them.

Why we use it

• To create your account and let you sign in.
• To run the Cat of the Month duel (Cat of the Week if the period becomes weekly), the rankings and The Meowfluencer.
• To make friendships, comments and messages work.
• To prevent fake votes, spam and abuse; the banned-word filter and sending limits exist for this.
• To meet our legal obligations when there is a legal request.

The legal grounds are those in KVKK Article 5: processing that is necessary to provide the service (performance of a contract), legal obligations, and our legitimate interest in preventing abuse.

Who can see it

• Everyone: your username, your cats, photos, comments and the rankings. These are public.
• Only you: the individual votes you give. The total votes a cat receives appear in the rankings.
• Only the people involved: friend requests and messages.
• Nobody on the site can see your email address.

Message reviews

Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. The site owner (super administrator) can review the latest messages of a conversation only when a message in it has been reported, or when there is a suspicion of abuse or a legal request. Without a report, a written reason must be entered before the review. Other administrators cannot see messages.

When there is a legal request, information may be provided to the extent the law requires.

Every review is written to a log that cannot be deleted, recording who reviewed which conversation, when and why. Messages are never read for advertising or any other purpose.

Cookies

• Session cookies: keep you signed in until you sign out (up to 400 days).
• Language preference: remembers which language you view the site in.
• pd_vid: set only if you leave a Meowfluencer heart (explained above).

We do not use advertising, tracking or visitor analytics cookies.

Service providers and transfers abroad

• Supabase: database and sign-in service. Servers in Germany (Frankfurt).
• Cloudflare: photo storage and bot protection (Turnstile). Servers worldwide.
• Google: authentication, if you choose to sign in with Google.
• Resend: sending sign-up and password reset codes by email (your email address only). Servers in Ireland (EU).

To provide the platform's technical infrastructure, database, cyber security and cloud storage, your data is hosted on servers abroad (Supabase, Cloudflare and Resend infrastructure), with the necessary technical and administrative measures taken under KVKK Article 9.

These companies process data only on our behalf and to provide the service.

How long we keep it

• Your account details, cats, photos, comments and messages are kept for as long as your account is open.
• You can delete your account yourself at any time with the "Delete my account" link on your profile; this information is deleted right away and photo files within a day. Records we are legally required to keep (such as moderation logs) are kept for the legal period.
• Hashed Meowfluencer heart records are kept as the contest's history; they do not show who you are.
• The individual votes you give are deleted automatically 14 days after that period's duel closes. The total votes cats received and the rankings remain.
• Notifications are deleted automatically after 90 days.
• Files of photos you delete, or that are removed by moderation, are deleted from storage within a day.
• If your account is suspended, the duration and reason are kept as a moderation record.

Your rights

Under KVKK Article 11 you can ask to:

• Find out whether and which of your data is processed.
• Find out why it is processed and whether it is used for that purpose.
• Find out who it is transferred to, in Turkey or abroad.
• Have incomplete or wrong data corrected.
• Have your data deleted or destroyed.
• Have corrections and deletions passed on to third parties your data was transferred to.
• Object to a result against you that comes only from automated systems.
• Claim compensation if you suffered damage from unlawful processing.

How to ask

Write to iletisim@patiduel.com from the email address registered to your account. We reply free of charge within 30 days at the latest.

If this notice changes, the current version is published on this page.