Privacy policy

Effective September 26, 2026 · updated October 27, 2026

Vota is a voting system for organizations whose members are named: homeowner committees, neighborhood boards, schools, companies, boards of directors, cooperatives and the like. It works on the web, in the mobile and desktop apps, and inside Microsoft Teams. This policy explains what data we process, why, and what we do so that a secret ballot really is secret.

The most important thing first. In a secret poll, your organization can know that you took part, but never what you voted. That doesn't depend on a promise of ours or on a setting: the ballot is stored apart from the roll, in a place where no column carries your identity, and the permit that links them is deleted inside the same transaction that records the vote.

Who is responsible

Birdie Limitada, Santiago, Chile. For any question about this policy or about your data, write to contacto@birdie.cl.

What data we process

Identity. The name, photo and email address provided by the service you sign in with (Google, Apple or Microsoft). If you sign in with an email and password, we store only an irreversible derivative of your password (PBKDF2 with a per-user salt), never the password itself.
Membership. The organizations you belong to, your role in each one and, where applicable, the weight of your vote under the organization's rules.
Participation. That you voted in a poll, and when.
Ballots. The content of your vote, without your identity in secret polls.
Device. An identifier of your device to send you notifications, if you accept them.
Microsoft Teams. If you use Vota inside Teams: the object ID and tenant ID of your Microsoft work or school account, to link the Teams tab and notifications to your Vota account; and the conversation reference Teams provides when the app is installed, so the bot can write to your personal chat. We don't read your Teams messages, files or contacts.
Payments. If your organization buys a plan, we store which one, through which channel and until when, with the purchase identifier Polar, Apple or Google provides. Your card details go to whoever charges you; we never see them.
Technical logs. IP address and application errors, to run the service and prevent abuse.
App diagnostics. The phone and computer apps, and the website, report when they are opened and when an error or an unexpected close happens, with the app version, the operating system and the device model. This does not include your name, your email, your account or any device identifier, nor anything about how you vote.

How the secret ballot works

The data lives in two separate schemas of the database, and no key relates them. When you vote, everything happens in a single transaction: your participation is recorded, your ballot is stored with no owner, and the one-time permit that linked them is deleted. After that, the link exists nowhere and cannot be rebuilt, neither by your organization's administrators nor by us.

The ballot's time is rounded to five-minute blocks, while the roll keeps the exact time. Without that asymmetry, matching both lists by time would identify every voter.

Its honest limit: in a poll with very few people, the result alone can reveal a lot, and someone watching live traffic can correlate by time. Rounding makes that correlation harder; it doesn't eliminate it. We prefer to say so.

Open polls

When a poll is created as open, the vote is on the record by definition and the organization sees who voted what. The app warns you before you cast the ballot.

What we use the data for

To identify you and show you only what belongs to your organizations.
To record your participation and count the votes.
To let you know about new polls and upcoming deadlines, if you accept notifications.
To keep a record of who viewed results and the roll, which protects the members themselves.
To run the service, prevent abuse and comply with the law.

We don't sell data, we don't share it for advertising and we don't build profiles.

Who it is shared with

Your organization sees your name, your email and your participation. Never your vote in a secret poll.
Microsoft Azure hosts the service, in its Chile region, and receives the apps' diagnostics (Azure Application Insights).
Google, Apple and Microsoft take part only when you sign in, and to deliver push notifications.
Polar, Apple and Google Play process plan payments: Polar on the website, in Teams and on Windows, with the email and payment details you enter on its page; Apple and Google, with your store account. We send them the organization's identifier, to credit it with the plan, and Polar your email so you don't have to type it.
Microsoft Teams displays the Vota tab and delivers the bot's notifications. What travels in a Teams message is what's public about a poll —its title, how many people took part and when it closes—, never your ballot.

How long it is kept

Your account and identity data, for as long as you keep it active. Ballots and results, for as long as the organization keeps the poll, because they are the record of the decision made. Technical logs, up to ninety days. The Teams conversation reference is deleted when you uninstall the app.

Your rights

You can request access, correction, deletion or a copy of your data by writing to contacto@birdie.cl. We reply within thirty calendar days.

There is one thing we can't do, and it's better to say it here: we can't give you or delete your vote in a secret poll, because we don't know which one it is. It's the same property that protects your secrecy.

How to delete your account

In the app, under Account > Delete account. On the web, at vota.birdie.cl/cuenta. You don't need to write to us or wait for a reply.

Your name, photo, email addresses and phone numbers, passwords, second factor, passkeys, sessions and registered devices are deleted. It's immediate and cannot be undone.

Three things are not deleted, and it's worth knowing beforehand:

Your votes in secret polls. There is no link between your ballot and your account, so we can't find it to delete it. It's the same property that protects your secrecy.
Your participation and your name on the roll of the organizations where you voted. It's the organization's record and supports the minutes of decisions already made; without it, the count would no longer match the quorum. Your email and phone number are removed from it.
The record of who viewed results and the roll, which protects the other members. It stays with an identifier that no longer belongs to any account.

If you are the only person in charge of an organization where others take part, another owner has to be appointed first; otherwise nobody would be left to manage it.

Minors

Vota is designed for organizations of adults. If an organization includes children under fourteen, it is responsible for obtaining the consent of their parents or guardians.

Changes

If this policy changes in a relevant way, we'll let you know inside the app before the new version takes effect.