Privacy Policy

Last updated: 17 July 2026

Zero Debate is a text-only debate app. This policy explains exactly what we collect, why, who else sees it, and how to get rid of it. We have written it in plain English and kept it specific — where we do not collect something, we say so.

1. Who we are

Zero Debate ("Zero Debate", "we", "us") is operated by Abhishek Awasthi, a sole proprietor based in India, trading as Zero Debate. For the purposes of India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ("DPDP Act"), we are the Data Fiduciary for the personal data described here.

You can reach us about anything in this policy at contact@zerodebate.com.

2. What we collect

We collect only what the app needs to work. There is no data broker relationship, and we do not buy personal data about you from anyone.

Account and identity

• If you sign in with a phone number: your phone number, and a one-time passcode which we store only as a cryptographic hash.
• If you sign in with Google: your Google account identifier, email address, display name and profile picture, as released to us by Google when you approve the sign-in.
• A username, which you choose and which is visible to other users.

Profile you fill in

• First and last name, bio, profile photo, occupation and education.
• Preferred languages and topic interests.
• Political preference. This one deserves a flag: it is optional, it reveals a political opinion, and it is shown on your profile by default. You can hide it or leave it blank at any time in Settings. Under the DPDP Act and comparable laws elsewhere, treat this as sensitive information about yourself and share it deliberately.

What you write

• Your debate arguments (turns), including in unfinished debates.
• Audience chat messages, comments and replies on debate results.
• Challenge messages, showcase captions, and topics you submit.
• Reports you file and feedback you send us, including any text you add.

If you report someone, we store a snapshot of the content you reported so the report still makes sense after that content is edited or removed. That snapshot contains the other person's content and account identifier.

How you use the app

• Which debate cards you swiped and in which direction.
• How long you watched a debate, and replay view counts.
• When you were last active, and your debate record (wins, losses, draws, civility and ratings derived from other users' input).

Device and technical

• A push notification token and the platform it belongs to (Android, iOS or web), if you allow notifications.
• Your IP address, which reaches our servers with every request. We use it to rate-limit abuse and it appears in short-lived server logs. We do not store IP addresses in our database — there is no column for them.

If you join the waitlist

The email address you type into the waitlist form on our website, and the referring page. Nothing else.

3. What we don't collect

These are worth stating plainly, because a lot of apps in this category do collect them and we do not:

• No location data. No GPS, no location permission, no IP-based geolocation lookups. The app requests no location permission at all.
• No advertising identifier and no ads. There is no ad network, no ad SDK, and no attribution or install-tracking SDK in the app.
• No third-party analytics or crash-reporting. No Google Analytics, Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics, Sentry, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Segment or similar — in the app or on this website. Usage statistics are calculated in our own database and never leave it.
• No contacts, camera, microphone, photos-library or calendar access. Zero Debate is text-only by design; there is no voice or video anywhere in it.
• No behavioural profiling for advertising, and no sale of personal data. We do not sell, rent or trade your personal data. Ever.

4. Why we use it

Our legal bases, where a law such as the GDPR applies to you: performing our contract with you (running the app), your consent (notifications, optional profile fields), and our legitimate interests (safety, abuse prevention, keeping the service working).

5. Who we share it with

We use a small number of service providers, and nothing else:

Google (Firebase Authentication and Firebase Cloud Messaging)

Firebase Authentication verifies your Google sign-in. Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers push notifications, which means Google receives your device push token and the text of the notification — and notification text often contains another user's username and a debate topic, for example "@someone challenged you". If that matters to you, turn notifications off in Settings or in your device settings.

Object storage (profile pictures)

If you sign in with Google, your profile picture is the image URL Google gives us, hosted by Google. If you upload your own picture, it is stored in an S3-compatible object-storage bucket (Cloudflare R2). Uploaded avatar images are served from a public URL and are readable by anyone who has that URL, without signing in — so do not upload a photo you would not want to be publicly reachable.

Our AI provider (debate scoring and summaries)

When AI scoring is enabled for a finished debate, we send the debate topic and the full text of the debate transcript to a third-party AI provider (Anthropic, with OpenAI as a possible fallback) to generate a scorecard and summary.

Debaters are identified in that transcript by internal account IDs only — we do not send your username, real name, phone number, email address or profile. Audience chat, comments and profile fields are not sent. We do not permit our AI providers to use your content to train their models.

Other disclosures

We may disclose personal data if we are legally required to, or where necessary to investigate abuse, fraud, or threats to someone's safety. If our service is ever transferred to another operator, we will tell you before your data moves.

6. What other people can see

• Debates are public to signed-in users by default. Your arguments, your side, the result, the audience vote and the AI scorecard are visible to other Zero Debate users, and stay visible after the debate ends as part of the replay. There is currently no fully private debate mode.
• Your profile — username, name, photo, bio, occupation, education, stats, and political preference unless you hide it — is visible to signed-in users.
• Your avatar image is publicly reachable by URL, as described above.
• Share links you generate contain the debate or profile identifier and the debate topic, and travel through whichever app you share them with.
• Write as if it is on the record, because it is. Deleting your account does not retract arguments you made inside someone else's debate — see the next section.

7. Retention and deletion

We keep your personal data for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete account in the app, or by following the instructions at zerodebate.abhishekawasthi.in/delete-account.

What happens when you request deletion:

1. Your push notification tokens are deleted and your active sessions are revoked immediately. Notifications stop right away.
2. Your account enters a 30-day grace period. Nothing has been erased yet, so if you change your mind, email contact@zerodebate.com within those 30 days and we will restore the account.
3. After 30 days the account is permanently anonymised. We irreversibly erase your phone number, email address, Google identifier, name, bio, profile photo, occupation, education, political preference, interests, languages, notification settings, swipe history, notifications, follows and blocks. Your username is replaced with an anonymous placeholder. This cannot be undone.

We also keep moderation records (reports, and enforcement actions such as bans) where we need them to keep the service safe and to stop a banned user simply creating a new account. Server logs containing IP addresses are short-lived.

8. Your rights

Whoever and wherever you are, you can ask us to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct anything wrong — most of it you can edit yourself in the app.
• Erase your account, as described above.
• Withdraw consent — for example by turning off notifications, or clearing optional profile fields.
• Complain to us, and then to a regulator if we have not put it right.

If you are in India, the DPDP Act gives you these rights and the right to nominate someone to exercise them on your behalf; you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India. If you are in the UK, EEA or another region with comparable law, you have equivalent rights including data portability and the right to complain to your local supervisory authority.

Email contact@zerodebate.com and we will respond within 30 days. We may need to verify that the request really comes from you.

9. Age requirement

You must be 18 or older to use Zero Debate. The service is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18.

If you believe someone under 18 is using Zero Debate, tell us at contact@zerodebate.com and we will close the account and delete the data.

10. Security

What we actually do, stated without exaggeration:

• All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted with TLS (HTTPS).
• One-time passcodes are stored only as bcrypt hashes, never in plain text.
• Session refresh tokens are stored as HMAC-SHA256 hashes and are rotated and revocable.
• Rate limiting on sign-in and other sensitive endpoints, to blunt brute-force and spam.
• Administrative access is separately authenticated, role-restricted, supports two-factor authentication, and is audit-logged.
• Reporting, blocking and a banned-word filter for user safety. To be precise: that filter is a word list, not an AI classifier.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If you find a vulnerability, please report it to contact@zerodebate.com rather than disclosing it publicly, and we will work with you on it.

11. International transfers

Our servers are hosted on Google Cloud Platform. Our service providers (Google, Cloudflare, our AI provider) operate globally, so your personal data may be processed outside your country, including in the United States. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

12. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and for significant changes we will notify you in the app before they take effect. Continuing to use Zero Debate after a change means you accept the updated policy.

13. Grievance officer

In line with India's Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 and the DPDP Act, 2023: