Privacy

Who is responsible

The data controller is Charles Baron. For any question about your data, or to use your rights, write to hello@thehugzone.com.

We collect as little as we can. There is no account, no advertising, no tracking and no audience measurement on this site, and we never sell or share your data for marketing.

What we collect, and why

• Hugs: the message, the countries and the person it is for, and the selfie, voice or video you choose to add. We use them to deliver your hug, show it on the Hug wall if you made it public, and translate it for its reader. Legal basis: your consent, given when you send the hug.
• Your e-mail address, if you give it after a hug: only to tell you when your hug is opened or when a hug comes back. Legal basis: consent.
• The union for peace: your e-mail address and country, to send you news of the movement. You confirm by e-mail, and every message has an unsubscribe link. Legal basis: consent.
• #HugChallenge videos: the link or video, the city, the country and what it is about, to show it on the site once checked. Legal basis: consent.
• Hug Zone proposals and artist sign-ups: the organisation or name, the place or country, and the e-mail address, so we can answer you. Legal basis: consent.
• Song suggestions: the song, the artist, the link and why you suggest it. Nothing that identifies you.
• A random identifier for your device (see cookies below), stored only as a one-way fingerprint. It ties your hugs to your device, limits each device to 5 opened hugs a day and counts each +1 or view once. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running the service and preventing abuse.

Moderation

Before anything you send is shown or delivered, it is checked: first automatically by Claude, an AI from Anthropic, and then, when in doubt, by a person from our team. This keeps hate, violence and personal attacks off the site. The automatic check sees the message and the selfie. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the site safe. You can ask a person to review any decision by writing to us.

Who receives your data

Only our team and the providers who run the site for us, each bound by a data processing agreement:

• Scaleway (France): hosting of the site.
• Supabase (database and files, stored in the European Union).
• Anthropic (United States): automatic moderation and translation of messages. Transfers are covered by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, and Anthropic does not use this data to train its models.
• Brevo (France): sending e-mails and managing the union mailing list.

Embedded videos and songs

Videos from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or X, and songs from Spotify, only load when you press play. From that moment, the platform receives your IP address and may set its own cookies, under its own privacy policy. For YouTube, we use its privacy-enhanced mode; preview images come from YouTube's servers.

Cookies

We only use two cookies, both needed for the site to work, so they do not require your consent:

• hz_device: a random identifier for your device, explained above. Kept for 2 years.
• hz_locale: the language you chose. Kept for 1 year.

How long we keep it

• Hugs and their media: as long as the Hug wall exists, unless you ask us to delete them. Rejected content: 1 year, then deleted.
• E-mail addresses: until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them. Unconfirmed union sign-ups: 3 months.
• Proposals and sign-ups: 3 years after our last contact.

Your rights

You can access, correct or delete your data, object to its use, ask to limit it, receive it in a portable format and withdraw your consent at any time, by writing to hello@thehugzone.com. As there is no account, tell us which hug or e-mail address it is about, and send the request from your device if it is about a hug. We answer within one month.

If you think your rights are not respected, you can complain to the CNIL, the French data protection authority (cnil.fr), or to the authority of your country.

Children

Children never receive hugs directly: hugs for children wait for partner associations. If you are under 15, ask a parent before giving us your e-mail address or sending a selfie, voice or video.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is published here with its date.