WineBlind Privacy Policy

Version dated 15 October 2026, effective upon publication on WineBlind.

1. Controller and contact details

WineBlind is a project operated by Tecla Disciplinada - Unipessoal Lda, the controller of the personal data processed through the platform, with Portuguese tax identification number 517158213 and registered office at Rua Norton de Matos, No. 48, Ground Floor, 7005-563 Évora, Portugal.

For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, contact wineblind.mail@gmail.com.

2. Data collected and purposes

Account and authentication: username, name, email address, password stored as a hash when registration uses the form, email verification status, date of birth, and the version and date of acceptance of the Terms and acknowledgement of this Policy. We use this data to create and protect the account, restore access and provide the service.

Date of birth: it is provided during registration or imported automatically from Google during the sign-in flow, after authorization of the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/user.birthday.read permission. WineBlind reads the birthdays field from the Google People API profile, verifies that the authorization belongs to the account used to sign in, and stores only a complete date containing day, month and year. We use it to calculate automatically whether the user is at least 18 years old. A date showing that the user is under 18 prevents access to the platform. If Google does not provide a complete and valid date, the user must enter it manually. The access token and complete API response are not stored in the application's database.

Google sign-in: we receive the data required to verify the account identity, including the Google account identifier, email address, email verification status and name made available by Google.

Optional gender: the user may choose Male, Female or Not defined. After signing in with Google, the user may separately authorize gender import through the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/user.gender.read permission. We read only the gender field from the Google People API profile after confirming that the authorization belongs to the account used to sign in. We store only the normalized value (male, female or not_defined) and its source. If permission is refused, the data is absent or the value is unsupported, gender remains Not defined. The user may change or remove it in Account Settings by selecting Not defined. The access token used for the import and the complete People API response are not stored in the account or the application's database.

Gender is used only for the WineBlind profile and features. It is not used for advertising, commercial targeting or automated decisions, and it is not sold to third parties. Our use of data received from Google complies with the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements: https://developers.google.com/terms/api-services-user-data-policy.

Optional profile: photograph, telephone number, address, country, city and postal code, when provided by the user.

Wine tastings and interactions: events created or attended, invitations, wines, notes, ratings, submissions and images required by the features used. Content shared within a tasting may be shown to its organizers and participants according to the feature being used.

Contact and operational communications: name, email address and the content sent to support, as well as verification emails, access recovery messages, invitations and service notices.

Payments and invoicing: Stripe processes payments. The application stores customer and transaction identifiers, payment status, plan and credits required to manage purchases and access. Tecla Disciplinada - Unipessoal Lda sells the service and issues invoices. The information required for invoicing — name, email address, tax identification number, address, amount and purchase description — is transmitted automatically to the company's invoicing process. Full payment card details are processed by Stripe.

AI-assisted wine completion: when this feature is used, wine data and context are sent to OpenAI to obtain suggestions. We keep a record of the search associated with the account. Do not include personal data in fields intended to describe wines.

Technical data: cookies required for sessions and form protection, operational and security logs, and error and diagnostic information sent to Sentry. This information may include user identifiers and technical request data and is used to identify failures and investigate incidents.

3. Legal bases

Data required for the account, events and purchases is processed to provide the requested service and perform the contract with the user. The date of birth allows us to enforce the condition that access is restricted to people aged 18 or over.

Providing gender is optional and relies on consent to complete the profile. The user may refuse or withdraw that consent without losing access to the other features. Accepting the Terms and acknowledging this Policy does not authorize the import of gender or date of birth: each field requires its corresponding Google authorization. The user may provide the date of birth manually instead of importing it; age verification remains necessary to provide the service.

Tax information is processed to comply with legal obligations. Security, abuse prevention and failure diagnosis rely on our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and operational, balanced against users' rights. Recording acceptance allows us to demonstrate the conditions that applied when providing the service.

4. Service providers and transfers

We use AWS for infrastructure and image storage in S3; Google for authentication, authorized import of date of birth and gender, and sending email through Gmail; Stripe for payments; Ably for real-time event updates; Sentry for error diagnostics; and OpenAI for wine completion suggestions. Each service receives the data required for its function. Tecla Disciplinada also processes the information needed to meet its sales and invoicing obligations.

Some pages load libraries and visual resources from external content delivery networks. When these resources load, the browser sends technical connection data to the relevant providers. We do not use advertising or audience analytics services.

Providers may process data outside the European Economic Area. International transfers are subject to GDPR requirements, including adequacy decisions or appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses, depending on the provider and processing concerned. You may ask for information about destinations and applicable safeguards, and for a copy of those safeguards, through the contact address in this Policy.

5. Retention and deletion

We retain account, profile and activity data while needed to maintain the account and provide requested features. Technical logs are retained for the period needed for security and for investigating and resolving failures. Data relevant to disputes may be retained for as long as needed to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

You may request account deletion at wineblind.mail@gmail.com. Requests are handled manually and cover the account, profile, events, notes, images and other personal data in the application, as well as deletion or anonymization by applicable external services. We may request proportionate information to verify your identity.

Tax documents subject to mandatory retention are kept for the applicable statutory period even after account deletion. This obligation does not automatically extend to all profile data. Data remaining in backups disappears as those backups are replaced under the applicable retention cycle. If a backup must be restored, deletion requests must be reapplied.

6. Data subject rights

You may request access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection, where applicable, by contacting wineblind.mail@gmail.com. You may withdraw consent to gender processing without affecting the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal. We respond within the statutory periods, normally within one month, and will tell you about any legally permitted extension and the reasons for it.

You may revoke WineBlind's access in your Google Account settings. Revocation prevents new authorized queries but does not automatically delete gender or date of birth already stored by WineBlind. You may remove gender in Account Settings and request rectification or deletion by email. Continued access to the service remains subject to verification of the minimum age.

You may lodge a complaint with the competent supervisory authority, including Portugal's Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados: https://www.cnpd.pt/.

7. Cookies and security

We use cookies required for authentication, form protection and operation of the service. Local passwords are stored as hashes. Access to data is limited to technical and operational needs. No system is entirely free from risk.

8. Changes

This Policy is available at https://wine-blind.com/en/privacy/. Material changes will be communicated in the application and, where applicable, by email. Where new consent is required, it will be requested before the new processing begins.

The Terms of Service are available at https://wine-blind.com/en/terms/.