Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

WorldView ("we", "us", "our") is a platform that connects scientists and engineers in the United Kingdom over shared ideas about how the world is changing. We are the data controller for the personal data processed through this service.

If you have questions about this policy or your data, contact us at: privacy@worldview.uk

2. What data we collect

We collect the following categories of personal data:

Account data

• Email address (used for authentication and, optionally, shared with connections)
• Password (hashed, never stored in plain text)
• Display name

Profile data (all optional)

• Job title
• Institution
• Department
• Career stage
• Location
• Bio
• Research interests
• ORCID identifier
• LinkedIn profile URL
• Profile photo (from LinkedIn sign-in or future upload)

Content you create

• Hunches (your ideas about how the world is changing)
• Connection request messages

Data from LinkedIn (if you sign in with LinkedIn)

If you choose to sign in with LinkedIn, we receive your name, email address, and profile photo from LinkedIn via their OpenID Connect service. We do not receive your LinkedIn connections, work history, or any other professional data. See Section 8 for more detail.

Technical data

• Authentication session tokens (cookies)
• Email domain (extracted from your email address to determine academic verification status)

3. How we use your data

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

4. How matching works

When you submit a hunch, we generate a mathematical representation (an "embedding") of your text using OpenAI's embedding API. This embedding is a sequence of numbers that captures the meaning of your hunch — it is not human-readable and cannot be reversed back into your original text. We use these embeddings to find other hunches with similar meaning, so we can suggest relevant connections.

The text of your hunch is sent to OpenAI for embedding generation only. We do not share your name, email, profile data, or any other personal information with OpenAI. OpenAI's API data usage policy states that API inputs are not used to train their models.

5. Who sees your data

Your profile is hidden by default. Other users can only see your hunches on the Explore feed. Your name, email, LinkedIn profile, and all other personal details are only shared when you actively choose to connect with another user.

At connection time, you control what you share:

• When you send a connection request, you choose whether to share your LinkedIn profile and/or email address. The recipient sees your display name and your message.
• When you accept a connection request, the same details you received are automatically shared back — creating a mutual, symmetric exchange.

We never sell, rent, or trade your personal data to third parties. We never use your data for advertising.

6. Third-party services

We use the following third-party services to operate WorldView:

7. Cookies

We use only essential cookies required for authentication. These cookies maintain your logged-in session and are strictly necessary for the service to function. We do not use analytics cookies, advertising cookies, or any third-party tracking cookies.

8. LinkedIn sign-in

If you choose to sign in with LinkedIn, we use LinkedIn's OpenID Connect service. This provides us with your name, email address, email verification status, profile photo URL, and locale. LinkedIn does not provide us with your job title, company, work history, connections, or any other professional data through this service.

You can revoke WorldView's access to your LinkedIn account at any time through your LinkedIn settings under "Permitted Services".

9. Data retention

We retain your personal data for as long as you maintain an active account. If you delete your account, we will delete all your personal data, hunches, and connection records within 30 days, except where we are required by law to retain certain information.

When you delete a hunch, we retain a snapshot of the deleted hunch along with the reason you gave for deleting it. This data is used solely to improve the product and is not shared with other users or third parties.

10. Your rights

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), you have the following rights:

• Access — request a copy of all personal data we hold about you
• Rectification — correct any inaccurate data (you can do this directly from your profile page)
• Erasure — request deletion of your account and all associated data
• Restriction — ask us to limit how we process your data
• Portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests
• Withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw it at any time

To exercise any of these rights, email us at privacy@worldview.uk. We will respond within 30 days.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

11. International transfers

Your data is processed by Supabase (hosted on AWS in the EU region), OpenAI (United States), and Vercel (United States). Where data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or adequacy decisions as the legal mechanism for transfer.

12. Children

WorldView is not intended for anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or by placing a notice on the site before the changes take effect. Your continued use of WorldView after the changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.