Privacy Policy
Last updated: 3 August 2026
Draft pending legal review. This version has been rewritten but has not yet been reviewed by a qualified lawyer. It is published here for review only and should not be relied on as final until that review is complete.
What changed, in plain English
- We now ask your date of birth when you create an account — once, and we do not keep it. We need it to enforce the rule that videos from 13 to 17 year olds are never used for marketing. What we store is the age band, not the date.
- Marketing use of your penalty videos is opt-in, per video. We removed the old assumption that posting a video let us repost it on Top 5ive's social accounts.
- We spelled out how long videos are kept and how fast they are deleted — and what we cannot delete, such as copies other people already reshared.
- Anyone who appears in a video can ask us to remove it, whether or not they use Top 5ive.
The matching rules are in Section 5A of the Terms of Service.
Top 5ive ("Company," "we," "us," or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our mobile application ("App") and our website at top5ive.app ("Site"), including the vote, invite and referral links the App shares. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By using the App or the Site, you consent to the data practices described in this policy.
1. Information We Collect
1.1 Information You Provide
- Account Information: When you create an account, we collect your display name, profile photo, and authentication credentials (via Game Center or Sign in with Apple).
- Date of Birth — asked once, and not kept: We ask for your date of birth when you create an account. We use it to work out which of three age bands you are in — under 13, 13 to 17, or 18 and over — because several rules depend on it, in particular that penalty videos from users aged 13 to 17 are never used for marketing, and that under-18 accounts need a parent or guardian's agreement. The date itself is not stored. It is sent once, converted to a band on our server, and discarded in the same operation; what is written down is the band, the date we worked it out, and nothing else. We do not display your band on your profile or show it to other players, and we do not use your age for advertising targeting. See Section 9.
- Profile Information: Any additional information you choose to add to your profile.
- User Content: Top 5 lists you create, votes you cast, comments, and penalty videos you upload.
- Marketing choices: If you opt a penalty video in to marketing use, we record that choice against that specific video, when you made it, and when you withdrew it if you do. That record is how we prove to ourselves that a video was cleared before anyone reposts it — see Section 3.6.
- Communications: Messages you send to other users and correspondence with our support team.
- Feedback: Ratings, feedback and bug reports you send from the App or from the Site's feedback form, including the name you choose to attach to them.
- Reports and blocks: When you report a video, a message or a player we record who reported whom, the reason you chose, anything you typed in the details box, and which piece of content it was about. When you block someone we record that block on your account so it can be applied and undone.
- Payment Information: When you make in-app purchases, payment processing is handled by Apple. We do not store your payment card details.
1.2 Information Collected Automatically
- Device Information: Device type, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information.
- Advertising Identifier: If you allow tracking when iOS asks, your device's Advertising Identifier (IDFA). If you do not, we and our advertising partners do not receive it.
- Usage Data: How you interact with the App, including features used, time spent, and actions taken.
- Log Data: IP address, access times, pages viewed, app crashes, and other system activity.
- Crash and Diagnostic Data: When the App hits an error or crashes we record a diagnostic report through Firebase Crashlytics. Those reports include your account identifier, the device model and OS version, and the error message so we can find the bug.
- Location Information: General location based on IP address (we do not collect precise GPS location).
1.3 Information from Third Parties
- Game Center: Your Game Center display name and player ID when you sign in.
- Analytics Providers: Aggregated analytics data to help us improve the App.
- Advertising Partners: Ad delivery and measurement data — such as which ads were shown, tapped or rewarded — from Google AdMob.
1.4 Information We Collect on the Site
You do not need an account to use the Site. When you open a vote, invite, referral or share link we collect the following even if you have never installed the App — see Section 5 for the detail and your choices:
- Cookies and browser storage: A first-party cookie and matching browser storage entry holding the invite or referral code from the link you opened.
- An anonymous sign-in: A Firebase anonymous authentication session, so our security rules can tell one browser from another. It is not linked to a name, an email or a Top 5ive account.
- Device details and IP address: When you vote on someone's Top 5 list or pick their penalty, we record a summary of your browser and device (screen size, colour depth, time zone, language, platform, browser user agent and whether the device is touch-capable) and your IP address, purely to stop people voting on their own list.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect to:
- Provide, maintain, and improve the App and its features
- Create and manage your account
- Process transactions and send related information
- Match you with other players for games
- Display your content to other users as part of gameplay
- Confirm your age band, so that age-dependent rules — including the ban on marketing use of videos from 13 to 17 year olds — can actually be applied
- Promote Top 5ive using a penalty video only where you opted that specific video in, and never where the account is under 18 — see Section 3.6
- Send push notifications (with your permission) about game activity, friend requests, and updates
- Respond to your comments, questions, and support requests
- Monitor and analyze usage patterns and trends
- Diagnose crashes and fix bugs
- Detect, investigate, and prevent fraudulent transactions, vote manipulation and abuse
- Review reports of objectionable content or abusive behaviour, remove content that breaks our rules and mute or ban the accounts responsible
- Credit referral rewards to the right players
- Show ads, including personalized ads if you allow tracking, and measure how they perform
- Enforce our Terms of Service and protect the rights and safety of users
- Personalize your experience and deliver relevant content
- Comply with legal obligations
3. How We Share Your Information
We do not sell your personal information for money. We do share limited advertising identifiers and ad-interaction data with our advertising partners so ads can be shown and measured. California law calls that "sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising," and you can stop it at any time — see Section 4. Beyond that, we share your information in the following circumstances:
3.1 With Other Users
As part of the App's social features, certain information is visible to other users:
- Your display name and profile photo
- Your Top 5 lists during gameplay
- Penalty videos you upload to the public feed
- Your game statistics and achievements
Resharing. Other players can share a penalty video out of Top 5ive using the App's share buttons — into a chat app or onto a social platform. Once that happens the video is on a service we do not control, held by a person we do not control, and we cannot recall it or delete it. Deleting the video from Top 5ive removes our copy; it does not reach theirs. If you are not comfortable with that, do not post the video to the public feed. See Section 5A.6 of the Terms.
If you appear in someone else's video and want it taken down, email support@top5ive.app. You do not need a Top 5ive account and you do not need to give a reason.
3.2 With Service Providers
We share information with third-party vendors who perform services on our behalf:
- Firebase (Google): Authentication, database, cloud functions and analytics
- Firebase Crashlytics (Google): Crash and error diagnostics, including your account identifier and device details
- Google AdMob: Serving and measuring the ads in the App — see Section 4
- Cloudflare: Storage and delivery of penalty videos and other media you upload (Cloudflare R2), and protection of our web endpoints
- Apple: Game Center integration and payment processing
3.3 AI Features
The App uses AI to generate topics, play as an AI opponent and judge some rounds. Depending on the setting you choose, the text of that request — the topic and the lists in play, never your account credentials — is processed by:
- Our own servers, which forward the request to the LLM7 API (api.llm7.io) by default
- Your device, using a bundled on-device model that sends nothing anywhere
- A provider you choose, if you enter your own API key under Settings > AI. In that case the request goes directly from your device to that provider — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or OpenRouter — under their privacy policy and terms, not ours, and your key is stored only in your device's Keychain
3.4 For Legal Reasons
We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to:
- Legal processes such as subpoenas or court orders
- Requests from law enforcement or government agencies
- To protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property
- To enforce our Terms of Service
- To protect against legal liability
3.5 Business Transfers
If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. Any buyer takes on our Terms and this policy as they stand, including the opt-in rule in Section 3.6. A change of owner does not widen what may be done with your videos.
3.6 Marketing With Penalty Videos — Opt-In Only
Top 5ive runs its own accounts on services such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook, and we would like to post the best penalty videos there to get more people playing.
We only ever do that with a video you specifically opted in, one video at a time. Uploading a video does not opt it in. Posting it to the public Pay the Price feed does not opt it in. Accepting our Terms does not opt it in. Having opted in a previous video does not opt in the next one. The answer starts at no and we ask separately each time.
For a video you did opt in, we may:
- post it to Top 5ive-operated social accounts
- include it in compilations, trailers, App Store screenshots and paid ads for Top 5ive
- show your display name and profile photo as the credit
- let an agency or media partner do those things on our behalf, under contract, and no more
We do not sell or licence your video to an unrelated business for that business's own advertising, and we do not present you as endorsing anything.
If you are 13 to 17, none of this applies to you. The opt-in is not offered to accounts under 18 and your videos are never used for marketing.
Withdrawing. You can withdraw marketing permission for any video at any time, in the App or by emailing support@top5ive.app. We stop using it immediately, remove it from our own social accounts within 7 days, and require any partner to delete their copy within 30 days. We cannot delete copies other people already downloaded or reposted — see Section 6.
4. Advertising and Your Choices
The App is free and is paid for by ads. We use Google AdMob to select, deliver and measure them, including banner, interstitial and rewarded ads.
- What is collected: your device's Advertising Identifier (IDFA) when you allow tracking, your IP address, coarse device and app information, and ad-interaction data such as impressions, taps and rewarded-ad completions.
- Tracking permission: the first time you open the App, iOS asks whether Top 5ive may track you across other companies' apps and websites. If you say Ask App Not to Track, we do not collect or share the IDFA and AdMob serves non-personalized ads, which are chosen from the context rather than from a profile of you.
- Changing your mind: go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking on your device and turn Top 5ive off (or on) at any time. You can also limit ad personalization at adssettings.google.com.
- Google's practices: how Google uses this data is described in Google's privacy & terms for partner sites and apps and in the AdMob privacy documentation.
- Purchases: removing ads through an in-app purchase stops ads being shown to you; it does not by itself change your tracking permission, which stays under your control in iOS Settings.
The Site itself carries no advertising and sets no advertising or third-party analytics cookies.
5. Website, Cookies and Web Links
Top 5ive shares links that open in a browser — vote links, invite and referral links, game join links and penalty share links. If you do not have the App, those open on the Site, and the following applies to you even though you have never created an account.
5.1 Cookies and Browser Storage
- t5_ref_code — a first-party cookie plus a matching localStorage entry holding the invite or referral code from the link you opened, so the reward survives the trip to the App Store. It lasts 30 days unless you clear it.
- t5_join_code — the same thing for a game room code, so you can join the game you were invited to. Also 30 days.
- t5_consent — remembers the choice you make in the notice at the bottom of the page, so we do not ask again.
We set no advertising cookies, no third-party cookies and no cross-site trackers on the Site. The first time you visit we show a short notice: choose No thanks and the code is kept only for the current browser tab and removed when you close it, which means an invite reward may not survive the install. You can clear everything at any time through your browser's site-data settings.
5.2 Anonymous Sign-In
Some pages (the live activity ticker, the feedback form, vote pages) sign your browser in anonymously with Firebase so our security rules can distinguish one browser from another. This anonymous session is not linked to your name, email or Top 5ive account.
5.3 Voting and Anti-Cheat
When someone sends you a link to rank their Top 5 list or pick a penalty, submitting your vote records a summary of your browser and device — screen size, colour depth, time zone, language, platform, browser user agent and whether the device is touch-capable — together with your IP address. We use it for one purpose: to detect when the person who sent the link is trying to vote on it themselves. We do not use it for advertising or profiling, we never show it to the person who sent you the link, and it is deleted with the voting session — within minutes of your vote, and in any case within 24 hours of the link being created.
6. Data Retention
We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We may retain certain information for legitimate business purposes or as required by law, including:
- To resolve disputes and enforce agreements
- To comply with legal obligations
- To prevent fraud and abuse
Voting sessions created from a share link, and the anti-cheat details attached to them, expire automatically 24 hours after the session is created. Crash reports are retained by Crashlytics for up to 90 days.
Reports of objectionable content or abusive behaviour, and the moderation decisions taken on them, are kept after the account they concern is closed. They are the record of why content was removed or an account was banned, they are what stops a banned user simply returning, and they would be worthless if they disappeared with the account. They are never used for advertising or profiling.
6.1 Penalty Videos
A penalty video is kept while it is on Top 5ive. It is not kept "perpetually". When you delete the video, or your account:
- Immediately — it stops being served and disappears from the App
- Within 7 days — it comes down from any Top 5ive social account it reached
- Within 30 days — the video file, thumbnails and transcoded versions are deleted from our storage, including from backups as those cycle out
- Within 30 days — any marketing partner holding a copy is told to delete it and must confirm
The narrow exceptions, stated honestly:
- A live case. If the video is the subject of an open abuse report, safety investigation, law-enforcement request or legal claim, we keep a copy for that purpose only and delete it when the matter closes.
- A hash, not the video. For content removed over a serious rule violation we may keep a mathematical fingerprint — nothing watchable — so the same clip cannot simply be re-uploaded.
- Copies that already left us. If another player reshared it, a viewer downloaded it, or it was posted to another platform, that copy is not ours and we cannot delete it. We would rather tell you than imply a power we do not have.
6.2 Account Deletion
When you delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal information within 30 days, except for information we are required or permitted to retain. There is no date of birth to delete, because we never stored one; the age band derived from it is deleted with your account.
7. Data Security
We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including:
- Encryption of data in transit (HTTPS/TLS)
- Encryption of sensitive data at rest
- Secure authentication mechanisms
- Regular security assessments
- Access controls limiting who can access your data
However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.
8. Your Rights and Choices
8.1 Account Information
You may update or correct your account information at any time through the App's settings.
8.2 Delete Your Account
You may delete your account at any time through Settings > Account > Delete Account. This will permanently remove your account and associated data from our active systems. If you no longer have the App, our account deletion page explains exactly what is removed and how to request it by email.
8.3 Push Notifications
You can opt out of push notifications through your device settings or the App's notification settings.
8.4 Tracking and Ads
You can allow or refuse tracking at any time in Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking on your device. See Section 4 for what changes when you do.
8.5 Your Penalty Videos and Marketing
You can delete any penalty video from the App at any time, on the timeline in Section 6.1. You can withdraw marketing permission for a video at any time without deleting the video, in the App or by emailing support@top5ive.app. Withdrawing does not undo use that already happened and cannot reach copies other people already have.
8.6 Data Access and Portability
You may request a copy of your personal data by contacting us at support@top5ive.app.
8.7 California Residents
If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), including the right to know what personal information we collect, the right to delete your information, the right to correct it, and the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. We do not sell personal information for money, but our use of advertising identifiers with Google AdMob is treated as "sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising." You opt out by refusing tracking in Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking, or by emailing privacy@top5ive.app. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.
8.8 European Residents
If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the UK, you have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including the right to access, correct, delete, or port your data, and the right to object to or restrict certain processing.
Our lawful bases:
- Performance of our contract with you — running the game, hosting and showing your content to the audience you chose, and processing your date of birth — transiently, to derive an age band we keep and a date we do not — to apply the age-dependent rules in our Terms
- Your consent — tracking and non-essential browser storage, and marketing use of a penalty video, which we rely on consent for and never on legitimate interest
- Our legitimate interest — preventing fraud and abuse, including the anti-cheat data described in Section 5, and keeping moderation records
You may withdraw consent at any time — including marketing consent for any video — without affecting processing already carried out, and you have the right to complain to your local supervisory authority.
On erasure: nothing in our Terms or this policy limits your right to erasure under Article 17. Where that right applies and we have no lawful basis to keep something, we delete it on the timeline in Section 6. The only things we hold back are the narrow, named exceptions in Section 6.1 — and the copies that already left our systems, which we do not hold at all.
9. Children and Teenagers
9.1 Under 13
The App is not intended for children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will delete that information and close the account promptly. If you believe we have information from a child under 13, please contact us at privacy@top5ive.app.
What happens if someone answers under 13. No account is created and no profile, content or contact details are collected. Two things are recorded, and we would rather name them than let them come as a surprise: a marker on the device so the question is not simply asked again until it gets a different answer, and a server-side note that this sign-in attempt was refused for age — a randomly generated sign-in identifier, a timestamp and the reason. That note contains no name, no email address, no date of birth and no content. It exists so the refusal holds, and it can be deleted on request at privacy@top5ive.app.
9.2 Users aged 13 to 17
Users aged 13 to 17 may use Top 5ive with a parent or guardian's agreement. For those accounts:
- Penalty videos are never used for marketing. The opt-in described in Section 3.6 is not offered to them, and we will not rely on it if it is ever shown by mistake.
- If we find that a video we used for marketing came from someone who was under 18 at the time, we treat it as an immediate withdrawal and remove it as an urgent priority rather than within the ordinary deadlines.
- We do not use age to target advertising, and a parent or guardian may contact us at privacy@top5ive.app to access or delete their child's information.
10. Third-Party Links and Services
The App may contain links to third-party websites or services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any third-party services you access.
11. International Data Transfers
Your information may be transferred to and processed in countries other than your country of residence. These countries may have different data protection laws. By using the App, you consent to the transfer of your information to the United States and other countries where we operate.
12. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting the updated policy in the App or on our website and updating the "Last updated" date. Your continued use of the App after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.
13. Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at: