Privacy Policy - Voucha
Privacy Policy
Effective Date: 23/06/25
Last Updated: 18/10/26
Welcome to Voucha (“we”, “us”, “our”). Your privacy and trust are important to us. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, share, and protect personal information in accordance with Canadian privacy laws, including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), the data protection laws that apply to members where they live, including Nigeria’s Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), and applicable platform requirements (including the Google API Services User Data Policy).
1. Information We Collect
- Account & Profile: Username, display name, and email address during account registration.
- Forum Activity: Content you post or interact with on the forum (e.g., posts, comments, reactions, votes), the tags you follow, and which discussions you have read.
- Uploaded Images: Images you upload to a post. They are stored on our servers and are visible to anyone who can see the post.
- My Community Details (optional): If you set up My Community, the places you choose to add: the country and city where you live, or your state and local government area (LGA) if you live in Nigeria; your home state and LGA in Nigeria; and your state and LGA of origin. You may also add your profession, industry, and field of study (see section 4).
- Invites: If you create an invite link to one of your communities, we store the link and the community it is for. If someone joins Voucha through an invite, we record which invite they used and how they said they are connected to that place (see section 4).
- Tools: If you are logged in and save a result in our salary, tax, or business tax calculators, we store the inputs and results you saved so you can see your history.
- Quiz Answers (okjapa.com): If you take one of our quizzes on okjapa.com, such as the Japa Compass or Where will you stand?, the answers you give and the results worked out from them. Depending on the quiz, this can include your gender, age band, nationality and where you live, your field and years of experience, who is moving with you (including how many children and their age bands), and bands for your household income and savings. You do not give your name or contact details to take a quiz (see section 9).
- Newsletter Subscriptions: Your email address, name (if provided), the newsletters you chose, how you subscribed (for example, from your account, a sign-up form, or a mailing list you joined), and your subscription status.
- Email Engagement: Whether a newsletter was opened, which links in it were clicked, and any feedback you give using the rating buttons in the email (see section 3).
- Advertiser Enquiries: If you contact us about advertising, the details you submit (company, name, email, phone, campaign type, audience, and message).
- Moderator Applications: If you apply to become a moderator, the details you submit with your application (such as the community you are applying for and why you would like to help).
- How You Found Us: When you arrive through one of our tracked links or newsletters, which link or newsletter brought you here. We link this to your later visits only if you accept measurement cookies (see sections 6 and 14).
- Technical Data: IP address, device/browser details, and cookies for security, spam prevention, session management, and (only if you accept them) measurement. When we choose which ads to show, your browser also tells us the country its time zone is in (for example, Canada); we use this only to pick an ad and do not store it.
- Google User Data (if you sign in with Google): Basic profile information (e.g., name, email, Google user ID) and authentication tokens as permitted by the scopes you authorize.
We do not sell your data to third parties.
2. How We Use Your Information
- Authentication & Account Management: Create and manage your account, verify identity, and maintain sessions.
- Forum Operations: Publish your content, moderate community activity, enforce guidelines, and improve site experience.
- My Community & Your Feed: Show you discussions, people, and information about the places you have added, and order your “For you” feed (see sections 4 and 5).
- Quizzes: Work out and show your quiz results, keep them for you if you save them to your account, and show you communities you can join that match your results (see section 9).
- Advertising: Show sponsored content, including ads chosen using the places in your My Community details unless you switch this off (see section 7).
- Newsletters: Send the newsletters you are subscribed to, and understand which topics and stories readers find useful so we can improve them.
- Support & Communications: Respond to inquiries (including advertising enquiries and moderator applications) and send important service or policy notices.
- Measurement: Understand which of our posts on other platforms and which newsletters lead people to join, subscribe, or contact us (see section 6). Measurement cookies are used only with your consent.
- Security & Compliance: Detect and prevent fraud, spam, and abuse, and comply with legal obligations.
Google user data is used only to authenticate you, create or link your forum account, and maintain your login session. It is not used for advertising.
3. Newsletters
- Consent: We send newsletters to members and subscribers who have agreed to receive them, including people who joined a mailing list operated by the same company as Voucha. Every newsletter explains why you are receiving it.
- Open and Click Tracking: Our newsletters contain a small invisible image and tracked links. These tell us whether an email was opened and which links were clicked, so we can measure what readers find useful. Some email apps load images automatically, so open figures are approximate.
- Feedback: If you use the rating buttons in a newsletter, we record your rating for that issue.
- Unsubscribing: Every newsletter includes a one-click unsubscribe link and a link to manage which newsletters you receive. Logged-in members can also change this in their account settings. Unsubscribing from newsletters does not affect essential account emails such as password resets.
4. My Community, Profiles and Invites
- Optional: My Community is optional. You choose which places, if any, to add, and you can change or remove them at any time in your settings.
- Matching your places: We match the places you add to our own list of countries, states, LGAs, and cities, so they show correctly across the site. A city you type is matched only when it is on our list; otherwise we use your country.
- What others can see: By default, where you live, your state of origin, and your profession and field of study are shown on your public profile, and you may appear in “Members near you” lists for the places you share. You can hide each of these separately in your settings at any time; once hidden, they no longer appear on your profile or in member lists.
- Group totals: We show some figures as anonymous totals, such as how many members live in or come from a place, or how many work in a profession. To protect privacy, groups with fewer than 5 people are not shown.
- Invites: When you invite someone, the welcome page they see shows your display name and the community you invited them to. You can see how many people joined through your links, but not who they are. If you join through an invite, we pre-fill your community setup with that place, and record which invite you used and how you said you are connected to the place.
5. Your “For you” Feed
When you are logged in, your “For you” feed is ordered using public activity on each discussion (such as replies, people taking part, votes, and views), how recent it is, and your own choices: the places you have added to My Community, the tags you follow, and whether you have already read a discussion. We do not use your private messages, email address, or information from outside Voucha to order your feed.
You can switch to Latest (newest first) or another order at any time using the sort menu. Visitors who are not logged in see a “Popular” feed that is the same for everyone and uses no personal information.
6. Measuring How People Find Voucha
When we post Voucha on other platforms (for example, social media or messaging channels), we use tracked links. When you arrive through one of these links, or by clicking a link in one of our newsletters, we count the visit. If you have accepted measurement cookies in our cookie banner, we also set a first-party cookie on your device that records which link brought you here (see section 14).
With that cookie, if within the following 30 days you create an account, subscribe to a newsletter, send an advertising enquiry, or save a calculator result, we credit that action to the link or newsletter that brought you. If you decline measurement cookies, we still count visits and actions as totals, but we do not connect them to each other or to your browser. We use this only to understand which channels and newsletters work, and to report overall results.
When visitors who are not logged in are shown an invitation to join Voucha, we count how often it is shown, closed, or used to join, by type of page. These are totals only and are not linked to you.
Advertisers and sponsors only ever see totals (for example, the number of ad views, clicks, or sign-ups from a campaign, including totals for an area such as a state or country). We do not share information that identifies you with advertisers.
7. Personalised Ads
- What we use: If you have added places in My Community, we may use where you live and where you are from to show you more relevant ads (for example, from businesses in your city or your home state). For visitors who are not logged in, and in addition for members, we may use the country your browser reports (see section 1).
- How advertisers choose: Advertisers choose broad areas, such as a country, state, LGA, or city. Voucha does the matching; advertisers never see who you are and receive only total numbers.
- No narrow targeting: Ads aimed at members by where they live or where they are from must reach at least 50 members, so that no one can be singled out.
- Sensitive use: Where you are from is used only to include people in an audience (for example, “members from Enugu living in Canada”), never to exclude people from offers.
- Your choice: Personalised ads are on by default. You can switch them off at any time in Settings → Privacy (“Show ads based on where I live and where I’m from”). When they are off, we do not use your My Community details to choose ads; you will still see ads that are the same for everyone on a page.
8. Public Information About Office Holders and States
Our Data Hub and community pages publish information about public officials and traditional rulers, such as governors, local government chairpersons, and traditional rulers: their names, offices, parties, dates in office, and publicly available background. This information comes from public sources, which we link where available. We also publish rankings of states calculated from official public statistics; these describe governments, not individuals. If you believe any of this information is inaccurate, please contact us (see section 20) and we will review it.
9. Quizzes on okjapa.com
okjapa.com is part of Voucha. Its quizzes, such as the Japa Compass and Where will you stand?, give general information to help you plan. They are not immigration, financial, or investment advice.
- No name or contact details: You take a quiz without an account and without giving your name, email address, or phone number. Some answers are personal, such as your gender, your household, and bands for your income and savings, so we ask for bands rather than exact amounts.
- How your answers are used: Only to work out your result and show it to you. Your gender is used only to choose the pictures in the quiz and is never used to work out results. We do not use quiz answers for advertising, and we do not share them with advertisers or anyone else.
- While you take a quiz: Your answers are kept in your own browser for the current visit (see section 14), so you can go back and change them. Answers that two quizzes share, such as your household or your field, are reused if you take another okjapa quiz in the same visit, and you can check and change them.
- When you finish: Your answers and result are sent to Voucha's server and kept under a one-time code. We store only a scrambled version of that code (a hash), so the code itself cannot be read from our records. Unless you save the result to a Voucha account, it is deleted after 7 days.
- Saving to your account: If you sign up or log in on Voucha with your code, the result is attached to your account. Only you can see it, under My results on your profile. You can delete it there at any time, and it is deleted if your account is deleted. Saved results are worked out again with our latest figures each time you open them.
- Exchange rates and figures: Results use published statistics and the exchange rates in our Data Hub. These are about countries and markets, not about you.
- Sharing a result: If you choose to share a Japa Compass result, the link carries only your best-matching country, its score, and the next two country names. Your answers are never included.
- Limiting misuse: To stop automated abuse, each internet (IP) address can send a limited number of quiz results per hour. For this we keep a scrambled version of the address for one hour; it is not stored with your answers.
- No tracking on okjapa.com: okjapa.com does not use analytics, advertising cookies, or third-party trackers. Only Voucha's own pages, after you click through, follow the cookie choices in section 14.
10. Data Sharing
- Service Providers: We share necessary data with trusted vendors solely to provide our services, under confidentiality obligations. These include our web hosting provider (Hostinger), which also stores uploaded images, our email delivery provider (Mailgun), and Google (for Google sign-in).
- AI Tools: We use an AI service (OpenAI) to help draft newsletters and to help find published official statistics (for example, inflation and interest rates) for our Data Hub. We send it only public forum content, such as discussion titles, links, and the text of public posts, and requests about public statistics. We do not send subscriber lists, email addresses, My Community details, or account data.
- Advertisers: Only totals, as described in sections 6 and 7. Never information that identifies you.
- Legal/Protection: We may disclose information if required by law or to protect rights, safety, or the integrity of our platform.
- No Sale / No Unapproved Sharing: We do not sell personal information, including Google user data, or share it with third parties for their independent marketing purposes.
11. Data Storage & Protection
Data is hosted with reputable cloud providers and may be processed in Canada, the United States, or other regions where those providers operate. We use commercially reasonable safeguards, including:
- Encryption in transit (HTTPS) and secure storage for sensitive tokens
- Signed tracking links and cookies so they cannot be tampered with
- Least-privilege access controls and monitoring
- Regular maintenance and security updates
While we take reasonable steps to protect your data, no online system is completely secure.
12. Data Retention
- Account & Forum Content: Retained while your account is active or as needed to provide the service.
- Uploaded Images: Kept while the post they appear in exists. To have an image removed, edit or delete the post, or contact us.
- My Community Details & Invites: Retained while your account is active, or until you remove them in your settings. Invite records are kept so we can show inviters how many people joined, and are removed if the inviter’s or the new member’s account is deleted.
- Quiz Results: Deleted 7 days after you take a quiz unless you save them to your Voucha account. Saved results are kept until you delete them or your account is deleted.
- Newsletter Records: Retained while you are subscribed. If you unsubscribe, we keep a record of your email address and that you unsubscribed, so that we do not add you again by mistake.
- Engagement and Measurement Data: Newsletter open, click, and feedback records, and records of how visitors found us, are kept for as long as they are needed for reporting, and are deleted or anonymized when no longer needed.
- Advertising Enquiries & Moderator Applications: Retained while we are discussing or working with you, and for our business records.
- Security/Log Data: Retained for a limited period for security and operational continuity.
- Backups: Encrypted backups may persist for up to 30–90 days before routine purge.
13. Your Choices & Controls
- Access/Update: You can access and update your profile information via account settings or by contacting us.
- My Community: In your settings you can edit or remove your places, profession, and field of study, and choose whether where you live, your state of origin, and your profession are shown on your profile.
- Quiz Results: See and delete your saved quiz results under My results on your profile. Results you did not save are deleted automatically after 7 days.
- Personalised Ads: Switch off ads based on where you live and where you are from in Settings → Privacy (see section 7).
- Your Feed: Switch between “For you”, “Latest”, and other orders at any time, and follow or unfollow tags.
- Notifications: Following a tag shapes your feed but does not notify you by default; you will be notified when you are mentioned. You can change which notifications you receive, by alert or email, in your notification settings.
- Newsletters: Unsubscribe or change which newsletters you receive at any time using the links in any newsletter or, if you have an account, in your account settings.
- Deletion: You may request deletion of your account, your newsletter record, or other personal data (see section 15).
- Revoke Google Access: You can revoke Voucha’s access to your Google account at any time through your Google Account permissions page.
- Cookie Choices: When you first visit, our cookie banner lets you accept or decline measurement cookies, or choose in “Manage preferences”. You can change your choice at any time using Cookie settings (also linked at the bottom of the site menu). If you decline or later withdraw consent, we remove our measurement cookies from your browser on your next visit.
- Cookies and Browser Storage: You may also block or delete cookies and clear your browser’s storage. Declining or blocking the measurement cookies does not affect how the site works for you; blocking session cookies will prevent you from staying logged in.
14. Cookies, Browser Storage and Analytics
Our site uses the following first-party cookies. Essential cookies are always on because the site needs them. Measurement cookies are set only if you accept them in our cookie banner, and you can change your choice at any time using Cookie settings.
Essential
- flarum_session and flarum_remember: keep you logged in and protect your session. Essential for the site to work when you are logged in.
- vch_consent: remembers your cookie choice (all cookies, or essential only) so we do not ask again on every page. Kept for 6 months.
Measurement (only with your consent)
- flarum_vch_vid: a random identifier for your browser, used only to connect visits from our tracked links and newsletters to later actions (see section 6). Kept for up to one year.
- flarum_vch_attr: records which tracked link or newsletter most recently brought you to Voucha. Kept for 30 days.
If you decline measurement cookies, or withdraw consent later, these two cookies are not set, and any that were set before are removed on your next visit.
We also store a small amount of information in your browser’s own storage (not sent to us automatically):
- vouchaInvite: if you open an invite link, the invite you arrived through, so your community setup can be pre-filled after you sign up. Kept for up to 30 days, and removed once you finish setting up My Community.
- vouchaInviteSent: notes, for the current visit only, that we have already reminded you about your invite.
- voucha-ads-seen: how many times each ad has been shown in your browser, so the same ad is not repeated too often.
- vjShown and vjDiscussions: for the current visit only, whether we have already shown you the invitation to join and how many discussions you have read, so the invitation appears at most once per visit.
- vjSnoozeUntil: if you close the invitation to join, the date until which it will not be shown again (7 days).
- okjapa:<quiz> and okjapa:profile (on okjapa.com): your answers and result while you take a quiz, and the answers two quizzes share, so you can go back and change them. Kept for the current visit only, and cleared when you close the tab.
- voucha-assessment-code: if you arrive on Voucha to save a quiz result, your one-time code while you sign up or log in, so the result can be attached to your account. Removed once it is saved.
- voucha-topics-prompted and voucha-topic-focus: after you save a quiz result, whether we have already suggested communities to join, and which kind to suggest first.
- Display preferences: small settings that make the site work as you left it, such as which sections you have collapsed.
We also use similar technologies in our newsletters (see section 3). These are set by Voucha itself; we do not use them for third-party advertising. You can disable cookies and clear browser storage via your browser settings, though some features may not function properly.
15. Data Deletion
You may request account and personal data deletion by emailing privacy@thevoucha.com (or through account settings, if available). We will delete or anonymize personal data within a reasonable timeframe, subject to legal and operational requirements. Forum posts/comments may be anonymized rather than deleted to preserve discussion context. Deleting your account also deletes your My Community details and invite records. It also deletes your saved quiz results. If you ask us to delete your newsletter record entirely, we will no longer hold a record that you unsubscribed, so we may not be able to prevent your address being added again from a future mailing list.
16. User Responsibility
Users are solely responsible for the content they post, including images and any legal consequences arising from defamatory, abusive, threatening, infringing, or otherwise unlawful content. We reserve the right to remove content that violates our terms or applicable law.
17. Web Scraping
Automated web scraping or data harvesting of this site is strictly prohibited without prior written permission. Violators may face legal action under applicable Canadian laws.
18. Third-Party Links
Our forum and newsletters may contain links to third-party websites, including sponsored links that are clearly labelled. We are not responsible for their privacy practices or content. Please review their policies independently.
19. Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated date.
20. Contact Us
If you have questions about this policy or your data, contact:
- Email: privacy@thevoucha.com
- Admin: [amj]
