Privacy Policy

tayst (the "Service") follows a policy of keeping the personal information it collects about users to the minimum necessary.

The Service does not store users' names or email addresses in their accounts. Signing in is handled by an external authentication service, and all the Service receives is an ID used to identify the user. Only when you contact us do we hold contact details so that we can reply (Article 5).

The Service collects and stores the following information.

• Account identifier: the user-specific ID issued by the authentication service
• Records of agreement and age verification: the date and time the Terms of Service were agreed to and the version agreed to, and the date and time the user declared being aged 20 or over (we do not collect dates of birth)
• Posted content: tasting notes, pairing records, ratings, and comments
• Usage: the date and time of the most recent sign-in
• Operational logs: the path accessed, the result, the processing time, and similar items (the servers of the Service do not record IP addresses or browser information; how the analytics services listed in Article 5 handle them is described in the next item)
• Usage analytics: the pages you view, the referrer, time spent, on-screen interactions, and your device, browser, language, and approximate region. These are collected by the analytics services listed in Article 5. They are not stored in the database of the Service, and they are not linked to your account identifier or to your posted content.
• Enquiries: the content of your enquiry and the address we reply to. This is not stored in the database of the Service; it is held by the external service listed in Article 5.

We use the information we collect for the following purposes.

• Providing the Service (recording and displaying tasting notes)
• Authenticating users
• Creating and displaying statistical information from which individuals cannot be identified
• Investigating defects, improving the Service, and preventing misuse

Only when you contact us may we send you email, in order to reply. The Service does not send email to users for any other purpose.

1. Tasting notes you post can be viewed only by you. Individual posts are never disclosed to other users.

2. Posted content is used to create statistical information from which individuals cannot be identified. This statistical information is displayed within the Service and may also be provided to third parties. Individual posts cannot be reconstructed from it.

The Service entrusts the handling of information to the following external services.

• Logto: authentication platform. Users' email addresses, profiles, and authentication history are held by Logto, not by the Service. We use a region in Japan.
• Amazon Web Services: servers and databases. We use the Tokyo region.
• Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.): recording of errors that occur on our servers. It collects the content of the error, where it occurred, and the request path. It is configured not to send IP addresses, cookies, request bodies, or identifiers of users. No region in Japan is offered, so we use a region in the United States.
• formrun (Basic Inc.): enquiry form. The content of your enquiry and the address we reply to are held by formrun, not by the Service. We use a region in Japan.
• Google (Google Analytics 4): usage analytics. Collects the "usage analytics" described in Article 2. Features relating to advertising and to the use of data for advertising purposes are disabled.
• Microsoft (Microsoft Clarity): usage analytics and recording of on-screen interactions. Text entered by users and the body of tasting notes are masked when recorded.
• Google / LINE: sign-in methods. Each provider's own privacy policy applies.

Apart from Google and Microsoft, to whom usage analytics is entrusted, and Sentry, to whom the recording of errors is entrusted, no personal information about users is stored outside Japan.

Information collected through usage analytics and the recording of errors may be handled in the United States or other countries. Each of these vendors continuously maintains systems meeting the standards required under Japan's personal information protection law. If you would like information about the countries to which data is transferred or about the data protection regimes of those countries, please contact us using the channel in Article 10.

The Service uses cookies for the following purposes.

• Keeping you signed in (authentication session)
• Remembering your display language
• Access restriction during the proof-of-concept stage
• Usage analytics (the analytics services listed in Article 5)

We do not use cookies to deliver advertising, or to track your behaviour on websites other than the Service.

For usage analytics, information about the pages you view and your on-screen interactions is sent to servers operated by Google and Microsoft via cookies. If you do not want this, you can install the opt-out browser add-on provided by Google, block cookies in your browser settings, or use tracking prevention or private browsing. Stopping this does not restrict any functionality of the Service.

We also temporarily store form input in progress on your device (your browser's localStorage). This content is not sent to the servers of the Service, and it is deleted once 24 hours have passed or submission is complete.

1. We retain the information we collect for as long as it is necessary to provide the Service. Operational logs are retained according to the server settings.

2. If you withdraw, your account immediately becomes unusable and the display name held by the Service is deleted. We also delete your user account registered with the authentication service (Logto). If you sign in again with the same account, it is treated as a new registration and does not restore the state before withdrawal.

3. The deletion of the account on the authentication service described in the previous item is carried out automatically as part of the withdrawal procedure, but it may fail to complete due to a communication failure or similar. Even in that case, your account on the Service is withdrawn. If you would like us to confirm that the deletion has completed, please contact us at the address below.

4. Even after withdrawal, the tasting notes you posted remain on the Service and are used as statistical information. In that case, the link between the posts and your account is no longer visible. See Article 4 of the Terms of Service for details.

5. Before you withdraw, you can delete individual tasting notes you posted. After withdrawal you can no longer sign in, so this is not possible. If there are posts you do not want to leave behind, please delete them before withdrawing.

6. A deleted tasting note is excluded from listings and from statistical information the moment it is deleted, and can no longer be viewed by anyone, including you. However, so that a note deleted by mistake can be restored, it remains in the database of the Service as a deleted record, and we have not set an upper bound on how long it is kept. If you want it erased completely, please request this at the address below.

1. If you wish to have your own information disclosed, corrected, deleted, or its use suspended, we accept your request by the following means.

2. Because the Service does not store email addresses, what you submit through the enquiry form alone does not let us verify your identity. For matters concerning your own information, carrying out the procedure yourself while signed in is what serves as verification of your identity (see the next item).

3. You can withdraw yourself from the account page, and you can correct or delete each tasting note you posted from the note list. You cannot restore a deleted note yourself. If you deleted a note by mistake, or if you want a deleted note erased completely, please contact us through the channel below.

4. Requests that cannot be carried out by the means in the previous item (complete erasure of a deleted note, deletion of an account on the authentication service (Logto) that did not complete at the time of withdrawal, and similar) are accepted through the channel below. In that case we will tell you individually how your identity will be verified. If we cannot confirm that you are the person concerned, we may be unable to act on your request.

The Service may change this Policy as necessary. If we make a material change, we will ask for your agreement again.

Enquiries about how the Service handles personal information are accepted through our enquiry form.

The Service is operated by an individual under the name "tayst". We will disclose the operator's name and address without delay upon request through the enquiry channel.

The Service is run by an individual, so a reply may take some time.