Your data on Arguers

Arguers is run by MABARIS di M.A.B. (P.IVA IT04083540791), a sole proprietorship in Italy, which decides what is kept and why (the data controller). Questions, requests and complaints about your data: contact@arguers.com. For help with the site: support@arguers.com. If you write, your message is used only to answer you. The rules for using Arguers are in the terms.

Whether you debate as a guest or with an account, the site keeps what the debate needs:

• The debate itself: the claim and every wording proposed for it, the notes you exchange while agreeing on it, your arguments and the links in them, drafts (saved as you type, so nothing is lost), the verdict, and whether you agreed to share the result.
• Your display name: the name you type. It is the only name your opponent sees; you can change it on the account page.
• Reports: if you report a claim posted for anyone, that you reported it.
• Records of what you do (which action and when, such as checking a claim or submitting an argument), to limit how often each can be done, which stops abuse and keeps the costs of the AI in check.
• When you last had it open, so that you aren’t emailed about something you have already seen (see Emails).
• Your rating, if you play rated debates with an account: a number worked out, as in chess, from the judge’s call on who argued better in each of your rated debates, with how settled it is and how many you won, drew and lost, and for each rated debate how it changed both ratings. It counts only who argued better, never which side you took or what you believe. Casual debates never count.
• Skill scores: after each verdict, an AI scores how each side argued on six skills (reasoning, evidence, rebuttal, focus, weighing and clarity), from 1 to 10, with a sentence on why. It is told the judge’s decision on who argued better, and the scores agree with it. They describe how you argued in that debate, never which side you took or what you believe, and they never change a verdict or a rating. Your account page shows your strongest and weakest skill, averaged over your latest debates.

Who sees what. Your opponent sees your name, your notes and your arguments; an argument only once you have both submitted that round. A claim posted for anyone is listed publicly with only the claim, the side that is free and when it was posted. A result is public only while everyone in the debate agrees to share it: then anyone with its link sees both names and the verdict, and the arguments too if everyone also agreed to include them. These pages are kept out of search engines. Only you see your rating, and both people in a rated debate see how it changed their ratings; the public leaderboard lists only the bots. Both people in a debate see both sides’ skill scores with its verdict (a shared result shows them only if it includes the arguments), and only you see your strongest and weakest skill.

Views you share. What you write can show your political opinions, your religious or philosophical beliefs or other sensitive things about you, which the GDPR protects specially (Article 9). They are there only because you chose to write them, and they are used only to run your debates and, if everyone in one agrees, to share its result: never to work out what you believe, and never for anything else.

This is what running a debate takes, which you ask for by starting or joining one (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR: a service you asked for), a rating is part of the rated game you choose to play, and skill scores are part of the verdict; the records of actions protect the site (a legitimate interest, Article 6(1)(f)).

AI models do five jobs, and receive the text each one needs:

• Checking a claim before a debate starts: the claim.
• Keeping debates civil: arguments, notes, display names and proposed wordings are checked for threats, abuse and similar before they are shown.
• Arguing as the bots, the AI opponents you can debate: the claim and the arguments revealed so far.
• Judging: the claim and both sides’ arguments, labelled FOR and AGAINST, with no names.
• Scoring skills after the verdict: the same, with the evidence the judge found and its decision on who argued better. With Pro, your coach’s review is written from the same, and the skill scores.

The text goes to OpenRouter, Inc. (United States), which passes it to the company that runs the model and returns the answer: Google, for Gemini, which checks claims, keeps debates civil, judges and scores skills; and for the bot you debate, Google, OpenAI or Anthropic, since each bot runs on a model of its own. Arguers asks OpenRouter to use only providers that don’t collect the data they are sent. See OpenRouter’s privacy policy. Don’t put anything in a debate you wouldn’t want an AI to read.

Searching for evidence. The judge searches the web through OpenRouter too. The searches it writes (from the claim and the arguments, never with your name) and the addresses of the links you attached go through OpenRouter to its search provider, Exa (Exa Labs, Inc., United States), which returns the pages it finds. See Exa’s privacy policy.

What the AI writes can be wrong, and it is never the opinion of Arguers or of the people who run it: see the terms.

• Feedback and reports you send from the feedback page: what you wrote, what it was about, the link you gave, the debate it came from if you are in it, and the name and email address you chose to leave, if any, so we can act on it and answer. Only the person who runs Arguers reads them. They are kept so we can learn from them; ask us to delete yours.
• Appeals against a verdict: what you wrote and the judge’s answer. Both people in the debate see them, and the AI receives the appeal with the debate, without names, to answer it.

Feedback is handled as a legitimate interest in running the site well and meeting our duties for reports (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR); an appeal is part of the debate you asked for (Article 6(1)(b)).

You sign in with Google or Discord. Arguers never sees your password: the provider confirms who you are and sends back a few details.

• What is kept: the provider’s id for your account, your email address and whether the provider has verified it, and when you last signed in. Your name and picture there are never asked for: opponents only ever see the display name you choose.
• Why the email address: to show you which account you are signed in with, so that a Google and a Discord account with the same verified address open the same Arguers account, and to email you about your debates (see Emails).
• Sign-in sessions: one record for each browser you are signed in on, holding only a scrambled (hashed) copy of the code in its cookie. Signing out deletes it.

If you were debating as a guest, your debates from that browser move into your account. This is the service you ask for by signing in (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR). Signing in is also covered by the providers’ own policies: Google, Discord.

Debates take turns, sometimes days apart, so if you have an account we email you about the debates you are in. Guests have no email address and get none.

• When a debate needs you: someone took your challenge or accepted your invitation, it’s your turn, your opponent has written their argument, or your opponent left.
• When a verdict is ready, and when the judge answers an appeal.
• With Pro, a summary of your month on the 1st: how many debates you finished, how they went, how your skills and rating moved, and the “what to practise” line and headlines of your coach’s reviews.

What they say. An email about a debate gives its claim, your opponent’s display name and a link to it; it never contains the arguments. It goes to the verified address of the sign-in you used last, a few minutes after something happens, and only if you haven’t opened the debate since (which is why the site notes when you last had each debate open).

Turning them off. They are on until you turn them off: on the account page, from the link at the foot of every email (it works without signing in), or with your inbox’s own unsubscribe button. Emails about a payment are always sent, because the law asks for them.

No tracking. They are sent through ZeptoMail (Zoho Corporation, from its data centre in the European Union), with no images and no tracking: we never learn whether you opened an email or which link you followed.

What is kept: a copy of each email we send you (the address, the subject, the text and when it went), a record of each one we decided not to send and why, and which emails you turned off. Telling you about the debates you are in is part of the service you ask for by playing them, and the summary of your month is part of Pro, which you buy (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Stripe handles the payment (Stripe Payments Europe, Limited, Ireland). Your card details go to Stripe and never reach Arguers. What we keep:

• Your subscription: your Stripe customer number, whether Pro is active and when it renews or ends.
• Each payment: the amount and currency, when it was paid, the month it covers, its invoice number and the email address it was paid with; and any refund, dispute or withdrawal.
• What you agreed to: the version of the terms the checkout showed, kept in full, and Stripe’s record that you accepted them and asked for Pro to start straight away.
• The emails we must send you: the confirmation of each payment and the acknowledgement of a withdrawal, sent through ZeptoMail like every other email (see Emails).

To show the price in your currency, and because Pro isn’t sold in the United Kingdom (see the terms), the Pro page and the checkout use the country Cloudflare works out from your IP address; it isn’t kept.

This is the contract you ask for (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR), and keeping its records is an obligation of Italian tax and consumer law (Article 6(1)(c)). Stripe also uses payment data for its own purposes, such as preventing fraud, as a controller in its own right: see Stripe’s privacy policy.

With Pro, your coach’s review of each debate is written for you (see The AI). Only you see it, it stays yours to read after Pro ends, and deleting your account deletes it. A summary of your month comes by email on the 1st (see Emails). While you have Pro, a Pro icon shows beside your name, to you and to the people you debate.

Only cookies the site needs to work, so no consent banner is shown. None is used for advertising or analytics.

• debate_guest: your guest session in this browser (400 days).
• debate_session: keeps you signed in (400 days, or until you sign out).
• debate_signin_google, debate_signin_discord: while you sign in, a check that the answer from Google or Discord is meant for your browser (10 minutes).
• debate_flash: says “You’re signed in” once, right after you sign in (one minute).

To know how many people use Arguers, which pages they read, which links bring them and whether pages load quickly, each page you open is counted by our own statistics service, which runs on Cloudflare. For each page view it keeps:

• The page’s address, without anything after a “?” and with its private parts removed: invite codes and the addresses of debates, results and claims are kept only as /join/…, /d/…, /s/… and /challenges/….
• Where you came from: the other site whose link you followed (its name, and the page when your browser says it), any campaign tags in the link (utm_source and the like) and, for a link from an ad, which ad network it came from (not the ad click’s own code).
• Roughly where you are and how you connect: your country, region and city, and the name of your internet provider, which Cloudflare works out from your IP address.
• Your browser and device: the names and versions of your browser and operating system, the kind of device (for example Chrome 141, Android, mobile), your screen size and your browser’s language.
• How the page was used: how long it was on screen, how far you scrolled, how quickly it loaded and responded (the measures known as Web Vitals), and clicks on links to other sites and on files to download.
• Checks that keep automated traffic out of the figures: whether your browser is being driven by a program, whether its clicks, taps and keys were made by a person (only whether, never what you typed or where you clicked), and whether its requests look like a real browser’s. Only these yes-or-no results are kept; your browser’s time zone is compared with your connection’s location and not kept. Visits that look automated are counted apart.
• A visitor code, to count people rather than pages: a scrambled (hashed) mix of your IP address, your browser’s description and a secret that is replaced every month. Your IP address and browser description themselves are not kept. Within a month the same browser on the same network gets the same code; once that month’s secret is deleted, nobody, MABARIS di M.A.B. included, can tell whose a code was (Cloudflare’s database backups keep a deleted secret for up to 30 more days). Pages opened less than 30 minutes apart count as one visit.

Nothing is stored on your device (no cookie, no local storage), and nothing is counted if your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. Your browser sends the count to stats.arguers.com. The figures are not used to profile you or to follow you on other sites, and only MABARIS di M.A.B. sees them. This is a legitimate interest in knowing how the site is used, with automated traffic left out, to improve it (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

• Neon keeps the database, on Amazon Web Services servers in Frankfurt, Germany (Neon’s privacy policy).
• Cloudflare hosts the site on its worldwide network and receives your IP address and browser details with each request, as any web host does; the site’s request logs are kept for at most seven days, to deliver the site and keep it secure (a legitimate interest, Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). The visit statistics (above) are kept in a Cloudflare database held in the European Union. Mail to Arguers’s addresses is forwarded by Cloudflare to an inbox at Google (Cloudflare’s privacy policy). The first time you ask for a claim check as a guest, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a person, not a script, is using the site: it runs in your browser and reads signals from it, such as its settings and how it behaves, and Cloudflare tells us only whether the check passed, which we note with your guest session. Most people never see it, and it never runs once you’re signed in. It keeps scripts from using up the AI everyone shares (a legitimate interest, Article 6(1)(f) GDPR; Turnstile’s privacy addendum).
• OpenRouter, for the AI and its web searches, which go to Exa (above).
• Zoho (ZeptoMail, in the European Union), which sends our emails (above).
• Stripe, for payments (above).

Some of these companies are in the United States or use providers outside the European Union. Transfers of personal data there rely on the safeguards the GDPR requires, such as the Standard Contractual Clauses in their data processing terms.

• Debates are kept so the people in them can come back to them. Deleting your account deletes every debate only you took part in (against the AI, or never taken up). A debate with another person stays theirs, with your name replaced by “Deleted account”; an unfinished one ends, and a shared result stops being public.
• Your account, its sign-ins and sessions: until you delete it, in the account menu under Account. Sessions end sooner when you sign out.
• Records of actions are kept with your guest session or account; deleting your account deletes them.
• Your rating is kept with your account; deleting your account deletes it. Someone you played a rated debate with keeps their own record of how it changed their rating.
• Skill scores stay with their debate, like its verdict.
• Emails: the copies of the emails we send you (other than those about payments, below), the record of those not sent and your choice of emails are kept with your account; deleting your account deletes them.
• Purchases: the records of payments, refunds, consents and withdrawals, and the emails about them, are kept for at least ten years, the period Italian law sets for accounting records (Article 2220 of the Civil Code), even after you delete your account; deleting it removes their link to you. Pro itself ends when the account is deleted.
• Visit statistics are kept with no time limit. They hold no IP address, and a visitor code stops pointing to anyone once its month’s secret is deleted (above).
• A guest session is not deleted automatically (your browser forgets its cookie after 400 days), and a guest’s debates have no account to delete them with: write to contact@arguers.com with a link to the debate and it will be deleted.

You must be at least 14 years old to create an account, or older if the law where you live requires it, and 18, or have a parent’s or guardian’s permission, to subscribe to Pro.

Under the GDPR you can ask to see the data kept about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to receive it in a portable form, and to object to or restrict its use. Much of this you can do yourself: the account page shows your name and how you sign in, chooses which emails you get, and deletes your account. For anything else, write to contact@arguers.com; you will get an answer within a month.

You can also complain to a data protection authority: in Italy, where Arguers is run, the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, or the authority of the EU country where you live or work.

If this page changes, the date at the top changes with it.

Back to Arguers