Our five-line promise
- Employers see your Verified real person badge and your verified name. Nothing else from your ID.
- Your ID photo and selfie go straight to our verification provider. CV Pod doesn't keep them, and our staff can't see them.
- CV Pod keeps your verified name, the result, the date and a reference number. We don't keep your date of birth, address or document number.
- We use your selfie once, to match it to your ID. We never use it to judge you, and we never analyse your face, voice, accent or emotion.
- You can delete your account any time. We delete your verification record within 30 days.
Who is responsible
[CV Pod legal entity name] is responsible for your personal information (the "data controller" under UK GDPR). We follow the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and Australian Privacy Principles, the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, and UK GDPR with the Data Protection Act 2018.
What we collect
| Who | What we collect | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Candidates | Email address; verification result, verified name, date and reference; three recordings and their transcripts; optional transcript notes; headline, plain CV, AI note, location and availability; up to five proof items (links, files, photos and claims); referee names, roles and emails you enter; your applications, questions and replies; consent dates. | You, and our verification provider (result only) |
| Employers | Business email; company name, number, country and registered name from the public register; job posts; decisions, reasons and notes; Ask-the-pod questions; billing records (we store only a card label such as "card ending 4242"). | You, public company registers, our payment provider |
| Referees | Name and role (as typed by the candidate), email address, and your action: confirm, edit wording or decline. | The candidate who asked you, and you |
| Agency invitees | Name, email and invite status. The agency receives only the outcome and verified name. | The agency, and you |
| Link visitors | If you choose to type one, a short self-introduction of up to 80 characters, shown to the candidate as "not verified". | You |
| Anyone signed in | A sign-in cookie and limited security logs (see below). | Your browser |
What we never store
There is no field anywhere in CV Pod for gender, ethnicity or age. Receipts don't store IP addresses, device fingerprints or precise locations. We never build a score, rank, "fit" or "interest" figure about anyone.
The real-person check
Before you start, you tick an unticked box: "I agree to CV Pod and its verification provider checking my ID and selfie for this one purpose." Your ID photo and live selfie go directly to our verification provider. It compares them once and returns only your verified name and a pass or fail. The provider must delete the images within 24 hours and may not use them to train its systems. Biometric information is sensitive information. We handle it only with your explicit consent and only for this check.
Recordings and transcripts
The first time you open the studio, you agree to CV Pod storing your recordings and transcripts and showing them to employers you apply to and people you send links to. We turn your speech into a written transcript, and that's all we do with how you sound. Only the take you choose to save is uploaded. Unsaved takes never leave your device. Recordings are streamed, never offered for download, and kept in private storage.
Please don't share other people's private details in your answers.
Receipts
When someone opens your Pod for more than 5 seconds, we record a receipt for you: which company (or which of your links), when, how long, and which recordings were played. Viewers are told this at the top of the Pod. Only you see receipts. They're never used to rank anyone, and you can't be charged to see them.
Who sees what
- Employers see Pods only of people who applied to their job or sent them a link, and only while access is active. They see "Opened by you [date]", never your receipts.
- Link visitors see your Pod only through a link you made and haven't paused or revoked.
- Referees see your name and one claim. They never see your Pod.
- The public can see employers' reply records, which hold numbers only and never applicant identities. Pods aren't indexed by search engines.
- CV Pod's safety team may open a Pod to review a report or dispute. Every time they do, it appears in your receipts as "CV Pod safety team reviewed your Pod on [date]". Staff can't see ID documents.
- We don't sell personal information or share it for advertising.
Why we use your data
| Purpose | UK GDPR lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Running your account, Pod, applications, replies and receipts | Contract |
| The ID and selfie check | Explicit consent |
| Storing and sharing recordings and transcripts | Consent, which you can withdraw by pausing, revoking or closing your account |
| Public reply records | Legitimate interests (accountability for employers) |
| Safety, fraud prevention and security logs | Legitimate interests |
| Billing and tax records | Legal obligation, and contract |
We make no automated decisions about people. No scores, no ranking, no auto-reject. Applicant lists are ordered only by when people applied.
How long we keep it
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| ID image and selfie | Never held by CV Pod. The provider deletes them within 24 hours. |
| Verification result, recordings, transcripts, CV, proof, receipts | While your account is open. Deleted within 30 days of closing it. |
| Replaced recordings | Deleted within 7 days of replacement |
| Referee email addresses | 30 days after the request is answered or expires |
| Agency invitee emails | 30 days after the invite is verified or expires |
| Report and dispute statements | Personal text removed 24 months after resolution |
| Sign-in links | 15 minutes, single use |
| Security event logs | 12 months, with no names, emails, transcripts or IP addresses |
| Edge access logs (IP addresses, for abuse handling) | 30 days, never joined to receipts |
| Backups | Age out within 7 days after deletion from live data |
When you close your account, applications you made stay counted in employers' reply records with your identity removed, so public records stay accurate.
Cookies and tracking
CV Pod uses one cookie: a sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in. It lasts 30 days for candidates, 14 days for employers and agencies, and 8 hours for staff. Your light or dark theme choice is saved in your browser's local storage, not a cookie. We use no advertising cookies, no third-party trackers or analytics SDKs, and no tracking pixels or click-tracking in our emails. That's why you don't see a cookie banner.
Service providers and locations
We use carefully chosen providers for identity verification, speech-to-text transcription, payments, email and hosting. Each may process data only on our instructions, must not keep recordings or images for its own training, and must return only what we need. We plan to host in Sydney, Australia. People in New Zealand and the UK will have data processed there, under safeguards required by their local law. We'll list our providers by name here before launch: [sub-processor list].
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. In the UK you also have rights to restrict or object to processing and to data portability. To ask, email privacy@cvpod.com or use "Ask for a copy of my data" in Settings. We reply within 20 business days. Your verified name can only be changed by re-doing the real-person check. You can close your account yourself at any time in Settings.
Minimum age
You must be 16 or older to make a Pod. We don't collect dates of birth, so this is a requirement you agree to rather than a check we run. If you believe a child under 16 has made a Pod, please contact us.
Security and breaches
We use passwordless sign-in, private media storage with short-lived access links, permissions checked on the server for every request, and database rules that stop anyone rewriting records. If a data breach is likely to cause serious harm, we'll tell the people affected and the relevant regulator as each country's law requires.
Contact and complaints
Email privacy@cvpod.com or use our contact page. If you're not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (Australia), the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (New Zealand) or the Information Commissioner's Office (UK).