Ryan Vet Studies Privacy Policy

Effective Date: August 18, 2026 | Last Updated: September 22, 2026 | Version: 2.3

This Privacy Policy explains how Izymu Inc., a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business at 120 East Parish Street, Suite 310, Durham, North Carolina 27701 (“Ryan Vet Studies,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), collects, uses, shares, and protects personal information in connection with the interactive studies, quizzes, and games at studies.ryanvet.com (the “Site”). It is incorporated into, and should be read together with, the Ryan Vet Studies Terms of Use.

The short version

This box is a plain-language summary. It does not replace the full Policy below, and where the two differ, the full Policy controls.

You can take our studies without creating an account. When you arrive, we give your browser an anonymous ID so we can score your answers and remember them on that device. We do not ask who you are.
Saving your result is optional. If you choose to save it, you give us your email and we send you a one-time sign-in link. Ryan’s newsletter, Collide, is a separate tick-box on that form — off by default. We do not subscribe you unless you tick it, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
We do not sell, rent, or license your personal information, and have not done so in the past twelve months.
What we publish is aggregate — statistics drawn from many participants’ answers (like “how you compare”), never anything that identifies you.
We use Google Analytics for basic traffic measurement and Google Firebase and Cloudflare to run the Site. These providers process technical data including your IP address. We are telling you plainly rather than claiming to be “first-party only.”
The Site is for people 13 and older, in the United States and Canada (excluding Quebec).
You’re in control: view your data, unsubscribe, sign out, or delete your data from your account page at studies.ryanvet.com/account, or by emailing privacy@ryanvet.com.

1. Who we are and how to contact us

This Policy applies to personal information collected through the Site. It does not apply to information collected by third-party sites we link to, or to Collide, which maintains its own privacy notice at https://ryanvet.com/privacy-policy.

Controller. Izymu Inc., 120 East Parish Street, Suite 310, Durham, North Carolina 27701, is the controller (or “business,” under U.S. state law) responsible for the personal information described here.

Contact us. For any privacy question or request, write to privacy@ryanvet.com. See Section 11 for how we handle requests.

2. How the Site works, and what that means for your privacy

Anonymous by default. You do not register to use the Site. When you first load a study, we create a durable, random anonymous identifier for your browser (via Firebase Anonymous Authentication) and store it on your device. Your answers and results are associated with that random identifier — not with your name or email — unless and until you choose to save your result.

Saving your result (optional). If you choose “save my result,” you enter your email address and we send you a passwordless magic link. Clicking it links your email to your existing anonymous identifier, so your saved results follow you across devices. We do not use passwords. You can instead choose Continue with Google; if you do, Google shares your email address, name, and profile photo address with us through Firebase Authentication, and we use only the email address, to link your saved results.

No account is ever required to take a study or see your result. Saving is a convenience you opt into.

3. What we collect

Category	Examples	Source	Why
Identifiers	A random anonymous ID; your email address (only if you save a result); IP address; your Prolific participant, study and session IDs (only if you take a study through Prolific)	Automatically; you, if you save	Scoring and saving your results; sign-in; security and abuse-prevention
Study responses	Your answers to a study’s questions and the result/score we compute	You, directly	Producing your result and aggregate research
Optional profile facts	Birth year, and — depending on the study — gender, country, primary language, whether you have hired someone, or (from the Communication Preferences Study at studies.ryanvet.com) your state, whether children under 18 live in your household, and whether you have pets	You, directly	Scoring, and “never asking the same question twice” across studies
Technical and usage data	Pages viewed, time on page, approximate location derived from IP, device/browser type, question timing, where people drop off	Automatically	Running the Site, measuring traffic, quality and abuse checks, research on response patterns
Derived data	Your result type/score, and quality flags (e.g., answered implausibly fast)	Generated by us	Producing results and keeping research data honest

We ask for a birth year to determine eligibility (Section 8) and to compute generational results. We do not intentionally collect Social Security numbers, financial-account numbers, precise geolocation, or government-ID numbers, and no study asks for them.

4. How we use your information

To run the studies: present questions, compute your result, and show you how you compare to others in aggregate.
To remember answers you’ve already given so later studies don’t ask again (“never ask twice”).
To save your result to your account and let you return to it, if you opt in.
To send you Collide, our newsletter, only if you ticked the newsletter box (see Section 5), until you unsubscribe.
To keep the Site secure and our data honest — detecting bots, abuse, duplicate submissions, and low-quality responses (including, at the point of submission, a bot-defense check and device/network signals used only to spot abuse).
To produce aggregate and de-identified research about how people think and decide.

We do not make automated decisions about you that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

Collide is a newsletter operated by the same principal as Ryan Vet Studies, at a separate address (https://ryanvet.com/collide). Subscribing is a separate, optional choice from saving your result. The form where you enter your email carries an unticked box for the newsletter; we subscribe you only if you tick it. Saving a result without ticking it does not put you on the list.

If you arrive from a link in Collide, we may recognise you as an existing subscriber and record your study result against your subscriber record so future issues can be more relevant. Doing so never changes what you are subscribed to.

You can unsubscribe from Collide at any time — from your account page at studies.ryanvet.com/account, using the unsubscribe link in any Collide email, or by emailing privacy@ryanvet.com. Unsubscribing from Collide does not delete your saved study results; deleting your data (Section 10) is a separate action.

We do not otherwise share your email between properties, and we do not sell it.

We do not sell, rent, or license your personal information (Section 7). We share it only as follows:

Service providers who run the Site for us, each contractually limited to that purpose:
- Google Firebase (Google LLC) — authentication, database, and serverless functions. Processes your anonymous ID, saved email, study data, and IP.
- Cloudflare, Inc. — hosting, content delivery, and security, and the database for the Communication Preferences Study (Cloudflare D1). Processes your IP and request metadata, and that study’s responses.
- Google Analytics (Google LLC) — aggregate traffic measurement (see Section 9).
- Our email/newsletter provider — delivering Collide and any transactional email.
Legal and safety. Where required by law, subpoena, or court order, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Ryan Vet Studies, our users, or the public, or to prevent fraud and abuse.
Business transfers. In a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, information may transfer as part of that transaction. Any successor will either be bound by this Policy or give you notice and a meaningful choice before applying materially different terms.
Aggregate research. We may publish or share aggregate, non-identifying statistics drawn from many participants.
De-identified research data. Where a study’s consent screen says so (for example, the Communication Preferences Study), we may share individual responses in de-identified form with research partners. These records carry a random respondent number instead of any identifier; they never include your name, email, IP address, or Prolific ID, and partners may not try to re-identify anyone.

We do not work with data brokers or advertising networks, and we do not use third-party advertising pixels, cross-site trackers, or session-replay tools.

7. We do not sell your information today — and what must happen before that could change

7.1 Today. We do not sell, rent, license, or share your personal information for money or for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we have not done so in the preceding twelve months, within the meaning of the CCPA/CPRA or any analogous state law. What we make public is aggregate information only. We do not currently license or sell de-identified, record-level datasets.

7.2 We reserve the right to change this in the future — subject to binding conditions. We may in the future license or sell personal information, or make de-identified, record-level research datasets available. We will not do so unless we first: (a) give at least 30 days’ advance notice by email (where we have it) and on the Site; (b) publish an updated Policy naming the specific categories of data and recipients; (c) offer a working, free opt-out — and opt-in where the law then requires it — with no loss of access for using it; (d) exclude sensitive information unless you separately consent; and (e) contractually bar every recipient from attempting to re-identify anyone. A standing objection you send to privacy@ryanvet.com is recorded and honored automatically if this ever changes. A Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal is treated as an opt-out of any sale or sharing.

7.3 Sponsored or commissioned research (reserved for the future). From time to time a third party may fund or commission a study. Any such sponsor would receive aggregate, de-identified results only — never data that identifies you — and would be contractually barred from attempting re-identification. We are not currently running sponsored studies.

7.4 Occasional incentives (reserved for the future). We may occasionally offer an incentive or prize drawing to encourage participation, governed by separate rules we would publish at that time (no purchase necessary; a winner may need to provide information required for tax reporting). None is currently offered, and using the Site does not by itself entitle you to any incentive.

8. Who can use the Site (age and location)

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Site. If our age question indicates you are under 13, we do not let you proceed and we do not knowingly collect your personal information. Participants who indicate they are 13–17 may take studies, but we do not store an email or other identity-linked record for them — their responses are kept only in anonymous form.

The Site is intended for residents of the United States and Canada, excluding Quebec. Published content on the Site may be read by anyone, but we do not target or solicit participants outside the United States and Canada, and we have not appointed an EU/UK GDPR representative because we do not offer the Site to, or monitor, individuals in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom.

9. Cookies, analytics, and similar technologies

We use a small number of technologies:

Strictly necessary — Firebase authentication and local storage that keep your anonymous session and your in-progress answers working. These are required for the Site to function.
Google Analytics 4 — a Google service that helps us measure aggregate traffic (pages viewed, time on page, device type). It sets cookies and shares data, including your IP address, with Google. We do not load Google Analytics until you have acknowledged our cookie notice, and you can decline. Google Analytics rolls up with the same measurement property as ryanvet.com so we can see studies traffic in one view.
First-party study analytics — funnel and drop-off events we record in our own database to improve the studies.
Communication Preferences Study cookies — two first-party cookies, set only if you take that study at studies.ryanvet.com/communication-2026. c26_b holds a random code for your browser (not for you) and lets us flag a possible second submission from the same browser. c26_done remembers that you finished, so we don’t ask you to take the study again. Both last up to 400 days, are never shared, and are not used for advertising. The study also keeps a random session code in your browser’s local storage so you can pick up where you left off. The Prolific version of this study sets no cookies and loads no analytics.

You can change your cookie choice at any time using the Cookie choice link in the Site footer. Where you decline or send a GPC signal, we do not load Google Analytics.

10. Your rights, and how to exercise them

You can exercise the following from your account page at studies.ryanvet.com/account, or by emailing privacy@ryanvet.com:

Right	What it means
Access	See what we hold about you (your profile facts and completed studies are shown on your account page).
Delete	Have your data deleted — see the method below.
Correct	Fix inaccurate information (retake a study, or contact us).
Unsubscribe	Stop Collide emails.
Opt out of sale/sharing	We do not sell or share; a GPC signal is honored regardless.
Non-discrimination	We will not penalize you for exercising any of these rights.

How deletion works (de-identify and exclude). When you delete your data, we remove your saved profile — the only record that holds your email and identity — and remove your responses from our public comparisons. The underlying answers, now anonymous and no longer linked to you, may be retained for research. Because those retained answers can no longer be connected to you, they cannot afterward be individually retrieved or corrected. This satisfies your deletion rights under the CCPA/CPRA and PIPEDA while preserving anonymous research value.

Response times. We honor unsubscribe and account-page actions immediately. For requests emailed to us, we respond within 45 days (extendable once by 45 days on notice). We may need to verify your request. We do not charge for a first request in any 12-month period.

11. Canada (PIPEDA)

For participants in Canada (outside Quebec), the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) governs our handling of your personal information. Your consent is given when you choose to use the Site and, if you opt in, to save your result and receive Collide; you may withdraw consent at any time by unsubscribing and/or deleting your data (Section 10). Your information is stored and processed in the United States and is subject to U.S. law. If you are unsatisfied with our response to a request, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at https://www.priv.gc.ca. Quebec residents are not eligible to use the Site.

12. Retention

Anonymous study responses are retained to support research and the “how you compare” figures. They contain no email or name.
Prolific IDs from the Communication Preferences Study are deleted once Prolific’s review of that study closes. The responses are kept without them.
Your saved profile (including email) is retained while your account is active, until you unsubscribe (email only) or delete your data (Section 10).
De-identified research records are retained indefinitely in anonymous form after deletion.
Analytics data is retained per Google Analytics’ configured retention.

13. Security

We use technical and organizational safeguards: encryption in transit and at rest, least-privilege access controls, logging, a bot-defense/attestation check on submissions, and contractual security obligations on our service providers. No method is perfectly secure, but if an incident compromises personal information, we will notify affected users and regulators as required by applicable law.

14. Changes to this Policy

We date and version every Policy. For any material change, we will post the updated Policy on the Site and, where we have your email, notify you. Continued use after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of non-material changes.

Questions? Email privacy@ryanvet.com. Postal: 120 East Parish Street, Suite 310, Durham, North Carolina 27701.