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VNEWSA VContent Group publication
Published Policy • v1.2Effective: Sep 18, 2026
Brand: VContent Group • Publication: VNews

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: September 18, 2026

Version: 1.4

Data Controller: Francis Vincent Sunday (Independent Owner & Operator)

Operating Jurisdiction: Ghana

Contact Email: vcontentplatforms@gmail.com

Telephone: +233537264904

1. Introduction & Overview

Welcome to VNews ("we", "us", or "our"). VNews is an independent news briefing and exploration platform developed and operated by Francis Vincent Sunday in Ghana. VNews synthesizes publicly available news reporting into structured, multi-source AI news briefings to provide readers with fast, balanced, and provenance-grounded information.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, handle, protect, and process information when you use the VNews mobile application and website (https://vhubs.site/vnews).

2. Intended Audience (18+) & Children's Privacy

  • Adult Target Audience: VNews is designed, operated, and intended solely for an adult audience aged 18 and over. The application is not directed at, designed for, or marketed to children.
  • No Age Verification Gate / No Date-of-Birth Collection: VNews does not require user accounts, registration, profile creation, or date-of-birth collection. Because VNews does not implement universal age-verification gating and does not restrict app store installation to verified adults, minors are not technically barred from downloading or opening the application. However, VNews does not knowingly solicit or seek to collect personal data from children or minors.
  • Parental Inquiries & Deletion: If a parent, legal guardian, or affected individual becomes aware that personal information pertaining to a child has been submitted to us through an optional communication channel (such as direct support email or voluntary editorial feedback), please contact our Data Controller at vcontentplatforms@gmail.com. Upon notification and verification, we will promptly review and delete any applicable personal information from our active records.

3. No User Accounts Policy

VNews is designed from the ground up to respect reader privacy and autonomy:

  • No Account Required: You do not need to register an account, sign in, or provide personal credentials (such as an email address, password, or profile information) to read news briefings, search coverage, or use the interactive Dig Deeper exploration feature.
  • No Account Profiles: VNews does not create, maintain, or monetize user account profiles.
  • Account Deletion Not Applicable: Because VNews does not provide or maintain user accounts, an account-deletion feature is not applicable to the VNews application.

4. Advertising & Sponsored Content Disclosure

To support ongoing operational and editorial infrastructure, VNews integrates advertising:

  • VNews-Managed House Ads: VNews displays internally managed informational and editorial notices (such as links to our AI Transparency or Editorial Policy). These house ads do not involve external tracking networks or personal profiling.
  • Google AdMob Integration: The VNews mobile application integrates Google AdMob to serve digital advertisements.
  • Non-Personalized Advertising in V1: In Version 1.0, VNews configures ad requests for contextual or non-personalized delivery where supported.
  • Technical Data Processing by AdMob: The advertising SDK and service provider (Google) may process essential technical signals—such as coarse IP address, mobile advertising identifiers (Google Advertising ID / GAID), device model, operating system version, and approximate location—as strictly necessary for ad delivery, fraud detection and bot mitigation, frequency capping, and aggregated reporting.
  • User Controls: You can reset or delete your Google Advertising ID or opt out of personalized ads at any time through your Android device settings (Settings > Google > Ads). VNews itself does not collect, store, or sell advertising identifiers.
  • Consent Controls: Where required by applicable data protection laws (such as GDPR or UK privacy frameworks), VNews respects user consent choices before non-essential data processing occurs.

5. Telemetry, Analytics & Crash Reporting

To maintain application reliability, prevent crashes, and understand aggregate feature adoption, VNews integrates industry-standard telemetry services calibrated for strict privacy:

  • Google Analytics for Firebase: VNews tracks high-level aggregated, pseudonymous engagement events (such as article opens, reading completion, shares, bookmark actions, and screen transitions).
  • No Raw Query or Input Transmission: Search events record only the search character count bucket (short, medium, long) and result count; questions asked in Dig Deeper transmit only question length buckets; inaccuracy reports transmit only report category types. Raw search terms, raw conversational text, and personal identifiers are never transmitted.
  • Sentry Crash & Diagnostic Reporting: To identify and fix software bugs, VNews uses Sentry.
  • Privacy Safeguards: `sendDefaultPii` is explicitly disabled so personal data is not collected. Network and search breadcrumbs containing search queries are stripped. Screenshot capture and view hierarchy capture are disabled.
  • Push Notifications (Firebase Cloud Messaging): When you enable notifications, your device registers an anonymous push token strictly to receive selected edition updates and breaking news alerts. Push notifications do not require a user account, and no personal identity is linked to push notification tokens.

6. Information We Collect & Process

We adhere strictly to data minimization principles:

  • Direct Communications & Feedback: If you submit an editorial inaccuracy report, reader feedback rating ("Was this helpful?"), publisher takedown request, or contact us via email, we collect the details you choose to provide (such as your message description and optional contact details).
  • Dig Deeper Exploration: When you use the interactive "Dig Deeper with AI" feature to ask questions about a briefing, your query is processed contextually against verified story facts. Exploration questions are not associated with personal user accounts or individual reader identities.
  • Technical & Diagnostic Logs: For operational stability, rate limiting, abuse prevention, and aggregated read counts, our servers record standard technical metadata including ephemeral SHA-256 client hashes, request timestamps, and user-agent headers. Raw IP addresses are not permanently retained in application databases.

7. Local-Only On-Device Storage

In Version 1.0 of VNews, reading data resides on your device:

  • Local Storage: Your active edition selection, theme appearance settings, saved bookmarks, reading history, and cached news feeds are stored exclusively on your local device using client SQLite and secure preference storage.
  • User Control: You may clear your reading history and cached data at any time from within the application settings (Settings > Clear Reading History / Clear Cache).
  • No Cloud Account Sync: We do not transmit, back up, or synchronize your personal reading history or saved bookmarks to our servers.

8. Data Retention & Deletion Policy

We retain data only as long as necessary to fulfill the specific operational, diagnostic, and editorial purposes described in this policy, or to comply with applicable legal obligations:

1. On-Device Local Data (Bookmarks, History, Preferences, Cache):

  • Retention: Stored exclusively on your local device for as long as you choose to keep the app installed or retain your reading history.
  • Deletion: You can delete your bookmarks and reading history at any time directly in the app settings, by clearing the app data in Android system settings (Settings > Apps > VNews > Storage > Clear Data), or by uninstalling the application.

2. Push Notification Tokens & Preferences:

  • Retention: Device notification tokens and category/edition preferences are retained on our servers only while your device installation remains active.
  • Deletion / Deactivation: If you disable notifications in the app settings or revoke notification permissions in Android settings, notification delivery stops. If a device token fails permanently (such as when the app is uninstalled), our servers immediately deactivate the device record (`is_active = false`).

3. Editorial Feedback, Corrections & Direct Correspondence:

  • Retention: Retained for the period necessary to investigate, verify, and resolve the editorial report, communicate any correction to you (if contact details were provided), and maintain internal audit records of published corrections. Non-actionable correspondence is periodically purged.
  • Deletion: You may request deletion of feedback or correspondence containing personal contact details by emailing our Data Controller.

4. Crash & Diagnostic Telemetry (Sentry & Firebase Analytics):

  • Retention: Aggregated pseudonymous analytics and crash diagnostic events are retained according to standard operational retention schedules (typically 30 to 90 days), after which telemetry is automatically deleted or aged out by the diagnostic providers.

5. Technical Server & Security Logs:

  • Retention: Ephemeral server logs (including rate-limiting counters and ephemeral client hashes) are retained for standard operational and security monitoring cycles (typically 7 to 30 days) and are then automatically purged or rotated.

9. User Deletion & Privacy Requests

Because VNews does not provide user accounts, there is no account profile to delete. However, we respect your rights regarding any personal data you may have provided to us:

  • On-Device Data: You have full direct control over on-device data and can delete it at any time using in-app settings or device app management.
  • Server-Held Communications / Privacy Inquiries: If you have submitted direct correspondence, editorial feedback, or a takedown notice containing your name, email, or other personal details, or if you wish to request deletion of applicable server-held records associated with your correspondence, you may contact our Data Controller directly:
  • Data Controller: Francis Vincent Sunday
  • Email: vcontentplatforms@gmail.com
  • Phone: +233537264904 (Ghana, UTC+0)
  • Subject Line: "Privacy / Data Deletion Request - VNews"
  • Verification & Limitations: We will review and process your request promptly. Because VNews does not collect personal identities for general reading, searching, or exploring news, we cannot locate, retrieve, or delete anonymous technical telemetry or pseudonymous device tokens unless you provide the specific installation identifier or correspondence details necessary to locate the record.

10. Third-Party Artificial Intelligence Processing

To synthesize news briefings and answer story exploration queries, VNews utilizes the Google Gemini API (via Google Cloud infrastructure).

  • Contextual story facts and your Dig Deeper questions are sent to the AI model strictly to generate the requested text explanation.
  • Queries are not linked to your personal identity or a user account.
  • We do not sell, rent, or trade your exploration queries to third parties.

11. External Links & Publisher Attribution

Every VNews briefing clearly attributes original reporting sources and provides direct links to primary publisher articles. When you navigate to external links, you leave VNews and are subject to the respective publisher's policies and practices.

12. Security Safeguards

We maintain appropriate administrative and technical safeguards to protect server-side data, including HTTPS encryption in transit, strict database row-level security, least-privilege administrative access, and isolated operational credential boundaries.

13. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect technological improvements, legal requirements, or operational updates. When changes are made, the Effective Date and Version at the top of this policy will be updated. Continued use of VNews following posted updates indicates your acknowledgment of the revised policy.

14. Contact the Data Controller

For questions, comments, or data rights requests regarding this Privacy Policy:

Francis Vincent Sunday

Owner & Operator — VNews

Operating Country: Ghana

Email: vcontentplatforms@gmail.com

Phone: +233537264904 (Ghana, UTC+0)

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