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Data Management Rules

Our services allow users to present themselves to the world. We understand, however, that not everyone is interested in doing so. That's why we've made it so that you can choose for yourself what information you want to share and with whom.

In this article, we will describe in detail about what data we collect, why we collect it, and how you can manage your information.
What Information We Collect
By using VK, you share information with us that helps us make our services better. For example, if you allow us to access your location, we can point you towards some events nearby or interesting live streams from your city. If you added your birthday information and made it public, we send your friends reminders for them to wish you a happy birthday.

We collect the information you give us when registering on VK or when using our services. To create an account, one must enter their first and last name, telephone number, password, gender, and date of birth. We never save passwords unencrypted and no one has access to them.

Before using our services, you can add a photo and enter other information on your profile so other users can find you. We also collect information regarding which of our services you use. Such information includes whether you've published a post on your wall. Here is a list of the kinds of information we collect:

  • Location. As a result of the information provided in your profile and information about your IP address, we can recommend more interesting posts and show you more relevant advertisements. With your permission, we can also have access to more precise location information with the help of technologies your device uses, such as wireless networks and GPS.
  • Registration Information. Thanks to the information you provided when registering, including your first and last name, date of birth, gender, telephone number and email address (if it was entered), you are able to create a profile and use VK’s features, such as meeting other people, joining groups, and receiving personalized recommendations and notifications.
  • Contacting Support. We collect information that you voluntarily provide to allow us to effectively help you restore access to your account and prevent misuse of the website.
  • Information from Your Profile Description, including your relationship status, place of residence, hometown, education and information about your career and military service. If your privacy settings allow, other people can find you through searching shared interests or places of work.
  • VK Login History and Device Information. We collect information about the devices which you use to access our services. Data collected from this could include the IP address, operating system, browser and service provider that was used. With your permission, we can also collect information about your contacts from your phone's address book and installed applications, as well as have access to your camera, microphone, stored media and notification functions. You may have given us access to these by using VK Calls, friends search, creating stories or by sending videos, photos or voice messages.
  • Information That Is Automatically Received when logging on to VK or other websites with the use of cookies, and such technology as VK Ads Pixel and VK Widgets. We use this information to allow users certain functions on other websites, such as logging in or sharing content. This also allows us to improve our advertising tools, collect statistics and make VK better. Targeted advertisements only use anonymous data, not the data of a specific individual.
  • Publication and Follower History. Joining a community, adding and deleting friends, posting videos and photos, your call history and likes are all parts of this history. This information may also be available to your friends, followers and profile's visitors, depending on your privacy settings.
  • Messages. So you can make full use of the VK messenger, we save the names of the sender and receiver, the date and time of the message, the number of messages, the text of the messages and attachments. 
  • Tagged Media Files. You have to confirm tags yourself and can set proper privacy settings for them. This data allows notifications and personalized recommendations to be better suited to you. And, of course, tags make communicating with friends more appealing. 
  • Payment Information. If you used VK payment services or money transfers, for security purposes, we save the first and the last four digits of your bank card number, to associate it to exactly your profile. You can unlink your card in the "Payment methods" section on the "Payments and transfers" page. 
  • Third-Party Information. An example of this would be if a different user gave us access to their telephone's address book and you were one of their contacts. We could combine this information with the rest of the information we have about you and use it to generate new friend recommendations.
How We Use Information
We create services which we ourselves enjoy using. This is the main secret of the VK Social Network Team’s success. Powerful and modern technology is behind our light and understandable interface. Everything works so smoothly that it’s easy to forget about the interface while you’re chatting with friends and simply enjoying the content available on the platform. However, for our services to work correctly, we need the information which you share with us. Thanks to that information, we:
  • develop, improve and distribute our services and products.
  • analyze the use of various functions, and conduct polls and anonymous research.
  • create more personalized content recommendations, friend suggestions and relevant notifications, taking into account your interests.
  • increase the safety and privacy of all of our products.
  • fight spam, scammers, abuse and violations of our rules.
For targeted advertising, only anonymous data, containing no information related to any one individual user, is used.
How We Share Information
We can share information about you to make it easier for you to use VK functions, or if it's required by current legislation. Information may be provided to: 
  • other VK users. For example, by showing them your name, photos, profile, posts, stories, friend list and followers, if you've allowed this information to be shared in your privacy settings. 
  • external application developers. When you add a game or app, you allow developers to access certain information that you agree to share in a special pop-up, such as your friend list or information from your profile description like your name, city, birthday and photos.
  • service providers in a limited, but necessary, amount to support our services' functionality through such things as conducting payments or analytic research.
  • government authorities, in response to a legally-grounded official request in order to comply with court orders, facilitate investigations, protect the rights of third parties, and identify fraud and security threats. You can read more about government requests here.
We may also disclose generalized, anonymized information to our business partners and advertisers that doesn't contain any personally identifiable information, such as audience segment statistics. It is impossible to identify any particular user with this information.
How to Manage Your Information
VK has simple and understandable privacy settings. You can choose who can visit your page, contact you and see what you post on your page. You can even make your profile completely private and protect your personal space from unknown people, leaving your page fully visible only to your friends. Find out more about how you can manage your privacy in our blog

Follow precautionary measures to protect your profile and personal data from scammers. Use a complex password, ensure that your page is linked to an up-to-date phone number and email address, periodically check your account activity history and do not click on suspicious links. Learn more about 2-step Verification

You have the ability to delete your profile at any time for any reason. We will keep the necessary information about you for the amount of time required by law. In Russia, VK is included in the Register of Organizers of Distribution of Information in the Internet Network, and is therefore required to store Russian users' messages for six months and other data for a year (in accordance with paragraph 3, Article 10.1 of Federal Law "On Information, Information Technologies, and Information Protection").
Privacy Policy
In this section, we quickly, and in simple words, explained some basic information regarding VK data security. If you wish, you can also read the desktop version of the Privacy Policy. Periodically, we may make some changes to it.

If you have any questions regarding privacy settings on VK or about the personal data archive, please see the Support section.
Download Your Information
We want you to know what kinds of user information we can collect, store or process. You have the ability to request a copy of your VK data. Currently, this feature is being tested, but we are making our best effort to improve it so that it will be easier for you to receive such information.

You can download a copy of your VK data anytime, anywhere, regardless of where you live. This includes users from EU countries, which can request their data in accordance to the GDPR. It is easy and completely safe. You will need to confirm your VK data copy request using a one-time confirmation code. The unique download link is impossible to open from a different profile. You can also add an extra level of protection by encrypting your data copy using a personal OpenPGP key.

It may take several days to prepare your data copy. You will receive a notification when it is ready to download. For security reasons, it will be available to download for a short period of time.

Your VK data copy will be provided as a ZIP file, so it will be more convenient to view your information on a computer. For your convenience, we've divided up your information into different categories. For example, it's easy to find photos you liked, your money transfer history or a range of your interests which are used to provide targeted advertising.
Please sign in to request a copy of your VK data.