Privacy Policy

What we collect today

Right now the site is mostly a place to read. You can browse everything without giving us any information about yourself.

Two things do reach our servers:

• Contact form submissions. If you write to us through the contact page, we store your name, email address, subject, and message in our database so we can read it and reply.
• Server logs. Like almost every website, our hosting providers keep standard server logs. These can include your IP address, browser type, and the pages you requested. We use them to keep the site running and to spot abuse, not to profile you.

What we will collect when accounts launch

User accounts are not live yet. When they launch, this is what will change. We are writing it down now so you know what is coming and we do not have to rewrite this policy later.

• Account details. An email address and a password, or your basic Google profile (name, email) if you sign in with Google. Passwords will be stored hashed, never in plain text.
• Things you post. Upvotes, reviews, comments, tool submissions, and edit suggestions will be stored with your account and shown publicly under your profile name.
• Tool claims. If you claim a tool on behalf of a company, we will collect what you send us to prove your affiliation, such as a work email address. We review claims manually and keep the claim record.

How we use your data

We use what we collect to:

• Reply to your messages.
• Keep the site secure and working.
• When accounts launch: sign you in, show your contributions, and review tool claims.

That is the full list. We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers.

Cookies

Today we do not set cookies beyond what is strictly needed for the site to work. There are no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

When accounts launch, we will set one authentication cookie so you stay signed in. It will be httpOnly, which means scripts on the page cannot read it. Even then, our stance stays the same: no ad cookies, no trackers.

Where your data lives

We use a small set of infrastructure providers to run the site. They process data on our behalf:

• Vercel hosts the website you are reading.
• Railway hosts our API server.
• MongoDB Atlas hosts our database, including contact form submissions.
• Cloudflare R2 stores files such as images, served from file.freealternatives.to.

Each of these providers keeps standard operational logs of their own.

How long we keep it

We keep contact form messages for as long as we need them to handle your request and a reasonable period after, in case you follow up. Server logs are kept for a short period by our hosting providers and then rotate out.

When accounts launch, we will keep account data for as long as your account exists. If you delete your account, we will delete or anonymize the personal data tied to it within a reasonable time, except where we need to keep something to prevent abuse or meet a legal obligation.

Your rights

You can ask us what personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Send your request through the contact page and we will respond. We may ask you to confirm you are the person the data belongs to before we act on a request.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update this page and the effective date at the top. If a change is significant, such as accounts going live, we will make that clear rather than bury it. Questions about any of this? Ask us through the contact page.