Policy draft
Privacy policy
LAWYER REVIEW NEEDED · Draft — needs lawyer review
Draft status
This is a draft for lawyer review and is not a final privacy policy.
What we collect
We collect your email, survey answers, complaint text, optional evidence and consent choices. We store day/week IP hashes, broad country/ASN data, a user-agent hash and form timing for abuse prevention, never raw IP addresses.
How information is used
Email verifies your account and sends requested links, follow-ups and launch reminders. Scores use verified ratings and eligible complaints. Account email fields are never sent to AI; email addresses in text are redacted first. Image pre-checks require owner confirmation that emails have been removed.
Separate newsletter signup
The optional newsletter uses a separate signup page hosted by beehiiv. Signing in, voting, rating or submitting a review on RateTheBots does not subscribe you. Our signup link does not include your email, account details or sign-in token, and we do not automatically send website account or legacy newsletter preference data to beehiiv.
If you choose to subscribe, you provide your signup information directly to beehiiv. Newsletter preferences and unsubscribe are managed through beehiiv, separately from your website account. Review the privacy information on its signup page before subscribing. Newsletter email is currently paused.
AI and human review
Anthropic processes complaint fields for categorization, redaction and safety routing. AI output is validated and does not independently publish complaints. Evidence and receipts stay private; only consented, manually redacted copies may be shown.
Retention
Unconfirmed submissions expire after 24 hours. Complaint evidence has a 180-day retention limit; receipt files are deleted 7 days after review. IP hashes are removed after 90 days. Essential signed sessions last up to 30 days.
We retain minimal, non-public local withdrawal history to prevent accidental re-enrollment in the old website newsletter, including after account deletion. This record contains a keyed hash of your email, the withdrawal reason, source and time, not your email address. It does not track or change your beehiiv subscription. This is pseudonymous data, not anonymous data: the keyed hash lets us recognize the same email if it is used on the website again.
Your controls
Use My account to delete your account and personal data. Your email, sessions, free text and evidence are removed; anonymous numeric ratings and previously published aggregate statistics remain. Deleting your website account does not unsubscribe you from the separate beehiiv newsletter. Use the preferences or unsubscribe link in a beehiiv newsletter email to manage that subscription. For privacy help, email privacy@ratethebots.com.
Cookies and analytics
We use an essential session cookie. Optional Cloudflare Web Analytics is configured without analytics cookies. Third-party Turnstile verification is used on forms.