Privacy policy
Effective date: [DATE]
[LEGAL ENTITY NAME] ("carstandings", "we", "us") operates carstandings.com and api.carstandings.com. This policy explains what personal information we handle, why, and your choices. Contact: [CONTACT EMAIL].
1. The short version
- You can browse the Service without telling us who you are, but reading a car's figures needs a free account, except for the ten most-registered models each year, which are open to everyone.
- If you create an account we hold your email address, an optional name, and (if you sign in with Google) the identifier Google gives us.
- If you buy a plan, Paddle handles your payment; we hold the plan you bought and its status, not your card.
- We keep counts of usage (a free account's five different cars a day, and by IP address, account or API key for the other limits) to run the free tier and the plan limits.
- We use no advertising trackers and we sell no personal information.
2. What we collect and why
Browsing without an account. Our host, Cloudflare, records requests to the Service in its logs (IP address, browser type, page requested, time). We keep a count of how many market-years an IP address has loaded in a day, to decide when to show a bot check; that counter is kept for the current day (UTC) and then expires. An account is required to read a car's figures at all: without one you see identity and a small public set (combined fuel economy, CO₂, the NHTSA overall rating and the recall count) on every car, and the ten most-registered models of the year in full — we keep no cookie and no count about what you looked at while doing this. Your theme choice (light or dark) is kept in your browser's local storage. We record simple usage events — a page viewed, the sign-in prompt shown, a checkout opened — with the page and the time, so we can see how the Service is used. These events are stored with Cloudflare and in our database; they are not linked to your name.
With an account. Our sign-in provider, Clerk, holds your email address, an optional name, your password (hashed, which we never see) or the Google identifier if you signed in with Google, and session information. We hold your Clerk user identifier and the plan attached to it. A free account may read five different cars a day in full; we count that on our servers by which cars you read, not how many times, keyed to your account and not to your browser, and the count resets at the next midnight UTC. Opening a car you already read that day again does not use up another. Once you have used today's five, your browser separately remembers, in local storage, that it has already shown you the upgrade notice, so you see it once a day rather than on every page after that.
With a paid plan. Paddle.com Market Ltd, our merchant of record, collects and holds your payment details and billing address and issues your invoices; we never see your card number. We hold Paddle's customer and subscription identifiers, your plan, its status and billing dates, so we can grant access and show your plan on your account page.
Using the API or bulk downloads. We keep a count of requests per API key and downloads per account for each day, to apply the plan limits, and the time your key was last used. API keys are stored hashed.
Writing to us. If you email us we keep the correspondence for as long as needed to deal with it.
3. Cookies and similar storage
| Name | Set by | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clerk session cookies | Clerk | Keeps you signed in | Per Clerk's settings |
Cloudflare cookies (e.g. cf_clearance, Turnstile) | Cloudflare | Security and the bot check | Per Cloudflare's settings |
| Theme preference | carstandings.com (local storage) | Remembers light or dark mode | Until you clear it |
| Upgrade notice shown | carstandings.com (local storage) | Records that a free account past its daily five has already been shown today's upgrade notice, so it is not repeated on every page | Until the next midnight UTC, when the day's flag is replaced |
We set no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. The daily count of distinct cars a free account has read is not kept in a cookie or in your browser at all: it is counted on our servers against your account (section 2), so it cannot be reset by clearing your browser.
4. Who else handles your information
- Cloudflare, Inc. — hosting, content delivery, security, bot checks, and the database and storage the Service runs on.
- Clerk, Inc. — sign-in and account management.
- Paddle.com Market Ltd — payments, invoicing and tax, as merchant of record.
Each processes your information under its own terms and privacy policy. We share information with no one else, except where the law requires it or to protect the Service or its users from abuse.
5. Legal basis (where it applies)
Where data-protection law requires a basis: we process account and billing information to perform our agreement with you; usage counts and security logs on our legitimate interest in running and protecting the Service; and optional information (a name, the theme choice) with your consent, which you can withdraw by removing it.
6. How long we keep things
Daily usage counters expire at the end of the day. Cloudflare's request logs are kept for Cloudflare's standard period. Account information is kept while your account exists and for [CONFIRM: 30 days] after it is closed. Billing records are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires. Usage events are kept for [CONFIRM: 13 months].
7. Your choices and rights
You can see and change your account details on your account page, cancel a plan there, and close your account by [CONFIRM: your account page / emailing us]. You can ask us to tell you what personal information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it, by writing to [CONTACT EMAIL]; we will answer within 30 days. Residents of Canada, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and certain U.S. states have further rights under their laws, including to complain to a supervisory authority; we will honour them.
8. Where information is held
The Service runs on Cloudflare's network and our providers operate in the United States and elsewhere; your information may be processed outside the country you live in. [CONFIRM: any transfer safeguards your lawyer wants named.]
9. Children
The Service is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect their information.
10. Security
Connections are encrypted, API keys are stored hashed, and access to production systems is limited to those who operate the Service. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting you we will tell you as the law requires.
11. Changes
We will post changes here with a new effective date, and email account holders about changes that affect them.
12. Contact
[LEGAL ENTITY NAME] · [POSTAL ADDRESS] · [CONTACT EMAIL]