Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 2026

This policy explains what information ValueRank collects, why we collect it, and what you can do about it. We aim to keep things minimal and clear.

Who we are

ValueRank is operated from the European Union. For privacy questions, contact info@valuerank.net.

What we collect

Account data — when you register, we store your email address and a salted hash of your password. We never store passwords in plain text.

Profile data — during profile setup, we require your birth year and country. We use them to tailor content and to produce aggregated, non-identifying audience insights. You can update both from Account Settings.

Activity data — your rankings, comparisons, subscriptions, favourites, suggestions, feed preferences, and article state such as read, saved, or removed. This is the data that powers your personalised ValueRank and lets your feed stay consistent across devices.

Traffic and technical data — for each successful page view, our first-party analytics may record the time, page path without its query string, external referring hostname, coarse device/browser/operating-system labels, whether the request appears automated, and a pseudonymous visitor identifier. Signed-in visits can be associated with your account ID. For anonymous visits, the identifier is created with a secret one-way hash from the source IP address and browser user-agent; ValueRank does not persist the raw IP address or full user-agent in its traffic-analytics table. We also store your most recent login timestamp for account security and service operation.

Email confirmation / password reset tokens — short-lived secrets used to verify your email or reset your password.

How we use it

To run your account and keep you signed in.
To compute your personal rankings and assemble your feed.
To find recent, relevant, English-language public content for exact items you follow and for the personalised categories you choose.
To understand page usage, distinguish human traffic from automated traffic, diagnose problems, and protect the service from abuse.
To send essential account emails (address confirmation and password reset) and—only if you opt in—occasional emails about major new ValueRank features and important product changes.

What we don't do

We don't sell your raw personal data or your individual ranking history.
We don't share information that identifies you personally with advertisers or partners.
We don't embed third-party advertising networks or cross-site behavioural trackers in the site.

Aggregated insights and advertising

ValueRank may produce and share aggregated, non-identifying insights derived from user activity—for example, “Brand X is in the top 10 for roughly 12,000 users in this country” or “Movies in genre Y are most valued by users aged 25–34.” These aggregates are designed so that they cannot be linked back to an individual account.

We may also show advertising or sponsored content within ValueRank itself. If we do, those placements are decided by our own systems based on the categories, items, or aggregate audiences you fall into—never by a third-party ad network and never by sharing your individual profile with the advertiser. The advertiser sees the aggregate audience, not you.

We will keep this section up to date as our approach to advertising develops.

Where it lives

Your data is stored on dedicated servers in the European Union, encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and protected by access controls. Backups are kept on the same infrastructure.

How long we keep it

Account data is kept for as long as your account is active. Current feed articles are limited to the previous 30 days. Read and removed article state is normally cleared after 90 days; saved article snapshots are kept until you unsave them or delete your account. Shared exact-item news caches stop refreshing when nobody follows the item and are normally pruned after 30 days without a follower. Traffic and technical records are kept only while they are useful for operating, securing, and understanding the service. If you delete your account, your personal data and account-linked activity—including rankings, comparisons, feed state, and saved articles—are deleted. Item suggestions may be retained only after they are unlinked from your account. Email and security logs may be retained for a short additional period.

Your rights

If you're in the EU/EEA or UK, you have the right to access, correct, export, restrict, or delete your personal data, and to object to certain processing. You can:

Update your profile details and product-email preference from Account Settings, and manage content preferences from the main page.
Delete your account at any time from the account page—this removes your personal data.
Email info@valuerank.net for any other request, including data export or questions about traffic analytics.

Third-party services

We use a small number of third parties strictly to operate the service:

hCaptcha — bot protection on registration. See the hCaptcha Privacy Policy.
YouTube API Services and embedded player — to find and play trailers, gameplay videos, and music videos. YouTube and Google may receive technical information when their player or thumbnails load. See the Google Privacy Policy.
Email provider — to deliver transactional and notification emails.
Hosting provider — physical infrastructure for the database and application servers.
Anthropic — to find and curate personalised category news. ValueRank may send a generated psychological/taste profile, top- and bottom-ranked item titles, genre signals, and the selected category. We do not send your name, email address, account ID, country, birth year, saved articles, favourites, or exact-item bell subscriptions, and we do not include a stable user identifier. See the Anthropic Privacy Center.
X — to retrieve recent public posts from verified official accounts associated with exact items users follow. ValueRank sends only the public X account identifier and a cursor for posts already checked; it does not send ValueRank user identities, profiles, rankings, or subscription lists to X. Qualifying posts are cached and displayed with attribution and a direct link to the original post. See the X Privacy Policy.
Perplexity — to find news about an exact public catalog item that a user explicitly follows. ValueRank sends the item's public title and category, not the user's psychological profile or account information. See Perplexity API Privacy & Security.

Our email and hosting providers process data on our behalf. Anthropic and Perplexity process the limited search inputs described above to provide news-search results. YouTube, Google, and hCaptcha process information under their own terms and privacy policies when their services load or are used.

Children

ValueRank is not directed at children under 16. If you believe a minor has registered, please contact us and we'll remove the account.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top and, for significant changes, notify you in-app or by email before they take effect.