Privacy policy

What you can do without an account

You do not need an account or an email address to rank a list, compare with a friend, or join a group vote. The contact form is the exception: it asks for a name, an email, and a message so a reply is possible.

Group votes

A group stores the title, the options, a hashed organizer key, optional expected size and deadline, and a short share code. Each ballot stores a hashed voter key, a nickname, the order of options that person ranked, which options they ruled out, whether they chose to share the order, and a timestamp. Anyone with the group link can see nicknames, the combined result, and any rankings people chose to share. Ruled-out options are counted, not attached to names, in that shared view. People in a small group may still guess. Group links stop working after 30 days. The organizer can delete the group and its ballots with the private organizer link. Expiry stops access. It does not, by itself, delete the stored rows.

Friend comparisons

Sharing a finished ranking saves the list, the order, and an optional nickname, and returns a short link. Those links do not have a scheduled expiry. Anyone with the link can open the list. Older links may still carry the list in the address itself.

Visitor rankings on public lists

If you add your order to a public list, Pickaside stores the list’s slug, a hash of a random id kept in this browser, the order you submitted, and a timestamp. It does not store your name for that tally. Submitting again from the same browser replaces your earlier order for that list. The public page shows only the combined tally.

Contact messages

The contact form stores the name, email, message, and time you send. A hidden company field is ignored if it is filled in. Messages are kept so they can be read and replied to. Write again, or say so in the message, if you want one deleted.

Activity counters

Pickaside counts daily totals for votes created, invitations opened, ballots submitted, and invitations that lead to a new vote. These counters store no names, option text, IP addresses, or visitor identifiers. They are approximate activity counts, not a count of unique people. A temporary tab flag notes whether this tab opened an invitation before creating a vote. The flag is not sent as an identifier. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control turn that optional counting off in the browser.

What stays in the browser

An unfinished ranking, list drafts, the organizer key, the voter key, and the random id used for public list rankings are stored in this browser. Clearing site data, or the button on the About page, removes the unfinished ranking stored under the progress key. Other keys are ordinary local storage and session storage.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Pages include Cloudflare’s Web Analytics beacon so the site can see aggregate visits and performance. The beacon is loaded from static.cloudflareinsights.com. Cloudflare describes this product as cookieless. Pickaside does not use it to build advertising profiles, and it does not sell personal information. Cloudflare’s own privacy documentation covers what the beacon transmits.

Advertising

There are no ads on the site right now. The code can reserve labelled placements on list and topic pages only. Voting screens, group screens, setup forms, and this policy stay free of them. If ads are enabled, they are expected to be Google AdSense, which uses cookies and its own policy. That change will be described here before the switch is flipped. An ads.txt file is already published for the publisher id that would be used.

Hosting

The site is a Cloudflare Worker. Cloudflare processes connection data as the host. Fonts are files on this site, not a request to a third-party font service. The database is Cloudflare D1.

Children

Pickaside is a general-audience tool for deciding everyday plans. It is not directed at children under 13, and it should not be used to collect personal information from them.

Contact

Use the contact form for privacy questions, deletion requests, and corrections.