AniRanks Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Information You Provide

When you register for an account, we collect:

• Email address: used for account authentication, password reset, and service communications
• Username: your public display name on the platform
• Password: stored in hashed, non-reversible form using industry-standard encryption

When you use the Service, you may also provide:

• Ranking votes and ranked lists
• Ranking suggestions (title, description, category)
• Upvotes on other users' suggestions
• Comments on rankings, and reports you file against other users' comments
• The avatar outfit you equip and any outfits you redeem
• Your notification and email preferences
• Your progress through the guided onboarding flow, if you use it

1.2 Information Collected Automatically

When you use the Service, we may automatically collect:

• Browser type and version
• Operating system
• IP address (used for security, rate limiting, and abuse prevention, not for identification or profiling)
• Pages visited and features used within the Service
• Date and time of visits

This information is collected through standard server logs and is used solely for security, performance monitoring, and abuse prevention. We do not use this data to build behavioral profiles or for advertising purposes.

1.3 First-Party Usage Analytics

We record page views in our own database so we can see which rankings and features people actually use. For each page view we store the page path, the date and time, the referring website (recorded once at the start of a visit), a randomly generated session identifier held in your browser's session storage for the current tab, and your account ID if you are signed in. These analytics run on our own infrastructure; the data is not sent to an external analytics vendor and is not sold or shared for advertising.

You can exclude your browser from these aggregates at any time by visiting any AniRanks page with ?noanalytics=1 appended to the URL. The preference is stored locally in your browser and can be cleared with ?noanalytics=0.

1.4 Payment Information

If you purchase a paid feature, payment is processed by Stripe, Inc. Your card number, expiry date, security code, and any billing address or tax information are entered on Stripe's own hosted checkout page and are transmitted directly to Stripe. AniRanks never receives, processes, or stores your full payment card details.

What we do store is limited to: your Stripe customer identifier, your Stripe subscription identifier and its status (including whether it is set to cancel at the end of the current period), and a record of each purchase and the credits it granted, including the Stripe checkout session identifier and the date the credit was used. We share your email address with Stripe so that your payment can be linked to your account and Stripe can send you receipts. Stripe processes this data as an independent controller under its own privacy policy, available at stripe.com/privacy.

1.5 Information from Third Parties

AniRanks uses MyAnimeList's official API v2 (myanimelist.net) to power anime, manga, and movie searches within the platform. When you search for one of these during voting, your search query is sent to MyAnimeList's servers. Character searches are served from our own catalog of title and character records and do not send your query to MyAnimeList. We do not share your personal account information with MyAnimeList. Please review MyAnimeList's privacy policy at myanimelist.net for information on how they handle data.

We use Sentry (sentry.io) to capture application errors and performance data from production builds so we can diagnose crashes and slow pages. Sentry reports may include the page URL, browser and operating system details, and a technical stack trace of the error. We do not attach your email address, username, or account ID to these reports.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Create and manage your account
• Enable you to vote, suggest rankings, comment, and participate in the community
• Calculate and display community rankings and points
• Generate your AI Taste Profile when you request one, as described in Section 3
• Render the share cards you choose to create, as described in Section 4
• Process payments, provide the paid features you buy, and keep your subscription and credit balances accurate
• Send you in-app notifications related to your activity (suggestion status updates, points earned)
• Send you email notifications about your activity, where you have not turned them off
• Send account emails such as password resets, email address confirmations, and purchase receipts
• Monitor and prevent fraudulent activity, abuse, and Terms of Service violations
• Understand which parts of the Service are used, and improve its performance and reliability

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your data for targeted advertising.

3. AI Features

3.1 Comment Moderation

When you post a comment, its text is automatically screened for policy violations using Google's Gemini API before publication. Only the comment text itself is sent to Google, never your email address, username, or any other account identifiers.

3.2 AI Taste Profile

The AI Taste Profile is generated only when you ask for one. To produce it, we send the following to Anthropic's Claude API: the titles of the rankings you have voted on, the names and order of the entries you ranked, and publicly available genre and synopsis information about those titles. If you are regenerating an existing profile, your previous profile text is sent as well so the model can avoid repeating it.

Your email address, username, and account ID are never sent to Anthropic. Anthropic processes this data as our service provider and, under its commercial terms, does not use it to train its models. Your generated Taste Profile is stored in your account and is visible only to you; we do not publish it or show it to other users.

To ground these profiles in accurate genre information, we maintain a catalog of publicly available title and character metadata sourced from MyAnimeList. This catalog contains no user data.

4. Information That Is Public

Some information is public by the nature of the Service. The following is visible to other users, and in most cases to visitors who are not signed in:

• Your username, avatar and equipped outfit, points total, and the date you joined
• Comments you post, and the rankings you submit or suggest
• Your votes as part of aggregated community ranking results

Your email address is never displayed publicly. Your AI Taste Profile, your notification settings, and your purchase and subscription records are private to your account.

When you create a share card for a ranking, we render an image containing the ranking title, your picks and their cover art, and your username. That image is stored on our infrastructure at a public, unguessable URL so that social platforms can display it. Anyone who has the link, or who sees the post you shared it in, can view it. Share images may remain accessible after you delete the post you shared them in.

5. Data Storage and International Transfers

AniRanks uses cloud infrastructure providers to store and process your data. Your data may be stored and processed outside of your country of residence, including in the United States.

By using AniRanks, you consent to the transfer of your information to these servers. We ensure that our service providers maintain appropriate security measures to protect your data.

For users in the European Economic Area (EEA): transfers to third countries are made pursuant to standard contractual clauses or other appropriate safeguards as provided under GDPR.

6. Cookies and Local Storage

AniRanks uses cookies and browser local and session storage to:

• Maintain your login session so you do not need to re-authenticate on each visit
• Store your UI preferences
• Hold the per-tab session identifier used for our first-party page-view analytics (Section 1.3)
• Remember that you have opted your browser out of those analytics
• Remember your progress through the onboarding flow

We also use the Reddit Pixel, a measurement tool provided by Reddit, to measure the aggregate performance of our ad campaigns. The Reddit Pixel may set cookies and collect your IP address, device and browser information, and the pages you visit on AniRanks. We use this data solely for aggregate ad-campaign measurement. It is not used to build individual profiles, and it is never sold. You can review Reddit's privacy policy at reddit.com/policies/privacy-policy for details on how Reddit handles this data. You may block the Reddit Pixel using your browser's tracking protection or an ad blocker without affecting site functionality.

By using the Service, you consent to the use of these essential cookies. You may disable cookies in your browser settings, but doing so will prevent you from remaining logged in.

7. Data Sharing

We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties. We may share your data only in the following limited circumstances:

• Service Providers: We share data with the providers that operate the Service: Cloudflare (CDN, DNS, and hosting), Supabase (database, authentication, storage, and backend), Stripe (payment processing and subscription billing, as described in Section 1.4), Resend (transactional and notification email delivery), Anthropic (AI Taste Profile generation, as described in Section 3.2), Google (Gemini comment moderation, as described in Section 3.1), Sentry (error and performance monitoring, as described in Section 1.5), and Reddit (ad-campaign measurement, as described in Section 6). Except for Stripe, which acts as an independent controller for payment data, these providers process your data on our behalf and are contractually bound to protect it.
• Legal Compliance: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law, or in good-faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to comply with a legal obligation or protect the rights, property, or safety of AniRanks, our users, or the public.
• Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your data may be transferred. We will notify users before your personal data is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

8. Data Retention

We retain your personal data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal data within 30 days, except where we are required to retain certain information for legal or security purposes. Anonymized, aggregated data (such as ranking vote counts and ranking results) may be retained indefinitely as it cannot be traced back to individual users.

Two categories are retained beyond account deletion:

• Billing and transaction records, which we and our payment processor must keep to meet tax, accounting, and anti-fraud obligations. These are retained for the period required by applicable law and are not used for any other purpose.
• Email suppression records, which store the email addresses that have unsubscribed, bounced, or filed a spam complaint. We keep these so that we continue to honor your unsubscribe request and do not email an address that has asked us to stop.

Share images you generated are stored under a content-derived filename and may persist after account deletion; contact us if you want a specific share image removed.

9. Your Rights

9.1 All Users

• Access: You may request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction: You may update your account information directly within the platform settings.
• Deletion: You may delete your account at any time from your settings, which will result in the deletion of your personal data as described above.
• Data Portability: You may request an export of your data in a machine-readable format.
• Email preferences: You may turn off email notifications in your settings, or use the unsubscribe link in any notification email.
• Analytics opt-out: You may exclude your browser from our first-party page-view analytics as described in Section 1.3.

9.2 EEA / GDPR Users

If you are located in the European Economic Area, you have additional rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including:

• The right to restrict processing of your data.
• The right to object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• The right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

Our legal basis for processing your data is: (a) performance of a contract (to provide the Service you signed up for, including processing payments and delivering the paid features you buy); (b) legitimate interests (security, fraud prevention, understanding how the Service is used, and service improvement); (c) compliance with a legal obligation (retention of billing records); and (d) your consent where explicitly obtained.

9.3 Brazilian (LGPD) Users

If you are located in Brazil, you have rights under the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD), including the rights to access, correct, anonymize, block, or delete your data, and to revoke consent. To exercise these rights, contact us at the address below.

9.4 California (CCPA) Users

If you are a California resident, you have the right to know what personal data we collect, to request deletion of your data, and to opt out of the sale of personal data. AniRanks does not sell personal data.

10. Children's Privacy

AniRanks is not directed at children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we will take steps to delete such information promptly. If you believe your child has provided us with their information, please contact us immediately.

11. Security

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your data, including:

• HTTPS encryption for all data transmitted between your browser and our servers
• Password hashing using bcrypt or equivalent strong hashing algorithms
• Row-level access controls in our database limiting each account to its own data
• Rate limiting on sensitive endpoints to deter abuse and automated attacks
• Regular security monitoring through built-in protections

No method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any significant changes by updating the effective date at the top of this document and, where appropriate, providing notice within the Service. We encourage you to review this Policy periodically.

13. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your data rights, or have a privacy concern, please contact us at:

Email: [email protected]
Website: aniranks.com

We will respond to all legitimate requests within 30 days.