Privacy

Payments are processed entirely by Stripe. Your card number, expiry and security code are submitted directly to Stripe and are never transmitted to, seen by, or stored on our servers. We receive only a payment identifier, the amount, and whether it succeeded.

Stripe processes that payment as an independent controller under its own privacy policy. We pass Stripe your email address so it can send you a receipt.

• Your email address — collected by Stripe at checkout and passed to us, so a listing stays tied to whoever paid for it and so raising a bid only costs you the difference. There is nothing to sign up for and no password: your email is the only identity we hold. Kept while the listing is live.
• Your listings and payments — the link you submitted, the amount, and the Stripe identifiers for the payment. Kept while the listing is live, and afterwards for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Billing country and any tax registration number — collected by Stripe at checkout where we are required to calculate sales tax or VAT. Held by Stripe; we store only the tax amount charged, for our own accounting.
• A visitor cookie — one random identifier and a timestamp, used for the “N online” counter. You count as online if we have seen you in the last 5 minutes.
• Your IP address and browser user-agent — recorded with the visitor cookie above and with each outbound click, together with the approximate city, region and country our host derives from the address. We keep only the most recent one per visitor, not a location history. It is used to keep the visitor counter honest and to stop one person inflating a listing’s click count; a repeat click from the same address inside 30 minutes is not counted. We do not sell it, share it, or use it to build a profile of you.
• Click counts — when someone follows a listing’s outbound link we record a timestamp and the referring page alongside the address details above. Not linked to your email address.
• A signed bidder cookie — holds the email address you paid with, so we recognise you on a return visit and credit what you already paid on a listing. Strictly necessary; no consent banner, because we set nothing that requires consent.

• Card numbers or bank details.
• Third-party analytics or advertising trackers. There are none on this site.
• Cross-site profiles, advertising IDs, or data purchased from anyone else.
• A history of where you have been — the address we hold is the latest one only.
• Anything about you from your listing’s visitors beyond the counts above.

Only the vendors needed to run the service: Stripe for payments, and our hosting and database providers, who store the data above on our behalf under contract. When you submit a link we fetch that page to read its title, description and icon, so the site you submitted may see that request.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We may disclose data if legally compelled, or to protect our rights or someone’s safety.

Email privacy@rankbids.com to access, correct, export or delete the data we hold against your email address. Deleting it removes your listings from the board. Placement fees already paid are not refunded on deletion — see the refund terms.

Depending on where you live you may have rights under the GDPR, UK GDPR, or state laws such as the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act or the CCPA. We honour these requests from everyone regardless of location, and we will not treat you differently for making one. Clearing cookies drops the visitor identifier; a new one is created on your next visit.

The service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

If this policy changes materially we will update the effective date above and post the new version here. Rankbids.com — privacy@rankbids.com.