Legal
Privacy Policy
AlternativesIndex is an independent software research directory. We collect as little as we can, we do not sell personal data, and we do not run third-party advertising trackers.
What we collect
- Account details
- If you create an account, we store your name, email address, and a salted scrypt hash of your password. We never store your password in a form we can read.
- Your submissions
- Alternative suggestions, corrections, and switcher reports you send us, together with the account they came from and the time they were sent.
- Security records
- When you log in or register we record a hashed form of your email address and IP address, plus whether the attempt succeeded. This exists to rate-limit and block credential-stuffing attacks. We store hashes, not the raw values.
- Aggregate usage
- Which alternatives are opened from a comparison table, counted without any identifier that links the click to you.
What we do not collect
We do not use third-party advertising networks, cross-site tracking pixels, or social login. We do not build advertising profiles, and we do not sell or rent personal data to anyone.
Cookies
- Session cookie
- Set only when you log in. It keeps you signed in and expires after 30 days or when you log out.
- Human-check cookie
- A short-lived cookie that ties a captcha challenge to your browser so a challenge solved elsewhere cannot be reused. It contains no personal data.
We do not set advertising or analytics cookies, so there is no cookie consent banner to dismiss.
Why we are allowed to hold it
We process account and submission data to perform the service you asked for, and security records under our legitimate interest in keeping the site available and free of automated abuse. Where consent is the basis, you can withdraw it at any time.
How long we keep it
- Accounts
- Until you ask us to delete the account.
- Published contributions
- Switcher reports and accepted suggestions stay in the index after account deletion, but are detached from your account and shown without your name or email.
- Security records
- Authentication attempts are pruned automatically; the rate-limit window is 15 minutes and records are deleted once they fall outside it.
Your choices
You can ask us for a copy of your personal data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account. Write to [email protected] and we will respond within 30 days. You can also ask us to stop publishing a contribution you made.
Where your data lives
The site runs on a single server we control, and the database is stored on that server. We do not transfer personal data to third-party marketing or analytics platforms.
Outbound links
Comparison tables link to the websites of the products we write about. Once you follow one of those links you are on someone else's site and their privacy policy applies, not ours.
Changes and contact
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of the page. Questions about privacy can go to [email protected].