Privacy Policy

Effective date: July 9, 2026

Information you give us

• Account details. When you register we collect a username, an email address, and a password. Passwords are stored only as secure cryptographic hashes — we cannot see them. If you enable two-factor authentication, we store the secret needed to verify your codes.
• Content you post. Reviews, ratings, issue reports, discussion responses, and the cars you add to your profile are public and are displayed together with your username.
• Feedback and reports. If you use the feedback page to suggest a car, send feedback, or report content, we receive what you write plus the contact email you optionally provide. These messages are delivered to our admin inbox.

Information collected automatically

• Log and security data. Like almost every website, our servers record the IP address, browser type, and pages requested for each visit. We use IP addresses to rate-limit abusive traffic, and we record failed login attempts and temporary account locks to protect accounts.
• Account activity. We store your registration date, last login time, and email-verification status to operate your account.
• Analytics and advertising measurement. We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the site is used (pages visited, how visitors found us, and site actions such as signing up or posting a review), and the Meta (Facebook) Pixel to measure whether our advertising works and to reach likely contributors with ads. These tools collect device and usage information (such as IP address, browser type, pages viewed, and approximate location) and use cookies or similar identifiers. They do not receive your username, email address, or the content of what you post.

Cookies and local storage

• Session cookie (essential) — keeps you signed in as you move between pages and protects forms against cross-site request forgery.
• Remember-me cookie (optional) — set only if you tick "remember me" at login, so you stay signed in between visits.
• Theme preference — your light/dark mode choice is saved in your browser's local storage and is never sent to our servers.
• Analytics cookies — Google Analytics sets cookies (names beginning with _ga) to distinguish visitors and sessions.
• Advertising-measurement cookies — the Meta Pixel sets a cookie (_fbp) used to measure ad performance and build advertising audiences.

You can block analytics and advertising cookies without affecting the site: browser settings or content blockers work, Google offers an opt-out add-on for Analytics, and Meta's ad preferences are controlled from your Facebook ad settings. The site works fully with these cookies blocked.

How we use your information

• To operate your account and display your public contributions.
• To send transactional email only: verifying your email address and resetting your password. We do not send marketing email.
• To prevent abuse: rate limiting, login-attempt lockouts, and moderation of reported content.
• To understand how the site is used and to measure and improve our advertising, using the analytics tools described above.

Who we share data with

We never sell personal information. A small number of service providers process data on our behalf to run the site:

• Fly.io — hosts our application and database in the United States.
• Brevo — delivers our transactional emails (verification and password-reset messages), so it processes the email addresses we send to.
• Content delivery networks (jsDelivr, Cloudflare cdnjs) — your browser loads some fonts, styles, and scripts directly from these CDNs, which receive the standard request data (such as your IP address) involved in serving any web asset.
• Google — provides Google Analytics, which processes the usage data described above on our behalf.
• Meta (Facebook) — provides the Meta Pixel for ad measurement. Meta may use pixel data as described in its own privacy policy, including to improve its advertising systems.

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights and safety of our users and the site.

Data retention

We keep your account information for as long as your account exists. Server logs and security records are kept for a limited period and then discarded. If you ask us to delete your account, we will remove your personal information; your public posts will be deleted or anonymized so they are no longer linked to you.

Your rights and choices

• You can view and edit your reviews, posts, and profile details, and change your password, at any time while signed in.
• You can ask us to access, correct, export, or delete the personal information we hold about you. Depending on where you live (for example the EU/UK under GDPR, or California under the CCPA), these may be legal rights — but we honor such requests from everyone, wherever you live.
• To make a request, contact us through the feedback page and include an email address we can reply to. We may need to verify that you control the account before acting on a request.

Security

All traffic to KnownCars is encrypted with HTTPS, passwords are stored as salted hashes, and you can add two-factor authentication to your account from the Security page. No online service can guarantee perfect security, but we work to protect your data with industry-standard measures.

Children

KnownCars is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has created an account, please contact us via the feedback page and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy — for example, if we ever add analytics or advertising — we will update this page and its effective date. Your continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Reach us through the feedback page — include your email if you'd like a reply.