Privacy Policy
We built BeforeYouClick because most privacy policies are hostile. Ours isn’t — here’s exactly what we collect and why, in plain English.
What BeforeYouClick does
BeforeYouClick is a web application that helps you understand the legal documents of popular services, such as Terms of Service, Privacy Policies, and Community Standards, before you agree to them. We analyze these documents ourselves and present each one as a plain-language summary, a risk grade, and a list of notable clauses. You can browse all of it without creating an account.
This policy explains the little data we collect when you visit the site, how we use it, and what rights you have over it.
Data we collect
| Category | What we collect and why |
|---|---|
| Usage and technical data | Our servers process technical data, including your IP address, to serve your requests, enforce rate limits, and protect the site from abuse. We do not use this data to identify you or build a profile of you. |
| Anonymous analytics | We use Plausible, a privacy-first, cookieless analytics tool, to understand aggregate usage. It records page views and a few product events — which service and grade you view, outbound-link clicks, and search terms that return no results. Plausible sets no cookies and does not profile you across sites. Because a no-result search term is sent to Plausible, please avoid typing personal information into the search box. |
How we use your information
We use the little data we collect only for the following purposes:
- Serving the public catalog of analyses and keeping the site running
- Measuring aggregate, anonymous usage so we know which analyses are useful
- Enforcing rate limits so no single visitor can overload the site
- Detecting and preventing abuse, unauthorized access, and technical failures
- Keeping our analyses accurate and the site performant
We do not build advertising profiles, sell to data brokers, train our own AI models, or make automated decisions about you.
Legal basisWhere the little data we process — such as an IP address used briefly for rate limiting and security — is personal data under the EU/UK GDPR, we rely on our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): keeping BeforeYouClick available, secure, and free from abuse, and understanding aggregate usage through cookieless analytics. Those interests are balanced against your rights, and because we hold no account and run no advertising or cross-site tracking, the impact on you is minimal. You can object to this processing at any time (see section 7).
Third-party services we use
To operate BeforeYouClick, we rely on the following sub-processors. When we send data to these services, we do so only to the minimum extent necessary to provide the feature they power.
Data retention
| Data type | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Published analyses and clauses | Our public catalog of analyses is retained indefinitely so the library stays available. We update or re-run an analysis when the underlying document changes. |
| Operational data | Technical and operational records, such as request logs and rate-limiting data, are kept only as long as needed to run the site securely and are then deleted. Retention is additionally bounded by the retention windows of our hosting providers. |
Security
We apply the following security practices to protect your data:
- Browsing requires no account, so there are no passwords or user credentials to store, leak, or protect
- Traffic between your browser and the site is encrypted in transit using TLS (HTTPS)
- Access to our systems and data is restricted and authenticated
- Rate limiting is applied to protect the service from abuse
No system is completely secure. If you discover a security vulnerability in BeforeYouClick, please report it to us at the contact address below before disclosing it publicly, and we will respond promptly.
Your rights
Because you browse without an account, we hold almost no personal data about you: the main example is an IP address processed briefly for security and rate limiting. Where you do have rights over that data, we honor them for everyone, regardless of jurisdiction.
Data portability does not apply here: our processing rests on legitimate interests rather than your consent or a contract, and we hold no account data to port. To exercise any of the rights above, contact us at the address in section 11, and we will respond within 30 days. If you are located in the European Economic Area or the UK and believe we have not addressed your request adequately, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.
Children's privacy
BeforeYouClick is not directed at children under the age of 16 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child under 16 has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.
Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we update the "Last updated" date at the top of this document. Since we don't hold your email, we can't notify you directly, so we recommend checking this page when you return.
Continued use of BeforeYouClick after a revised policy takes effect means you accept the changes. If you do not agree, please stop using the site.
Contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your rights, or want to report a security vulnerability, please reach out:
BeforeYouClick
BeforeYouClick is the data controller for the limited data described in this policy.
For privacy requests, security reports, and general inquiries:
[email protected]We aim to respond to privacy-related requests promptly, and within the period required by applicable law.
© BeforeYouClick. All rights reserved.
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