Privacy Policy

Last updated: 14 July 2026

Rotten Brains is an independent, self-hosted service. Your data lives on infrastructure we operate — it is not resold, shared with data brokers, or used for profiling beyond what is described here.

1. What We Collect

• Account data: email address, username, display name, password (stored hashed), and optional profile picture and bio. If you sign in with Google or Discord we receive your name, email, and avatar from that provider.
• Activity data: watch history and playback positions, view counts, posts, comments, likes, saves, playlists, follows, and notification state — this is what makes the product work (resume playback, Continue Watching, your profile).
• VPN-check IPs (optional): if you use the VPN-reminder feature, the IP addresses you explicitly save are stored so we can warn you when you browse without your VPN. We do not build an IP log of your visits.
• Technical data: server logs and error reports (via a self-hosted Sentry instance) that may include your IP address and browser details, kept for debugging and abuse prevention.
• Analytics: we use a self-hosted Plausible instance — cookieless, aggregate page-view statistics that cannot identify you.

2. What We Do Not Do

• We do not sell or rent your personal data.
• We do not send marketing email.
• We do not use third-party trackers for our own analytics.

3. Advertising

Free accounts are shown ads from third-party ad networks. Ad networks may use cookies or similar technologies and may process your IP address and browser characteristics to serve and measure ads; this processing is governed by the ad network's own privacy policy. Premium accounts are not shown ads and no ad-network code runs for them.

4. Third-Party Services

• TMDB provides title metadata and artwork; requests to TMDB are made from our servers, not your browser.
• Google / Discord handle sign-in if you choose OAuth login.
• Video providers: when you stream, your browser may fetch media through our proxy or, in some cases, directly from third-party CDNs, which then see your IP address like any website you visit.

5. Cookies

We use an essential session cookie to keep you signed in, and local browser storage for preferences like theme. Details are in the Cookie Policy.

6. Retention & Deletion

Your data is kept while your account exists. You can delete individual posts, playlists, saved IPs, and watch-history entries at any time, and you can delete your entire account from settings — this permanently removes your profile, watch history, and social activity. Server logs and error reports rotate automatically. Backups expire on a rolling schedule.

7. Your Rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data at any time by using the in-app tools or contacting us. If you are in the EU/EEA, these rights are backed by the GDPR.

8. Changes

We will update this policy as the service evolves; the "Last updated" date above reflects the current version.

9. Contact

Privacy questions or requests: [email protected]