Privacy Policy

SocialTrends (“we,” “us”) operates the website at socialtrends.app (the “Service”). We built SocialTrends to be private by default: it works fully anonymously, stores your preferences on your own device, shows no ads, and uses no third-party analytics or tracking tools. This policy explains what limited data is involved and the choices you have.

The short version

• You can use the whole Service with no account. There is no login wall.
• Your saved items, history, and settings live in your browser’s local storage on your device — not on our servers — unless you opt in to sync.
• No advertising and no third-party analytics, tracking pixels, or session-replay tools of any kind.
• Optional features — Google Sign-In to sync across devices, and browser push alerts — are strictly opt-in and involve the third parties named below.
• We do not sell your personal information.

1. Data stored on your device

By default, everything you do is stored locally in your browser (via localStorage and sessionStorage) and never leaves your device. This includes:

• your saved items (bookmarks) and recently-viewed history (kept to the most recent 200);
• your settings: country/region, language, theme, playback preferences, and pinned/recent countries;
• interface state used to improve your experience: visit count and one-time prompt markers (so we don’t re-ask you to sign in or install the app), collapsed-section state, and “biggest movers” rank snapshots used to compute changes between visits;
• a random, anonymous per-install identifier (see “Anonymous usage signals” below).

You can clear all of this at any time by clearing your browser’s site data for socialtrends.app.

2. Optional account & cross-device sync

If you choose to Sign in with Google (an optional feature to sync your saved items across devices), sign-in is handled by Google Firebase Authentication:

• Google provides us your account’s unique ID, email address, display name, and profile photo. We use the unique ID as the key to store your data; your email, name, and photo are used only to show you who is signed in and are not written to our synced record.
• Your saved items and history are then stored in Google Cloud Firestore under your account and synced in real time across your signed-in devices. When you first sign in, items you saved anonymously on that device are merged up into your synced account.
• Google (as the identity provider) maintains your sign-in session in your browser so you stay logged in until you sign out.

Google’s handling of this data is governed by the Google Privacy Policy. You can stop syncing by signing out, and you can delete your synced data (see “Your choices”).

3. Push notifications (optional)

If you enable “Trend Surge Alerts,” your browser creates a push subscription. We store only what is needed to deliver notifications: an opaque per-browser push endpoint URL, the public encryption keys your browser generates, and the country you selected (so we only send alerts relevant to that region). This is not linked to any account, and the country is your chosen setting — it is not derived from your IP or location.

Notifications are delivered through your browser’s push service (for example Google’s FCM on Chrome, Mozilla on Firefox, or Apple on Safari), which necessarily sees the delivery endpoint. Payloads are encrypted so only your browser can read them. You can turn alerts off in Settings at any time, which unsubscribes your browser and deletes the stored subscription.

4. Anonymous usage signals (Community Picks)

To power the “Community Picks” board (what people save and share most), when you save or share an item we send our own backend the item’s details plus a one-way SHA-256 hash of a random identifier generated on your device. The hash lets us count one vote per device without identifying you — there is no account, cookie, name, email, or IP tied to it.

5. Performance & security telemetry (first-party only)

To keep the Service fast and secure, your browser may send us:

• anonymous performance measurements (page-load timing metrics and the page path), and
• automatic browser reports if our Content-Security-Policy blocks something (used to fix security-policy issues).

These are sent only to our own systems and appear in our server logs; they are not shared with any third-party analytics provider. Again, we use no third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking SDKs.

6. Server logs & IP address

Like virtually all websites, our servers and hosting provider (Google Cloud) record standard request logs, which include your IP address, and the request path (which may contain the country you are viewing). We use your IP address transiently to rate-limit abuse; we do not use it to build a profile of you or to determine your location for content.

7. Third-party content shown in the Service

SocialTrends displays content from other platforms. When that content loads in your browser, the relevant third party can see your IP address and which items you viewed (standard for any embedded content). These include:

• Thumbnail images loaded from an image-resizing service (wsrv.nl) and directly from the source platforms’ image servers (e.g. YouTube, Dailymotion, Reddit, Twitch). To resize a thumbnail, the image service receives the source image URL.
• Embedded video players — YouTube (using the privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.comdomain) and Dailymotion. When you press play, the provider can see the video you watched and may set its own cookies. Your use of these players is subject to YouTube’s and Dailymotion’s policies.
• Google Sign-In and Firestore (Google/Firebase) — contacted only if you opt in to sign in and sync.

Our fonts are self-hosted (not fetched from Google), and all trend data is fetched through our own server, so your browser does not talk to our backend directly.

8. Cookies & local storage

SocialTrends does not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. The browser storage we use is strictly functional: your settings and saved items (described above), and, if you sign in, the Google sign-in session your browser keeps you logged in with. Embedded video players (YouTube, Dailymotion) may set their own cookies when you play a video; those are governed by the respective provider.

9. How your information is shared

We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. Data is only ever involved with the parties needed to run the optional features you choose: Google/Firebase (sign-in and sync), your browser’s push service (notifications), and the content providers whose media you view (as above). Our hosting and logging run on Google Cloud.

10. Data retention

• On-device data stays until you clear your browser data.
• Synced data (if you sign in) stays in Firestore until you delete it or delete your data.
• Push subscriptions stay until you turn alerts off, or are automatically removed when your push service reports the subscription as expired.
• Server logs are retained for a limited period per standard operational practice.

11. Your choices & rights

• Use the Service fully anonymously — do not sign in.
• Clear your browser’s site data to erase everything stored locally.
• Sign out to stop syncing; the account you signed in with remains with Google.
• Turn off Trend Surge Alerts to unsubscribe and delete your push subscription.
• To access or delete your synced data, email medhamdan@gmail.com with the subject “Privacy request.” Depending on your region, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port your data, and to object to certain processing.

12. Children

SocialTrends is not directed to children under 13 (or the equivalent minimum age in your country), and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. Note that trending content aggregated from third parties is not curated for children.

13. International processing

The optional Google/Firebase features and our Google Cloud hosting may process data on servers located in various countries. By using those optional features you understand your data may be processed outside your country of residence.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the “Last updated” date above; significant changes may be highlighted in the Service.

15. Contact

Questions or requests? Email medhamdan@gmail.com. See also our Terms and Disclaimer.