Privacy Notice

The short version

• No accounts, no sign-ups, no names, no email addresses.
• No tracking cookies, no advertising trackers, no analytics profiling.
• We don't store your IP address. For abuse prevention it's briefly processed to compute a short-lived, irreversible rate-limit token (auto-deleted within minutes) — never linked to you or your lookups.
• Your lookups, history, and cached results stay on your device (browser localStorage) — they are never sent to us.
• When you report, confirm, or send feedback, we store only an anonymous, AI-sanitized summary — never your identity.

What is sent to the AI service

To generate an etiquette answer, the gesture, country, and context you enter are sent to a third-party AI provider for processing. These are query terms, not personal data, and we do not attach any identifier to them. We ask you to avoid entering personal information in free-text fields; report and feedback text is automatically screened and stripped of any personal details before anything is stored.

What we store (and what we don't)

Stored (in an anonymous community database):

• A verdict key — the gesture, country, and context of a lookup (e.g. "tipping · Japan · dining").
• Aggregate counts — how many people confirmed or corroborated-disputed a verdict.
• An AI-sanitized, personal-data-free summary of an accepted report or feedback message.
• A coarse, day-level date (no precise timestamps).
• A short-lived, salted rate-limit token (an irreversible hash — not your IP) that auto-deletes within minutes.

Never stored: names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, IP addresses, device IDs, precise location, cookies, or any other identifier that could single you out.

How reports stay genuine (and abuse-resistant)

Every inaccuracy report is reviewed by an AI moderation agent that filters trolling, spam, and off-topic content, and removes any personal data. A verdict's accuracy only changes after several independent reports corroborate each other — a single submission (or a troll that slips through) never moves the number on its own.

Lawful basis & your rights

Where the GDPR and similar laws apply, our basis for processing is your consent (which you give on the welcome screen and when you choose to submit a report or feedback) and our legitimate interest in preventing abuse and improving accuracy. Processing is limited to these purposes (purpose limitation) and to the minimum data needed (data minimization).

Because we hold no personal data and no identifiers, we have no way to link any stored summary back to you — so there is nothing personal to access, correct, export, or erase. You can clear everything stored on your device at any time from your browser settings or the in-app "Clear history" control. You may withdraw consent by not using the reporting/feedback features.

Retention & security

Anonymous community summaries and counts are retained to keep accuracy stats meaningful over time; because they contain no personal data, no personal-data retention limit applies. Data is hosted on Cloudflare's infrastructure and transmitted over HTTPS.

Children

The service is intended for a general audience and does not knowingly collect any data from children — because it does not collect personal data from anyone.

Standards alignment — an honest note

This service is designed to align with the principles of the GDPR and ISO/IEC 27701 (privacy information management) and ISO/IEC 27001 (information security): data minimization, purpose limitation, transparency, consent, and security by design.

To be clear and not mislead you: IsItPolite.com is not formally "ISO certified" and makes no certification claim. ISO certification requires an independent audit of an organization by an accredited body. We describe alignment with these standards' principles — not a certification.

Changes & contact

If this notice changes, the "last updated" date above will change with it. Questions or privacy requests? Use the in-app feedback form (linked from the site footer) — it's anonymous, so please don't include personal details.