Privacy Policy

1. Overview

This Privacy Policy explains how Indie Chains collects, uses, shares, and protects information when you use our directory, accounts, public profiles, site listings, badge widgets, verification tools, link balances, and related services.

Indie Chains is built for public discovery. Some information you submit is meant to be visible to other users and visitors, while account, security, and operational information is handled with more limited access.

2. Information We Collect

Account information may include your email address, username, password hash, display name, avatar, bio, profile links, account creation date, and authentication-related records.

If you sign in with Google, we may receive basic Google profile information such as your email address, name, and profile image, depending on the permissions granted during the OAuth flow.

Site and directory information may include site names, slugs, URLs, categories, tags, taglines, descriptions, logos, showcase images, YouTube URLs, social links, link balances, and related public listing data.

Badge and verification information may include badge settings, badge colors, badge text, selected icons or logos, badge embed relationships between sites, badge status, penalty counts, and last impression timestamps.

If you contact us for support, partnerships, or privacy requests, we may collect the information you choose to include in that message.

3. Local Storage, Logs, and Operational Data

Indie Chains stores authentication tokens in your browser's localStorage so you can stay signed in. You can remove this token by logging out or clearing your browser storage.

Our backend, hosting providers, security tools, and rate limiting systems may process operational data such as IP address, request metadata, user-agent, timestamps, error logs, and similar technical information. We use this information to operate the service, prevent abuse, diagnose issues, and improve reliability.

4. How We Use Information

We use information to create and secure accounts, authenticate users, display public profiles and site listings, process uploaded images, render badge widgets, verify badge embeds, maintain link balances, provide support, prevent abuse, and troubleshoot the service.

We may also use aggregated or privacy-conscious product analytics to understand usage, improve product quality, and prioritize development. Indie Chains does not sell personal data and does not use third-party advertising or retargeting trackers by default.

5. Public Information

Public profile content, site listings, URLs, categories, tags, descriptions, images, badges, link-related status, and public site pages may be visible to anyone, indexed by search engines, copied by third parties, or linked from other websites.

Do not submit information to public profile or site fields that you do not want to be publicly visible.

6. How We Share Information

We share information with service providers that help us operate Indie Chains, such as backend hosting, database hosting, frontend hosting, authentication providers, email or support tools, monitoring, security, and infrastructure services.

When users submit links to third-party websites or embed Indie Chains badges on their own websites, visitors may interact with those third-party websites directly. Indie Chains is not responsible for the privacy practices of websites we do not control.

We may disclose information if required by law, to protect the rights and safety of Indie Chains or others, to investigate abuse or fraud, or as part of a business transfer such as a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets.

7. Data Retention

We retain information for as long as needed to provide Indie Chains, maintain accounts and site listings, verify badges, resolve disputes, enforce our Terms, prevent abuse, comply with legal obligations, and keep appropriate records.

Some information may remain in backups, logs, fraud prevention records, or archived systems for a limited time after deletion from active product surfaces.

8. Your Choices and Rights

You can update many profile and site listing fields from your account settings or site management pages.

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information by contacting us. We may need to verify your identity before completing a request.

Deletion or correction requests may be limited when we need to retain information for security, fraud prevention, disputes, backups, legal obligations, or legitimate operational purposes.

9. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect information. However, no internet service, database, transmission method, or storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

You are responsible for keeping your account credentials safe and for logging out on shared devices.

10. International Processing

Indie Chains and its service providers may process information in countries other than where you live. Those countries may have data protection laws that differ from the laws in your location.

11. Children's Privacy

Indie Chains is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information to Indie Chains, contact us so we can review and take appropriate action.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as Indie Chains changes. When we make material changes, we will update the Last Updated date on this page. Your continued use of Indie Chains after an updated policy is posted means the updated policy applies to your use of the service.

13. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or want to request access, correction, or deletion of your information, contact us at hello@indiechains.com.