Privacy policy
Last updated: 9 November 2026
What we collect
- Account data: your email address and, if you use social sign-in, your name and profile picture.
- Listing data you submit: name, URL, descriptions, images and founder links.
- Analytics data, only after you connect a provider: aggregate visitor and pageview counts, hostnames and referrer domains. We never read data about individual visitors.
How we use it
To publish your listing, compute rankings and badges, and — combined anonymously across many sites — to report which traffic sources work best. We do not sell personal data.
Google user data
Sign in with Google only asks for the openid, email and profile scopes, which we use to create and sign in to your account.
Connect with Google (to verify a listing's traffic) asks for the read-only Google Analytics scope (analytics.readonly) plus openid. With it we list your Google Analytics 4 properties so you can pick the one for your listing, and then, once a day, read that property's aggregate visitor and pageview counts, hostnames and referrer domains.
The Google refresh token is stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM). When you disconnect analytics, delete the listing or delete your account, the token is deleted and the access is revoked at Google (unless another of your listings still uses the same Google access, in which case it is revoked when the last one goes).
We never read personal or user-level data from Google Analytics, never sell or share Google data, and never use it for advertising or to train AI models. Only aggregate numbers are shown publicly, on the listing's profile and the leaderboards. Our use complies with the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
How we protect your data
We treat analytics credentials and Google user data as sensitive and protect them as follows:
- Encryption in transit. Pingsold is only served over HTTPS (TLS); plain HTTP requests are redirected to HTTPS. Our calls to Google, the other analytics providers, our database and our email and payment providers are also made over TLS.
- Encryption at rest. Google refresh tokens and every other analytics credential (API keys, tokens) are encrypted by our application with AES-256-GCM before they are stored, using a key kept in Google Cloud Secret Manager, never in our code or database. On top of that, our database (Neon) and file storage (Google Cloud Storage) encrypt all stored data at rest.
- Minimal data. We only request the read-only Analytics scope and only read aggregate totals for the one property you choose (visitors, pageviews, hostnames and referrer domains). We never request, read or store personal or user-level data from Google Analytics.
- Restricted access. Credentials are decrypted only in memory by our servers, at the moment they make a read-only request to your analytics provider. They are never shown in our admin tools, never written to logs, and never sent to any third party. Production systems and secrets are accessible only to the Pingsold operators, through accounts protected by their provider's sign-in security.
- Deletion and revocation. Disconnecting analytics, deleting the listing or deleting your account deletes the stored credentials immediately and revokes our Google access. You can also revoke it yourself at any time from your Google Account's third-party access page.
- Incidents. If we ever discover unauthorised access to Google user data or credentials, we revoke the affected access, rotate our keys and notify affected users without undue delay.
Activity logs
To keep Pingsold working and to help when something goes wrong, we keep a log of what happens in your account: for example sign-ins, submitted and edited listings, analytics connections and their errors, payments and emails sent, and crashes in your browser. The log is linked to your account but holds no email addresses, passwords, keys or IP addresses, is only visible to our admins and is deleted after 90 days. If you delete your account, its entries are unlinked from you straight away.
Sponsor clicks are counted anonymously: when you follow a sponsor's link, we only add one to that sponsor's daily count. To count a visitor once per 30 minutes, we briefly keep a one-way hash of the IP address and browser (salted with a key that changes every day), never the address itself.
Profile views, clicks, upvotes, reviews and feedback
So founders can see the traffic Pingsold sends them, we count views of each startup profile and clicks on its “Visit” link, as daily totals per listing only: no personal data, no cookies, and no IP address is stored. Each visitor counts once per listing a day; to tell, we briefly keep a one-way hash of the IP address and browser, salted with a key that changes every day, and delete it the next day. Bots and the listing's owner aren't counted, and if your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, nothing is counted at all. Upvotes and reviews are linked to your account (reviews are public, with your first name, last initial and photo); you can take back an upvote or delete a review at any time. Private feedback goes only to that listing's founder, without your name. None of this ever changes a ranking.
Service providers
We rely on a small set of providers to run Pingsold: hosting and image storage on Google Cloud (Firebase App Hosting and Cloud Storage, in Singapore), database on Neon, email delivery via Resend, and payments via Dodo Payments, who acts as merchant of record for paid listings. We measure visits to Pingsold itself with Google Analytics. The bar of other startups shown on our public pages comes from StartupBar (startupbar.co): it loads in its own frame and counts views anonymously (the page path, the referring site and a random per-tab ID, no cookies). Each provider only receives the data it needs to perform its function.
Cookies
We set a sign-in session cookie and, only while you sign in with Google or GitHub, a short-lived security cookie. Your light/dark theme choice is stored in your browser's local storage, not in a cookie. To understand how people find and use Pingsold, we use Google Analytics, which sets its own first-party cookies (_ga) to count visits, pages viewed and where visitors came from. We don't use it for advertising, and we don't share it with advertisers. You can opt out with Google's browser add-on. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
Retention and deletion
Disconnecting a provider deletes its stored credentials immediately. You can delete a listing yourself at any time from its Settings page in your dashboard: the listing, its traffic and rank history, its badge and its analytics connection (including stored credentials) are deleted instantly, along with its uploaded images.
You can delete your whole account yourself at any time from Dashboard → Account → Delete account (for your security, we ask you to sign in again first unless you did in the last 15 minutes). Your listings (as above), your analytics connections and Google access, your sign-in methods and sessions, your sponsor details and any sponsor waitlist entry for your email are deleted instantly, and a sponsorship ends at once (a running subscription is cancelled). We keep the records of your orders and payments for accounting and tax purposes, no longer linked to an account: amounts, dates and the payment provider's references (payment, subscription and customer IDs). The hashed IP address we store with a checkout to limit abuse is deleted with the account. Dodo Payments, as merchant of record, keeps the billing details under its own policy.
Signing in only needs your email address (we can always email you a sign-in link), so you can delete your account even if you no longer have your password or Google or GitHub sign-in. If you've lost access to that email address, contact us at support@pingsold.com.
Your rights
You can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data at any time by emailing the contact address below.