Privacy policy

Draft: to be reviewed before launch.

Who we are: StackBySolo, operated from the United Kingdom. Contact: [email to be added].

Newsletter: if you subscribe, your email address is processed by our email provider (Kit) to send you the newsletter. The lawful basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by unsubscribing.

Analytics: we use Vercel Web Analytics, which is cookieless and aggregated. It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device.

Cookies, ads and similar technology

• Your cookie choice (sbs_consent): when you click “Accept ads” or “Reject ads” in the cookie banner, we save that choice in your browser's local storage on this device so we don't ask on every page. It holds only your choice and the time you made it, is never sent to us, and we ask again after about six months. This is strictly necessary to remember your choice.
• Ads only with your consent: some pages (such as tool reviews, comparisons and best-of lists) have ad slots for display and native ads from Adsterra, a third-party ad network. No Adsterra code loads and no advertising cookies are set until you click “Accept ads”. If you reject, or haven't chosen, the slot shows our own promo for StackSiren instead. Ads are always labelled “Advertisement”, run in sandboxed frames, and never appear on our newsletter, free-guide, privacy, disclosure or StackSiren account pages.
• What Adsterra may do: once you accept, Adsterra and the advertisers it works with may set cookies and use similar technology (such as local storage or device identifiers) to select, show, measure and limit ads, and to detect fraud. They receive your IP address, browser details and the page you're reading, and process this under their own privacy policy (see adsterra.com).
• Changing your mind: use “Cookie settings” in the footer of any page to accept or reject at any time. After you reject, we stop loading ads; to remove cookies Adsterra has already set, clear your browser's cookies for its domains. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings.
• Affiliate links: when you click an affiliate link, the destination site may set its own cookies to track the referral. Their privacy policies apply. We don't set any cookie on that click.
• sc_acct: a strictly necessary, httpOnly cookie set only if you sign in to a StackSiren account on this site (see below).

StackSiren scanner: when you use StackSiren we process the URL you enter, your email address and your IP address (for rate limiting and abuse prevention). We fetch only publicly available pages and files from that URL. We do not store scan results or page content; anonymous summaries (domain, score, issue count) may appear in our server logs. Your email is added to our newsletter list in Kit (you agree to this on the form and can unsubscribe at any time). Payments for full reports are processed by Stripe, which receives your payment details and email under its own privacy policy. We don't see or store your card details. Paid report links contain a Stripe session ID; keep yours private.

StackSiren accounts and monitoring: if you buy a report pack or a monitoring plan, your account (email, credit balance, plan, the app URLs you choose to monitor and a short summary of each weekly rescan: score, issue types and what changed) is stored with Stripe as customer and subscription data. We set a strictly necessary, httpOnly cookie (sc_acct) that keeps you signed in to your account on that device, and give you a private account link. Monitored apps are rescanned passively once a week until you remove them or cancel. You can manage or cancel your plan any time through the Stripe customer portal linked from your account. Contact us to delete your account data.

Your rights: under UK GDPR you can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your data, and complain to the ICO (ico.org.uk).