Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

• Account info: email and, if you use Google sign-in, your name and profile picture.
• Fact-check inputs: text, images, or audio you submit — stored so you can review your history and to power the Trending feed. Trending items are anonymized.
• Payment info: donations, Pro subscriptions, and merch pre-orders are processed by Stripe. We store only the Stripe session ID and amount — we never see your card number.
• Analytics: Google Analytics 4 (with IP anonymization) and PostHog for aggregate page views, feature usage, and error tracking. No personally identifiable content from your fact-checks is sent to analytics.
• Ads: when Google AdSense is active, Google may set cookies to serve relevant ads. Pro subscribers see no ads.

2. AI providers

Your fact-check inputs are sent to OpenAI (for GPT-5.2 text, GPT-5.2 vision, and Whisper transcription) via the Emergent LLM proxy. These providers may retain requests for abuse monitoring per their own privacy policies. Do not submit content you would not be willing to share with a third-party AI service.

3. How we use your data

• To provide fact-check verdicts, scam detection, saved history, and Pro features.
• To process donations and merch orders through Stripe.
• To send you receipts, Pro welcome emails, order confirmations, and — if you opt in — the newsletter and Fact of the Day.
• To improve the product through anonymized, aggregated analytics.
• To detect and prevent abuse (rate-limiting anonymous users by IP).

4. What we do NOT do

• We do not sell your personal data.
• We do not share your fact-check content with third-party marketers.
• We do not train our own AI models on your data.

5. Cookies

We use a session cookie for login and localStorage for onboarding preferences and theme selection. Google Analytics and AdSense (when active) set their own cookies. You can block cookies in your browser settings; the site will still work but some features (login, saved theme) may not persist.

6. Your rights

You can:

• Request a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Delete your account and all associated fact-check history.
• Unsubscribe from any email at any time (link at the bottom of every email).
• Opt out of AdSense personalization at adssettings.google.com.

Email privacy@real-check.org to exercise any of these rights.

7. Children

Real-Check is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.

8. Changes

We may update this policy. Material changes will be announced on the homepage or by email. See our Terms of Service.

9. Contact

Privacy questions? Email privacy@real-check.org.