Privacy and data use
Read-only website
The static GitHub Pages build loads a public, bundled ranking snapshot. It can remember your chosen city and visited restaurants in this browser's local storage. It does not submit those selections or collect votes. Browser storage may be cleared in your browser settings.
Optional live backend
When the included backend is running, it uses a session cookie, stores visited restaurant identifiers, and records submitted comparisons and ordered lists. The session cookie also remembers up to 32 recent skipped comparison keys so Skip does not immediately repeat a question. Skips are not preference votes. The inherited backend also stores hashed client fingerprint fields for abuse controls. The site operator controls the database and retention. Administrator exports can contain user identifiers and must not be published.
The public snapshot export in this package is database-free. It does not include session identifiers, private diner rows, or client fingerprints. Set production secrets, secure cookies, and a retention policy before collecting public submissions.
Basic traffic counts
The live website counts page loads, category views and successful share actions. It stores only the event type, category, a broad referral group (such as Google, Facebook or direct), one of a small set of named campaigns, and a timestamp. Traffic events contain no visitor ID, full referral URL, IP address or user agent. No additional analytics cookies or third-party analytics scripts are used. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control disable these browser events. Counts include repeat views and may include bots; they are not unique visitor counts.
Individual traffic events are deleted after 90 days when new events arrive. Aggregate reports are restricted to the administrator. Completed comparison counts come from accepted comparison records, separately from browser traffic; skipped and rejected comparisons do not count. These counts are not linked to a referring visitor or campaign. Existing community submissions have their own retention policy, described above.
External sources
Source links open third-party websites with their own privacy terms. The Value audit contains numeric subratings, dates where recorded, and source URLs; it does not reproduce review prose or reviewer profile identifiers. Source availability does not establish permission for automated bulk collection or commercial redistribution; obtain applicable permission before expanding production ingestion.