Privacy policy

AskRanker (the “Service”) is operated by an individual sole proprietor based in the United States, doing business as AskRanker (“AskRanker”, “we”, “us”, “our”). This policy describes how we collect, use, and share personal data when you visit askranker.com, sign up for the Service, or otherwise interact with us.

For privacy questions, including data subject requests, contact us at hello@askranker.com.

We collect three categories of data, by source. Visitor data is what we observe when you browse the marketing site. Account data is what you give us to use the Service. Scan data is what the Service generates when it samples AI assistants on your behalf.

Visitor data:

• Pages viewed, click positions, scroll depth, sampled cursor positions, active and idle time, JavaScript errors, and Core Web Vitals. Stored under a per-session pseudonymous identifier (a SHA-256 hash of an in-browser session id).
• Approximate device, browser, viewport size, and referrer.
• Standard server logs maintained by our hosting providers (Vercel, AWS) including IP address, user agent, and request timestamps.
• Cookies and similar technologies, described in Section 5.

Account data (collected when you join the waitlist, contact us, or sign up for a paid account):

• Email address.
• Name and company name, if you provide them.
• Workspace (organization) configuration, including brand name, domain, and the buyer questions you choose to track.
• Authentication metadata (session cookie, last sign-in time).
• Billing data managed by our payment processor (see Section 6). We do not store full payment card numbers on our systems.

Scan data (generated when the Service samples AI assistants on your behalf):

• The buyer questions you submit and the prompts derived from them.
• The raw responses returned by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other model providers.
• Brand mentions extracted from those responses, mention rates, and citation sources.
• Predictions, model diagnostics, and audit logs.

We use personal data to:

• Provide the Service and operate your account.
• Sample AI assistants and produce the reports you have asked for.
• Improve the product, including model training on aggregate scan data.
• Communicate with you about the Service.
• Send marketing emails to addresses on the waitlist or other opt-in lists. You can unsubscribe at any time.
• Detect, prevent, and respond to fraud, abuse, and security incidents.
• Comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell personal data and we do not use scan data or buyer questions to train any third party's AI model.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, we rely on the following legal bases under GDPR Article 6:

• Performance of a contract — to deliver the Service to a paying customer or to fulfil a free scan requested by a visitor.
• Legitimate interests — to operate, secure, and improve the Service, to communicate with prospects who have opted in, and to defend our rights.
• Consent — for non-essential analytics and marketing cookies, where required.
• Legal obligation — to retain records or respond to lawful requests.

We use a small set of cookies and similar technologies:

• Essential cookies for authentication and CSRF protection. The Service will not work without them.
• In-house analytics using a per-session pseudonymous identifier. We do not set tracking cookies for this. The session identifier is hashed before storage.
• Google Analytics on the public marketing site. Google sets first-party cookies under the AskRanker domain. We do not load Google Analytics on /admin/*, /dev/*, or authenticated app surfaces.

The vendors below process personal data on our behalf. They are contractually bound to confidentiality, security, and purpose limitation.

• Vercel — hosting for askranker.com.
• Convex — primary application database (waitlist entries, accounts, scan data).
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) — SES for outbound and inbound email, S3 for raw inbound message storage, Route 53 for DNS, Lambda for an inbound-mail forwarder.
• Stripe — payment processing for paid subscriptions.
• Google (Workspace, Analytics) — marketing analytics and email delivery to our administrative inbox.
• Cloudflare — Browser Run, used to crawl public pages on behalf of customers.
• OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI, Perplexity, and other AI providers — execute the model queries that produce your scan results. The buyer questions you submit are sent to these providers as part of providing the Service.

A current subprocessor list, including business address and processing location, is available on request at hello@askranker.com.

AskRanker is operated from the United States. Most of our subprocessors are headquartered in the United States, and personal data may therefore be transferred to and stored in countries outside your country of residence. Where required, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, or other lawful transfer mechanisms.

For a copy of the relevant transfer mechanism for any subprocessor, contact us at hello@askranker.com.

We keep personal data only as long as we need it:

• Visitor analytics: raw events for 13 months, then aggregated.
• Waitlist and contact submissions: until you unsubscribe or request deletion.
• Account data: for the life of your account and 90 days afterward, unless we are required to keep it longer for tax, accounting, or legal reasons.
• Scan data: for the life of your account. You can delete individual scans, brands, or your full account at any time.
• Email logs: 13 months for deliverability diagnostics.
• Backups: rotating, with the longest retention up to 35 days.

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or port your personal data, and to object to certain uses. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

California residents have the rights to know, delete, correct, opt out of sale or sharing (we do not sell or share for cross-context behavioral advertising), and limit the use of sensitive personal information (we do not collect any).

To exercise any of these rights, email hello@askranker.com. We will respond within the timelines set by applicable law (typically 30 days under GDPR, 45 days under CCPA).

AskRanker is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

We protect personal data with industry-standard administrative, technical, and organizational measures, including:

• Transport-layer encryption for all traffic in and out of the Service.
• Encryption at rest for primary databases, S3 buckets, and backups.
• Role-based access for administrators, with admin sessions gated by a separate cookie family from end-user sessions.
• Secrets and API keys stored in dedicated secret managers, not in source control.
• Logging and monitoring of authentication events and administrative mutations.

No system is perfectly secure. If you discover a vulnerability, please email hello@askranker.com and give us a reasonable time to respond before public disclosure.

We may update this policy from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top reflects the most recent change. If a change is material, we will notify customers by email at least 30 days before it takes effect. Your continued use of the Service after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

For privacy questions, data subject requests, or to receive a current list of subprocessors, email hello@askranker.com.

AskRanker is operated as a sole proprietorship in the United States. The operator's postal address is provided on written request for legitimate legal or regulatory purposes; email hello@askranker.com with the request.