Privacy policy

Data we process

• Identity and session data handled by Clerk, such as your user ID, email, and sign-in methods.
• Collection data you enter: gear descriptions, condition, purchase details, serial numbers, notes, and valuations.
• Gear photos you upload. Before private storage, the server validates and normalizes each accepted image to WebP, resizes it, and removes source metadata.
• Temporary provider-hosted reference-image links you explicitly select, together with their source and expiry metadata. Those external reference images remain with their provider and are not copied into Riffsticks photo storage.
• Operational data such as security logs, request diagnostics, and consent or webhook event IDs.
• Research-credit balances and ledger entries, plus payment and refund identifiers required to reconcile purchases. Riffsticks does not receive or store full card numbers.

Why we process it

We process data to authenticate you, display and calculate your collection, preserve value history, prevent fraud and abuse, provide support, and meet legal obligations. We do not use your collection or marketplace content to train our own model or create unauthorized marketplace analytics.

AI-assisted model research

When you request a market scan, we send Anthropic only the public descriptor needed for that research: category, brand, model, variant, finish, year, condition, currency, and market. We do not send your photos, serial number, notes, nickname, purchase price, name, email, or Clerk identifier. We retain the resulting estimates, bounded citation excerpts, source links, model and prompt versions, and usage totals so the report can be explained, audited, refreshed, and safely reused.

If an all-access list is configured, Riffsticks checks your verified primary email directly with Clerk to decide whether the user credit meter applies. That address is matched exactly in server memory and is not added to the research report, credit ledger, provider request, response, or application logs.

The normalized gear identity and derived model-level report are shared data, not a public collection profile. A later collector with matching gear may receive the same report without another provider call. Their account is not told who requested it first, and no private collection field is included.

Market sources

Market evidence is always labeled with its source, method, and observation date. Reverb integration is disabled unless configured under appropriate terms. Live asking prices are not represented as sold prices or guaranteed value.

Sharing and processors

We use service providers only to run the product, including Clerk for authentication, Neon/Postgres for application data, and Vercel for application hosting and private object storage. Upstash handles pseudonymous abuse-prevention counters without receiving raw account IDs. Anthropic processes bounded public model descriptors for requested AI-assisted research, and Stripe processes one-time top-up payments. These technical processors handle data under their respective agreements and retention practices. We do not sell or rent collection data.

Retention and deletion

Collection data remains until you remove it or delete your account, subject to limited security, legal, and provider backup retention. Uploaded photos remain with the gear record, including while it is archived, until you remove individual photos or delete your account. Those actions queue the affected objects for deletion by a protected daily cleanup job with bounded retries. A verified Clerk account-deletion event removes the application user, cascades their collection records, and queues their uploaded photos before that cascade. Limited backup copies may remain until the applicable provider retention period expires. Temporary external image references expire separately and return to a category placeholder. De-identified shared market reports may remain after account deletion because they no longer describe an owner. Payment, refund, webhook, and credit-ledger records may also be detached from the deleted account and retained where reasonably required for fraud prevention, accounting, disputes, and legal compliance.

Your choices

You may correct or archive gear at any time and manage identity data from account settings. For access, export, correction, or deletion requests, email privacy@riffsticks.com.

Security and changes

We use signed sessions, owner-scoped database queries, verified webhooks, restrictive browser policies, private object storage, and least-privilege integrations. Uploaded photos are delivered only after the server verifies the signed-in owner of the related gear. No service can promise absolute security. Material policy changes will be dated here.