That does not mean we collect nothing. This page is the full list: what reaches us, what reaches the two companies that host and measure the site, why, for how long, and what you can ask us to do about it.
We would rather tell you an awkward truth than a comfortable half one. If a line here turns out to be wrong, we fix it and change the date at the top.
The short version
- We use four analytics services — DataFast, PostHog, Umami, and Google (loaded through Google Tag Manager) — to count page views and a handful of button clicks. They are third parties, and they see ordinary request details, including your network address.
- We do not sell, rent, or trade visitor data. We run no ads and no ad networks.
- There are no accounts, no passwords, no payments, and no marketing email. We never ask for your name, your email, or a card. Browser alerts need none of those either — see Browser alerts below.
- Our host, Cloudflare, keeps normal server logs, the way every web host does.
- There are two things you can send us, both only if you tap a button: a take on a tool (the time, the tool, and your vote) and, if you turn on browser alerts, the delivery address your own browser makes for them.
01
Who runs this site
BenchAlert is run by DURK ENTERPRISES LLC. It is one person, one lab machine, and this website.
The company answerable for the data described here — the "controller", in UK and EU data protection law — is DURK ENTERPRISES LLC, a limited liability company registered in Wyoming, United States.
We do not publish a postal address. Email is the way in, and we answer it. Write to team@benchalert.com.
We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer, and we have not appointed an EU or UK representative. If either changes, this page changes with it.
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Everything we collect
This is the complete list. Read it as nine items, not nine companies — the first three are the same DataFast account seen from different angles.
- Page views, through DataFast
- A script from datafa.st runs on every page. It reports the page you asked for, the page or link that sent you, and the ordinary details every web request carries: your network (IP) address, your browser, and your device type. We see counts and summaries in a dashboard. We do not get a list of people.
- Three button clicks, through DataFast
- Three actions each send one small event. Copying a board as a picture sends which board it was and whether the copy worked. Sharing the daily report sends how you shared it — the picture, the link, or the Post on X button — and whether it worked. Saving a take sends which tool you picked and which vote. Nothing you typed, and nothing that names you.
- AI crawler visits, from our server
- When a bot such as ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, or Googlebot asks for a page, our server tells DataFast which bot it was, its full user agent, its network address, the page it asked for, and the page that sent it. This runs for known bots only. An ordinary visit from a person never takes this path.
- Page views and clicks, through PostHog
- A second analytics script, PostHog, runs on every page. It reports the pages you visit, what you click, the click events above, errors the page hits, and the ordinary request details: your network address, your browser, and your device type. It sends through our own address at pulse.benchalert.com, but the data lands with PostHog. We see counts and summaries, not a list of people.
- Page views, through Google Tag Manager
- A Google Tag Manager script runs on every page and loads Google's measurement tags. Google sees the page you asked for, the page that sent you, and the ordinary request details: your network address, your browser, and your device type. Google's tags may set cookies in your browser. Google's privacy policy is at policies.google.com.
- Page views, through Umami
- A script from cloud.umami.is counts page visits, including navigation between pages. Umami receives the page address, referring page, browser and device details, and the network address carried by the request. We use its dashboard to understand visits. We have not configured custom Umami events.
- A take, but only if you send one
- If the Report button is switched on and you use it, we store three fields: the time, the tool you picked, and your vote. That is the whole record. No account, no name, no device id, and no text box to type into. When the button is off, nothing is stored at all.
- A short memory of your network address
- To stop one person voting twice, our server holds your network address in memory for a cooldown — normally about half an hour, and the operator can change the length. It is never written to disk, it never joins the vote record, and it is gone when the server restarts.
- Server logs, from our host
- The site runs on Cloudflare Workers. Cloudflare records ordinary request information — network address, time, the page asked for, the response — for its own security, abuse, and performance work. That is standard hosting. We do not use those logs to build anything about you.
03
Browser alerts, only if you turn them on
Browser alerts are off until you press the button and then say yes to your browser. Until you do, nothing in this section happens and we hold nothing.
When you turn them on, your browser creates a delivery address for this site and hands it to us. We store that, and the two keys that go with it. That is the whole record.
- The endpoint address
- A long web address your browser's push service gives us — Google's, Mozilla's, or Apple's, depending on the browser you use. It is how a message reaches your browser. We did not choose it, it holds no name, and it is the push service's address, not yours.
- Two keys your browser generates
- A public key and an authentication secret, both made by your browser on your device when you turn alerts on. They let us encrypt an alert so that only your browser can open it. They are not a login, and they are attached to no account.
- What we use it for
- One thing: sending you an alert when a new model drops. There is no marketing on this channel, we send nothing else down it, and we do not join it to the analytics above.
- What we still do not get
- No name, no email address, no account, and no payment details. Turning alerts on tells us nothing about who you are.
- When it is deleted
- The moment you turn alerts off, and automatically when the push service tells us the subscription is dead or expired. Switching notifications off for this site in your browser has the same effect: the next send comes back as gone, and the record goes with it.
04
Why we collect it, and what allows us to
Two reasons only: to know whether the work is read, and to stop the vote button being abused.
- Running and measuring the site
- Counts of page views and those three clicks tell us which pages people use and which links bring readers who use the boards. In UK and EU law this rests on our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) in running and improving a public site, weighed against how little the analytics holds about any one reader.
- Stopping abuse
- The short in-memory note of your network address exists so one person cannot flood a tool's vote count. Legitimate interests again: keeping a published number honest.
- Keeping the site up
- Cloudflare's logs are part of hosting a website at all. Legitimate interests, and in places a legal duty to keep certain records.
- Consent, where it is required
- We set no cookies of our own. Where the law where you live asks for your agreement before analytics runs, and you have not given it, tell us and we will act on it — see Your rights below. You can also block the script with a browser setting or an extension, and every page still works.
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How long we keep it
- The vote cooldown
- Minutes, in memory. It is gone at the next server restart at the latest, and it is never written down.
- A take
- Kept while the board runs, as three fields with nothing in them that points back to a person.
- A browser alert subscription
- Kept until you turn alerts off, or until a send comes back saying the subscription is gone — then it is deleted. There is no separate expiry, because there is nothing in it worth holding once it stops working.
- Analytics and server logs
- Held by DataFast, PostHog, Umami, Google, and Cloudflare under their own retention periods, which they set and we do not. We keep no separate copy of raw visitor logs ourselves.
- The published test data
- Kept indefinitely, on purpose. It is a public record of our own runs on our own paid accounts, and it holds nothing about readers.
08
Where your data goes
We are based in the United States. That is where the lab machine sits and where the published test data is made.
Cloudflare serves this site from a global network, so a page usually comes from a data centre near you. DataFast, PostHog, Umami, and Google receive what they receive at their own servers.
If you read this site from a country other than ours, your request data crosses a border. Where UK or EU law applies, those transfers rely on the safeguards our providers offer — standard contractual clauses, or an equivalent approved route. Ask us and we will tell you which one applies today.
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Your rights (UK and EU GDPR)
If UK or EU data protection law covers you, you have the rights below. They are free to use, and we answer within one month.
- Get a copy
- Ask what we hold about you, and get a copy of it.
- Fix it
- Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
- Delete it
- Ask us to erase it.
- Pause it
- Ask us to restrict how we use it while a question about it is open.
- Move it
- Ask for it in a portable, machine-readable form.
- Object
- Object to anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests, the analytics included.
- Take back consent
- Where anything rests on your consent, withdraw it at any time. That does not undo what was lawful before you withdrew it.
- Complain
- Complain to a data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office, at ico.org.uk. In the EU it is the authority for the country you live in. You do not have to come to us first, though we would like the chance to put it right.
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One honest limit on those rights
We hold almost nothing that identifies you. A vote is a time, a tool, and a word, with no id attached, so we usually cannot tell which row is yours — which also means we usually cannot pick it out to delete it.
Where the data sits with DataFast, PostHog, Umami, Google, or Cloudflare, we will pass your request on and help you take it to them.
To give us any chance of finding something, tell us roughly when you visited and what you did. We may ask a question or two before we act, so that we are not handing your data to somebody else.
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California (CCPA and CPRA)
If you live in California, this section is for you.
- What we collect about you
- Two categories, both listed above: identifiers (your network address) and internet activity (the pages you asked for, the page that sent you, your browser and device type, and the click events above). We collect them from your own use of the site, through DataFast, PostHog, Umami, Google, and Cloudflare, in order to run and measure a public website.
- We do not sell or share it
- We have not sold personal information, and we have not shared it for cross-context behavioural advertising, in the last twelve months or at any time. There is no opt-out to offer you, because there is nothing to opt out of, and a Global Privacy Control signal has nothing here to switch off.
- Sensitive personal information
- We do not knowingly collect any, and we do not use or disclose any for a purpose that would require a limit-the-use notice.
- Your rights
- You can ask to know what we collect and why, ask us to delete it, and ask us to correct it. You will never be treated differently for asking. An authorised agent may ask on your behalf, with written proof.
- How we check it is you
- We will ask for details about the request that only you would be likely to know. We will not make you create an account in order to ask.
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Children
This site is for people who buy and use paid developer tools. It is not aimed at children, and we do not knowingly collect anything from anyone under 16.
If you believe a child has sent us something, write to us and we will delete it.
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How we protect it
Every page is served over HTTPS. There are no accounts, so there are no passwords to steal. The vote log holds nothing that identifies a person, so there is nothing in it to leak.
No website is perfectly safe, and we will not pretend otherwise. If you find a security problem, tell us before you tell anyone else, and we will fix it.
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Changes to this policy
We may update this page. When we do, the date at the top changes, and a real change also gets a dated line in the Changelog.
If a change matters — a new thing collected, a new company involved — we will say so plainly rather than slip it into a paragraph.
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How to reach us
Privacy questions, requests, and complaints go to team@benchalert.com.
We do not publish a postal address. Email is the way in, and we answer it.
Tell us what you want us to do, and roughly when you visited. We answer every message, and we fix our mistakes in the open.