Privacy Policy

This policy explains how OSTVault (“we”, “us”) handles information when you use ostvault.com.

1. What we collect

Your account

• Email address and password. Sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication. Your password is stored by Firebase in a protected form, and we never see it.
• Username, which you choose when you sign up and can change in Settings.
• Account dates: when you signed up, and when you last signed in (recorded by Firebase).

What you do on OSTVault

• Ratings, saved with the album’s title, composer and cover image so they can be shown in lists and charts.
• Favorites, listened history, lists (and the albums in them) and composers you follow.

Premium

If you subscribe, payment is handled on Stripe’s checkout page. Stripe collects your card and billing details; we don’t receive or store them. We keep your Stripe customer reference, the email Stripe uses for receipts, and your subscription status with your account so the site knows you’re on Premium.

Anonymous page views

When anyone opens an album page, we record the album, its title and composer, and the time. These records don’t include your account, name or IP address, and each album is counted once per browser session. They power the Popular and Trending lists.

What we don’t collect

No analytics or advertising trackers, no location, no contacts, and nothing from your other accounts.

2. Public vs. private

OSTVault is partly social, so some of what you do is visible to others. Here’s exactly what:

Your public profile lives at a link containing your account ID. Anyone with that link can view it.

3. How we use it

• To run your account and the features you use: ratings, favorites, listened history, lists and follows.
• To show your public profile and include your ratings in album averages and charts.
• To apply the Free and Premium plan limits.
• To count anonymous page views for the Popular and Trending lists.
• To reply when you contact us.

If you’re in the EU, UK or a similar region: we process account and activity data to provide the service you signed up for, payment data to fulfil your subscription, and anonymous view counts in our legitimate interest in showing what’s popular. We don’t sell your personal information or share it for advertising.

4. Services we use

These companies help run OSTVault or supply its music information:

• Google Firebase (sign-in, database, hosting and a small server function). Stores your account and activity data on Google’s servers, which may be outside your country. Firebase privacy
• Cloudflare, which delivers ostvault.com and protects it from attacks. It processes your IP address and request details to do that. Cloudflare privacy
• Stripe, which processes Premium payments. Stripe privacy

To show albums, artwork, composers and concerts, your browser also loads information from Apple iTunes, MusicBrainz, Cover Art Archive / Internet Archive, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, TheAudioDB, Ticketmaster (Live Shows), Google Translate (to translate Japanese album and composer names) and Google Fonts.

We don’t send these services your account details. But because your browser contacts them directly, they can see your IP address and browser information, just as any website you visit can. Links to Apple Music, Spotify and ticket pages take you to those sites, where their own policies apply.

5. Storage on your device

We don’t use advertising or tracking cookies. The site stores a few things in your browser to work and load quickly:

• IndexedDB: Firebase keeps you signed in and saves a copy of recently loaded data.
• Local storage: cached album artwork and translations, the Live Shows list (refreshed every 6 hours), and your own recent ratings for quick display.
• Session storage: page caches, and a note of which albums you’ve viewed this session so views aren’t double-counted.

Cloudflare may set strictly necessary security cookies, and Stripe uses cookies on its own checkout pages. Clearing this site’s data in your browser removes everything above and signs you out.

6. How long we keep it

• Account and activity data: until you remove it or ask us to delete your account. When you remove a rating, favorite, listened mark, list or follow, it’s deleted right away.
• Anonymous page views: kept to calculate popularity. They aren’t linked to you.
• Payment records: kept by Stripe for as long as tax and financial laws require.

7. Your choices and rights

• Change your username or password in Settings.
• Remove any rating, favorite, listened mark, list or follow from the album, composer or profile pages.
• Manage your Premium subscription through Stripe’s billing page, linked from Upgrade.
• Email us to get a copy of your data, correct it or delete your account and everything tied to it.

Depending on where you live (for example the EU, UK or California), you may have legal rights to access, correct, delete or export your data, and to object to how it’s used. You can exercise any of them by emailing us, and we’ll respond within 30 days. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

8. Security

OSTVault is served only over encrypted HTTPS. Passwords are handled by Firebase Authentication, and database rules control who can read and change each kind of data, so other people can’t edit your ratings, favorites or lists. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a password you don’t use elsewhere.

9. Children

OSTVault isn’t intended for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information. If you think a child has created an account, email us and we’ll delete it.

10. Changes to this policy

When we update this policy, we’ll change the date at the top. If a change affects how your information is used in a meaningful way, we’ll also note it on the site.

11. Contact

Questions, data requests or account deletion: [email protected]