Privacy Policy
Internet Exchange has no accounts. This describes, precisely, the small amount of anonymous data the product actually uses to work correctly and stay fair.
The short version
There is no sign-up and no account. To keep the Exchange fair — one BACK per person per listing, sensible rate limits — we use one small anonymous identifier plus standard web analytics. Here is exactly what that means.
The anonymous visitor cookie (ie_visitor)
When you visit, our server issues a signed, randomly generated anonymous identifier in a cookie named ie_visitor. It is not your name, email or any account — there isn’t one. It exists so the product can work as intended: remembering your own BACKs, enforcing one BACK per person per listing, and applying sensible rate limits. The cookie is HttpOnly (not readable by page scripts) and, in production, sent only over HTTPS. It is never used for advertising, cross-site tracking, or building an identity profile of you.
Product interactions (BACK, VISIT, SHARE, view, IPO, referral)
When you BACK a listing, visit its destination, share it, view it long enough to count (a “qualified view”), submit an IPO, or follow a referral link, our server records that action against your anonymous visitor id — that is how rank and Internet Cap are computed, and how obvious abuse is prevented. These records are not linked to any real-world identity.
Vercel Web Analytics
We use Vercel Web Analytics for aggregate product usage: automatic pageviews, and a small, fixed set of named product events (for example ipo_completed or back_completed) — never a raw event payload, a full URL, a submitted tagline, or a visitor id. This is a separate mechanism from the ie_visitor product cookie above, operated by Vercel; see Vercel’s own documentation for how it processes data on our behalf.
Where you came from (acquisition)
When you arrive from a link, we read — in the browser, as part of the analytics above — any UTM parameters and the hostname (never the full URL) of the page that referred you, purely to understand which channels bring visitors. We never capture the full referring URL, your browsing history, or any identity.
Network/IP information
Our server processes IP-derived network information for abuse prevention and rate limiting on write actions (BACK, IPO and similar). This is used only to decide whether to accept or reject a request — it is never turned into a user-facing identity profile, and a raw IP address is never stored against your visitor id.
What we store, and for how long
Being precise rather than inventing a number: short-lived tokens (dwell tickets, IPO preview tokens) expire in minutes, by design. The visitor cookie itself lasts up to 400 days (refreshed on use) — the practical browser maximum. Product/action records tied to your anonymous visitor id persist for as long as the listing they relate to remains on the Exchange. We do not currently define a separate fixed deletion schedule for that data beyond a listing’s own lifecycle — we’re stating that plainly rather than promising a specific retention window the product doesn’t yet implement.
User-submitted listing information
A listing’s name, tagline, category and destination are stored and shown publicly on the Exchange — and are search-indexable — because that is the product. Don’t submit anything about a real person you don’t have the right to share; see Listing Guidelines.
Infrastructure we actually use
Vercel (hosting, serverless functions, scheduled jobs, and the Web Analytics above) and Supabase (the Postgres database, and object storage for listing logo images). We do not sell data, and we do not share it with advertisers.
External links
Listings and shared links point to destinations we don’t control. Their own privacy practices apply once you leave Internet Exchange.
Your choices
Clearing your cookies resets your anonymous visitor id — you’ll appear as a new visitor, and your prior BACKs won’t follow you. There is no account to delete, because there is no account.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the product evolves.
Contact
Questions about this policy go to Report / Takedown / Contact, or email internetexchange@gmail.com directly.