Privacy Policy

Who we are

Car Face Off (carfaceoff.net) is an independent car-comparison voting site. If you have questions about this policy or want to request removal of something you submitted, contact us at andrewjrider@gmail.com.

What we collect

Voting on the main site

Voting doesn't require an account. Each vote is tied to a one-time random ID generated in your browser at the moment you vote, not to a persistent identifier we can trace back to you across visits.

Anonymous usage analytics

We collect basic, first-party usage data: a random session ID (created fresh each browser session and stored only in that tab's session storage, not a cookie), the page path, your browser's user-agent string, how long you were on a page, and whether you voted or skipped. We don't use this to identify you personally, and we don't share it with advertising or analytics networks.

Dream Garage

Dream Garage uses a random anonymous visitor ID stored in your browser to save vehicles and collections without an account. Shared garage links use opaque public tokens and do not reveal that visitor ID. Garage and collection names are optional, length-limited, and should not include personal information.

Community Garage submissions

If you submit a vehicle to the Garage, we collect:

• The VIN you provide, which we send to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's public vPIC decoding service to look up the year, make, model, trim, and body style. No other data about you is sent to NHTSA.
• One photo you upload. Before it's stored, we automatically strip all EXIF metadata from the file, including GPS location data, camera/device information, and timestamps. The photo is also automatically re-scanned for prohibited content before it can go live.
• An optional nickname and one-line caption, if you choose to provide them.
• A hashed version of your IP address, used only to enforce submission rate limits and is never stored or shown in plain form.

Everything in an approved Garage submission — the photo, decoded vehicle details, nickname, and caption — is displayed publicly on the site. Don't submit a VIN or photo for a vehicle you don't own or don't have permission to feature.

Server logs

Like most hosted websites, our hosting provider's infrastructure may briefly retain standard server logs (including IP addresses) as part of normal operation and security monitoring. We don't use these logs for tracking or profiling.

How we use it

We use the information above to run the voting and ranking features, save anonymous Dream Garages, decode and display Garage submissions, moderate content before it's public, prevent abuse (duplicate VINs, submission spam), and understand aggregate site usage so we can improve it.

What we share

We don't sell your information. A few narrow exceptions where data leaves our system:

• NHTSA vPIC — VINs submitted to the Garage are sent to this public U.S. government API to decode vehicle details.
• Content moderation — Garage photos may be automatically screened by a third-party image moderation service (AWS Rekognition) solely to check for prohibited content before anything is approved.
• Advertising (not yet active) — We may enable Google AdSense on this site in the future. If and when that happens, Google may set cookies and collect data to serve and measure ads, governed by Google's own privacy policy, and we'll update this section accordingly. As of this writing, no advertising is running on Car Face Off.

Cookies

Car Face Off does not use tracking or advertising cookies for regular visitors. The only cookie in use is a functional, HttpOnly session cookie used for the site's own admin login — it isn't set for regular visitors and isn't used for tracking.

Your rights

You can request removal of any Garage submission you made — photo, vehicle details, nickname, or caption — at any time by emailing andrewjrider@gmail.com. We'll remove it promptly.

Children's privacy

Car Face Off is not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we'll update the date at the top of this page.