Privacy policy
Last updated: 16 October 2026
What we store
- Account: your username, your email address, and a salted hash of your password (we never store the password itself).
- Your activity: sites you submit, your votes, your reports and your favourites, so we can count them and moderate the directory, plus a history of the sites Discover has shown you, so it doesn't repeat itself. You can clear your history at any time on My account.
- Sessions: a login cookie on the website, or a login token stored in the extension.
- Server logs: IP addresses are used in memory for rate limiting and are not stored in our database.
Your email address
You need an email address to create an account. We use it only for:
- Activating your account: when you sign up, we email a 6-digit code to check the address is yours.
- Password resets: if you use "Forgot password?", we email you a link to choose a new one.
- Security notices: we let you know when your password or email address is changed, so you can act if it wasn't you.
We don't send newsletters or marketing, and your email is never shown to other users. It's visible only to you on My account and to the site's administrators, who may use it to contact you about your account. You can also log in with it instead of your username.
Account emails are sent from Accounts@elsewhereonline.co.uk through our email delivery provider, Resend, which handles your address and the email's contents only to deliver it on our behalf. Codes and reset links are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form, work only once, and expire after 15 minutes (codes) or one hour (links).
If a sign-up is never activated, the account and its email address are deleted automatically after 7 days. You can change your email address at any time on My account; we confirm the new one with a code and tell the old one about the change.
Cookies and browser storage
We don't use advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, so there's no cookie banner to click through. The website only stores what it needs to work and to remember the choices you make:
| What | Where it's kept | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Login session | A cookie, for up to 30 days or until you log out | Keeps you logged in. It's only set when you log in. |
| Theme, interests and dismissed tips | Your browser's storage | Remembers the look, topics and settings you chose. |
| Discover trail | Your browser's storage, cleared when you close the tab | Makes the Back button work. |
| Sign-up reminder | Your browser's storage | Counts discovers so we only suggest creating an account occasionally, and remembers if you said "Maybe later". Only used when you're logged out. |
| Security cookie | A cookie set by Cloudflare, our network provider | Helps tell real visitors from malicious bots. |
Browser storage stays on your device and isn't sent to us. You can clear any of it at any time in your browser's settings; the site will simply forget your choices.
The browser extensions (Chrome and Firefox)
The extension stores your settings, interests, login token and a short list of the sites it has shown you (for the Back button and to avoid repeats) in the browser's own extension storage.
If you allow it, the extension draws the Elsewhere Online toolbar on top of the sites it opens for you. That needs the browser's permission to "read and change data on websites", which the extension asks for once and you can turn off at any time in its settings. The toolbar is only added to the tab Elsewhere Online opened, and only until you close it. The extension does not read page contents, your browsing history or any other tab, and it only talks to our server when you press Discover or Back, vote, report, favourite or log in. When you log in through the extension, your username (or email) and password are sent to our server to check them.
Bug reports and feedback
Messages sent through the feedback form are stored on our server and emailed to the team. Each one includes your message, your username if you're logged in, your browser type, and the page you mention. An email address is only included if you choose to give one in the form, and is only used to reply to you.
What we don't do
No advertising, no tracking pixels, no analytics, no marketing emails, and we never sell or share your data with anyone except the email delivery provider above, and only to send the emails described here.
Removing your information
Get in touch through the feedback form if you want your site or account information removed.
Contact
For privacy questions or to delete your account, use the feedback form and include an email address so we can reply, or open an issue on the project's source repository.