Privacy

The email address you give at checkout, the listing details you submit, and the payment records our provider returns to us. We also count clicks on listings in aggregate, with bot filtering and per-session deduplication, so the click totals shown on the board mean something.

While a page is open and visible, it tells us once a minute that it is still being read. That is how the site counts who is online and how many visits it gets. We keep a marker made by hashing your IP address and browser together with the day and a secret, and the time it was last seen. The marker changes every day, so it cannot follow you from one day to the next, and we set no cookie and store nothing in your browser to do it.

When you open someone’s share link, we also keep a marker of the network you came from, made by hashing only the first part of your IP address (the part shared by everyone on the same network) with the day and a secret. It lets us notice many earning visits arriving from one network in a short time. It cannot identify you or your device, and it changes every day. The listing page also notes how long it was visible and whether you scrolled or tapped, and sends that as a single yes once it is enough to count. We store no timing data, and the link’s signed ticket is removed from the address bar as soon as the page opens.

If you arrive through a partner’s referral link (one ending in ?ref=), we keep that referral code in a cookie called oust_ref for 30 days. If you then claim a listing, the code is saved with the claim so the partner can be credited for it. The cookie holds only the code, never anything about you.

If you choose to sign in with Google, X or Uphiva, that service shares your name, email address and profile picture with us, and X shares your username and confirmed email. We use them only to create your Oust account, sign you in, and email you about your own listings and payments. If you verify an X handle, we keep your X username and X’s permanent id for that account, and once a day we ask X what the account is called now, so a handle that changes hands stops being verified. The sign-in tokens the service issues are stored with your account and are used for nothing beyond signing you in.

We never post, read your posts or messages, or see your contacts, and we do not use this information for advertising or sell it. Oust’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. You can disconnect a sign-in method from your account page at any time, or delete your account there, which removes this information.

Card numbers, bank credentials and payment authentication never reach our servers. Checkout happens on the payment provider’s own page. When you enable auto-defend, we store a provider-issued token that authorises a future charge, never the card itself.

Everything on a listing is public by design: title, description, category, link, amount paid, rank history and click count. That is the product. Your email address is not published.

Our payment provider, so charges can be processed, and our hosting and analytics providers, so the site runs and we can count visitors. We do not sell personal data, and we do not share your email address with the products listed on the board.

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Deleting your personal details does not remove a public listing or its payment record, because the board’s history is what makes the ranking verifiable. Write to privacy@oustbid.com.