Privacy
What replacementapps.com stores, why, and for how long, in plain language. Updated 19 October 2026.
The short version
- Reading the site needs no account and sets no cookies.
- Upvoting needs no account. To keep it to one vote per person, we keep a cookie and a scrambled (keyed-hash) form of your network address. We never store your IP address itself.
- Commenting, replying and voting on comments need a sign-in, only to keep out spam. Your comments show a public name you choose. Your real name, email address and photo are never shown, and we don't ask GitHub or Google for your name or photo.
- If you make an account with an email address and a password, we store the address and a scrambled, one-way form of the password (a hash). We never store the password itself.
- Apps you save while signed in are kept on your account so they follow you to other devices. They're private: never shown to anyone and never counted in public numbers.
- No ads and no tracking. We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies and doesn't store your IP address. We never sell your data or share it for marketing.
- You can change your public name or delete your account at any time.
What we collect, and why
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Upvotes: which projects you upvoted, a random voter id in a cookie, keyed hashes of your network address and of its surrounding block, and your network's AS number | One vote per person per project, and a limit on how many votes one network can cast |
| If you sign in: which service you used, the account number it gives us (your email address, for email sign-in), the verified email address it gives us, and when you first signed in. For GitHub, also the date your GitHub account was created. | To recognize you next time, to review the first comments from brand-new accounts, to keep banned accounts out, and to find your account if you ask us to recover or delete it. Never shown to anyone. |
| If you make an account with an email address and a password: the address, a one-way hash of the password (never the password itself), when you confirmed the address, when you last changed the password, and a count of recent failed sign-ins | To let you sign in, to make sure the address is yours, and to slow down anyone guessing passwords. The address is never shown to anyone; your account page shows only its first letter and domain. |
| Apps you save while signed in | So your saves follow you to every device. Private: never shown to anyone, never counted in public numbers, and deleted with your account. |
| Your public name: a random one such as member-4f2a9c until you choose your own | Shown next to your comments |
| Comments and replies you post, and comments you report | To show them, and to moderate |
| Your up and down votes on comments, linked to your account | To show each comment's score, to keep it to one vote per person, and to show you how you voted. Never shown to anyone. |
| Messages you send through the contact page | To read and answer them |
| Short-lived counters keyed by a hash of your network address | To slow down spam and abuse |
Before a comment appears it is screened automatically, by word lists and by an AI model that runs on Cloudflare's network.
When you choose a password, we check it against Have I Been Pwned's list of passwords exposed in data breaches, without sending the password. We compute a SHA-1 hash of it on our server and send only the first 5 characters of that hash; the service answers with every breached password that starts the same way, and our server looks for yours in that list. The service never learns your password or which one was checked. If it doesn't answer within a second and a half, we skip the check.
Cookies and browser storage
| Name | Set when | Lasts | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
ra_vid | You upvote | 2 years, or until you sign out | One vote per project from this browser |
__Host-ra_session | You sign in | 30 days, or until you sign out | Keeps you signed in |
ra_oauth | You start a GitHub or Google sign-in | 10 minutes | Checks that the sign-in finishes in the same browser |
ra_email | You ask for an email sign-in link | 15 minutes | Makes the link work only in this browser |
ra_signup | You ask to make an account with an email address and a password (whether or not the address already has one) | Up to 24 hours | Lets the confirmation link sign you in only in the browser where you made the account |
ra_device | You sign in | 1 year. Kept when you sign out; removed when you delete your account. It stops counting when you change or reset your password or choose Sign out on all devices. | Remembers that this browser has signed in to your account before, so failed password guesses by someone else don't lock you out here. It holds only a random account number, never your email or password. |
The page also remembers your list layout and the order you chose for comments in your browser's local storage, and keeps unsent comments and replies while you sign in. That stays in your browser and is never sent to us. When you're signed out, apps you save are kept the same way, in this browser only. When you sign in, they move to your account and are removed from the browser. Cloudflare may set a strictly necessary security cookie when it checks for bots.
How long we keep it
| Network hashes and AS number on a vote | 30 days, then erased. The vote itself stays until you remove it or delete your account. |
| Rate-limit counters | 2 days |
| Unfinished sign-ins, including the address an email link went to | Up to 1 hour |
| Accounts made with an email address and a password whose address was never confirmed | 7 days, then deleted |
| Links to confirm an address or reset a password | They stop working once used or expired (24 hours to confirm, 1 hour to reset), and are erased within a day after that. A reset link also stops working when the password changes. |
| Failed password sign-in counters | Each count covers 15 minutes (a lock lasts 15 minutes) and is erased within a day. Counts for a network are erased within 2 days. |
| Sign-in sessions | 30 days, or until you sign out. Changing or resetting your password, or choosing Sign out on all devices, ends them at once. |
| Saved apps | Until you remove them or delete your account |
| Your comments | Until you or a moderator delete them. When you delete one, its text is erased at once. Text a moderator removes is erased after 30 days. |
| Your votes on comments | Until you change or clear them, or delete your account. Votes on comments that were removed or deleted are erased 30 days later. |
| Comments waiting for review | Removed 30 days after they were held, if nobody has reviewed them by then |
| Moderation records: text of blocked or held comments, and public-name changes | Text erased after 30 days, the record itself after a year |
| Reports | 90 days |
| Contact messages | 90 days |
| Your account | Until you delete it |
Who else handles data
- Cloudflare hosts the site and its database, runs the bot check (Turnstile) when you vote, comment, make an account, sign in with a password, ask for an email sign-in link or a password reset link, add a password, or send a message, and runs the AI comment screening. Like any web host, it sees your IP address when you visit. It also gives us visit counts (Cloudflare Web Analytics): when a page loads, a small script reports the page address, the site that linked you, your browser and device type, your country and how fast the page loaded. It sets no cookies and doesn't store your IP address, and we only see totals. The account page isn't counted, because the links we email you open it with a one-time code in its address.
- Google Fonts serves the typefaces on every page of the site, so Google sees your IP address and browser when a page loads.
- GitHub or Google, only if you sign in with them. They tell us your account number and email address.
- Resend delivers our emails: sign-in links, links to confirm an address or reset a password, and notices that a password was changed. It receives the address and the message, only when one of these is sent to you.
- Have I Been Pwned receives the first 5 characters of a SHA-1 hash of a new password, as described above, and nothing else about you.
Your choices
- To change your public name, sign in and open your account page (or choose Your public name in any project's comments).
- On your account page you can also change your password or add one, sign out on all devices, see and remove your saved apps, and download a copy of your data as a file: your account, public-name changes, saves, comments, reports you made and votes. In that file your email address is shortened to its first letter and domain, as on the account page, so someone using your session can't read it from there.
- To delete your account, choose Delete account on your account page, or Delete my account under Your public name in any project's comments. That signs you out everywhere, deletes your email address, password hash, saved apps, sessions, votes (on projects and on comments), reports and any unused confirmation or reset links, and erases the text of your comments. If an account was banned, we keep only its sign-in account number and the ban, so it cannot sign up again. For an account made with an email address, that number is the email address itself.
- To remove an upvote, click it again. Clearing your cookies makes you a new anonymous voter.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- Show you the personal data we hold about you (access).
- Correct anything in it that is wrong.
- Delete it, beyond what deleting your account already removes.
- Export it in a common machine-readable format (portability). Download my data on your account page already gives you a copy.
Send the request through the contact page and tell us which account it is about: the sign-in service and email address you used, or your public name. We may ask you to confirm it is your account before we act. We answer within one month.
If you are in the EU or the UK, these rights come from the GDPR, which also lets you object to how we use your data and complain to your local data protection authority. If you live in California, the CCPA gives you similar rights to know, correct and delete, and we don't sell or share personal information as that law defines those terms. We won't treat you differently for using any of these rights.
Contact
Questions about this page or your data? Use the contact page. Please don't send passwords or other secrets.