Privacy Policy

Last updated: 18 October 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what information Cinelect ("Cinelect", "the Service", "we", "us") collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. Cinelect is a group movie picker available at cinelect.com, free to use with an optional paid Premium upgrade, and operated by an independent developer. By using Cinelect, you agree to this policy.

1. Information we collect

We only collect what we need to run the Service:

Account information. If you sign in with Google, Facebook, or email, we receive your email address and display name. We do not receive or store your Google or Facebook password.
Profile details. Optional information you choose to add: an avatar photo, your country, your preferred language, and which streaming services you use.
Activity in the app. The rooms you create or join, the films you add to a watchlist, your nominations, your rankings, and your watched list.
Payments. If you buy Premium, the payment is handled by Stripe. We receive your email address and the plan you chose and its status, never your card number.
Usage data. If you allow it (see Cookies), Google Analytics records how the app is used: which screens are opened; actions such as creating a room, suggesting a film, or locking in nominations; how far you get through the tour; and general technical details such as device type, browser, language, approximate location (country or city, worked out from your IP address), and the website that sent you (your browser also remembers the kind of site that first brought you to Cinelect, such as a search engine, an invite email or an AI assistant, so we can see how people find us). It does not receive your name, email address, room codes, or anything you type. Vercel Web Analytics also counts page visits, without cookies and without identifying you.
Invites. If you send invites through Cinelect, we pass the email addresses you enter, along with your display name, to our email provider (Resend) to deliver them. If you are signed in, each invite also shows your email address so people can reach you; invites sent without an account show only your display name. We don't keep those addresses, except that if someone unsubscribes, or an invite to an address bounces or is reported as spam, we keep that address so Cinelect doesn't invite it again.
Cinelect AI. If you ask Cinelect AI for recommendations, we send what you typed about your mood, the titles of films your room liked or has already seen, the room's age rating limit, and your language to Anthropic, whose Claude model suggests films. For a Quick pick it also gets the titles on your room's Watchlist and the titles each member rated highly, listed as "Member 1", "Member 2" and so on. We do not send anyone's name or email address, or the room code. Anthropic does not use this data to train its models.
Abuse protection. Cinelect uses Google reCAPTCHA (through Firebase App Check) to confirm that requests to our database come from the Cinelect website rather than automated scripts. It runs in the background and never asks you to solve a puzzle. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Abuse limits. To stop spam and abuse, we count how many invites and Cinelect AI requests each account makes per day or week, and, for people using Cinelect without an account, per internet connection. For that we keep a scrambled code made from your IP address (a keyed hash, which can't be turned back into the address), never the address itself. These counts are used for nothing else.
Error reports. If the app runs into an error, it sends us an automatic report with the error message, the page address, your browser type, and your room code and display name, so we can find and fix the problem.

You can use Cinelect anonymously without signing in. In that case we do not collect your email, only the in-app activity above tied to a temporary anonymous identity.

What we do not do: We never see or store your card details, we do not run advertising, and we do not sell your information.

2. How we use your information

We use the information to provide and improve the Service: to sign you in, sync your rooms across devices, show your display name and avatar to other members of rooms you join, remember your preferences, let the group build watchlists and vote, unlock Premium for members who buy it, and understand which features are used and what goes wrong so we can make Cinelect better.

3. Where your information is stored

Cinelect runs on Google Firebase. Your information is stored using Firebase Authentication and Firebase Realtime Database, which run on Google's servers. Google acts as our data processor. Google's handling of data is described in the Firebase Privacy and Security documentation.

4. Information shared with other users

When you join or create a room, the other members of that room can see your display name, your avatar, and the films, nominations, and rankings you contribute to that room. Only people with the room's code can join it. Your email address is not shown to other members.

5. Third-party services

Cinelect uses a small number of third parties to function:

Google Firebase for sign-in and the database.
Google and Facebook if you choose to sign in with them.
Google Analytics for usage statistics, if you allow it (see Cookies). Google signals and ad personalisation are turned off, so this data is not used for advertising.
Vercel, which hosts the app and provides cookieless visit counts (Vercel Web Analytics).
Resend, which delivers the invite emails you send through Cinelect and password-reset emails.
Anthropic, whose Claude model powers Cinelect AI recommendations, if you use them.
Stripe, which processes Premium payments under its own privacy policy.
The Movie Database (TMDB) and OMDb for movie information and ratings. When you search for a film, your search text is sent to these services to return results. We do not send them your personal information. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.

6. Cookies and local storage

Cinelect uses your browser's local storage and authentication tokens to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences (such as your theme, language, and recent rooms). These are essential to how the app works and are not used for advertising. While you take the tour, its practice room and your progress are kept in local storage only, never sent to our database, and are removed when you finish or skip it.

With your permission, Cinelect also uses Google Analytics cookies (named _ga, and _ga_ followed by an ID) to recognise returning visits and measure how the app is used. They are not used for advertising.

In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, these cookies are set only after you choose Allow on the notice shown on your first visit.
Elsewhere, they are on by default.
You can turn them on or off at any time in Settings > Privacy > Share usage data. Turning it off stops Google Analytics and deletes its cookies from your browser. You can also use Google's opt-out browser add-on.

Google describes how it handles this data in How Google uses information from sites that use its services.

7. Keeping and deleting your information

We keep your information for as long as you use Cinelect. You are in control:

You can leave or delete rooms from within the app.
You can update your display name, avatar, and preferences at any time.
You can delete your account in Settings (Delete Account). This permanently removes your account, your profile, your Solo and Watched lists, and your list of rooms, and removes your email address from the rooms you were in. The display names, films, nominations, and rankings you added to a room stay with that room, so the rest of the group keeps its history. You can also email us at info@cinelect.com and we will help.
Google Analytics keeps usage data for up to 14 months.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example, under the GDPR in Europe or the CCPA in California), you may have the right to access, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you, and to object to certain processing. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@cinelect.com. You can also stop usage data collection at any time in Settings.

9. Children

Cinelect is designed so that children as young as 5 can take part in choosing a movie with their family without creating an account. Used this way, a child only needs a room code and a display name; we recommend parents choose a nickname rather than the child's full name, since that name is visible to other members of the room. This anonymous, in-app activity is tied to a temporary identity, not to the child. Usage data is collected only to understand and improve the app, never for advertising or to build profiles, and it is not linked to a name or email address.

Creating an account (signing in with Google, Facebook, or an email and password) requires the user to be at least 13 years old, and we do not knowingly collect an email address or other account information from anyone younger. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 through an account, we will delete it. If you believe this has happened, contact us at info@cinelect.com.

10. International users

Cinelect is available worldwide and your information may be processed by Google, Vercel, Stripe, and Resend on servers located in other countries. By using the Service, you consent to this processing.

11. Security

We protect your information using Firebase Authentication and database security rules that restrict access to signed-in users and the rooms they belong to. No method of storage or transmission over the internet is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date above. Significant changes will be reflected here.

13. Contact

Questions about your privacy or this policy? Email us at info@cinelect.com.