Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Recommended.app is operated by Admaginations LLC ("we," "us," "our"). Our website is located at www.recommended.app (the "Service"). By accessing or using the Service, you agree to the collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

2. Information We Collect

Information You Provide

When you create an account, we collect your name, email address, and password. You may also provide profile information such as a username, referral code, avatar photo, bio, and primary city. If you use our internal messaging, chat agent, or contact forms, we collect the content of those communications. Payment information is processed through Stripe, which is PCI-DSS compliant — we do not store full credit card numbers. If you earn commissions through our referral program, we may collect tax information such as a W-9 form as required by law.

Information Collected Automatically

We automatically collect usage data including pages visited, links clicked, and search queries. We collect device and browser information such as your IP address, browser type, operating system, and screen resolution. We use cookies and similar tracking technologies, including session cookies for authentication, 30-day referral attribution cookies, and analytics cookies. We may derive approximate location data from your IP address.

Information from Third Parties

If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and profile image from Google. Our affiliate partners may provide us with anonymized conversion and click data related to transactions completed through our referral links.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to provide, maintain, and improve the Service; process transactions and calculate and distribute referral commissions; send transactional communications (such as account confirmations and payout notifications) and, where permitted, promotional communications; track referral attribution and affiliate link clicks; analyze usage patterns to improve our platform; detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and security threats; and comply with legal obligations including tax reporting requirements.

4. How We Share Your Information

We do not sell your personal information. We share information with service providers who help us operate the Service, including Supabase (database and authentication), Vercel (hosting), Stripe (payment processing), and email delivery providers. When you click affiliate links to partners such as Viator, Hotels.com, Expedia, Amazon, Thumbtack, Stay22, Angi, and others, the destination sites receive your referral ID, IP address, and browser information — these sites are governed by their own privacy policies. We may disclose information to comply with applicable law, respond to legal process, or protect the rights, property, and safety of Admaginations LLC and our users. In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We may also share information with your consent.

5. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service. Upon receiving an account deletion request, we will delete your personal data within 30 days, except where retention is required by law. Tax-related records may be retained for up to 7 years in accordance with IRS requirements. Anonymized and aggregated data that cannot be used to identify you may be retained indefinitely for analytical purposes.

6. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your information, including TLS/SSL encryption for data in transit, row-level security policies in our database, and restricted access controls for our team. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security of your data.

7. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use the following types of cookies and tracking technologies: essential cookies for authentication and session management; referral tracking cookies to attribute sign-ups and purchases to the correct referrer; analytics cookies to understand how visitors interact with the Service; a consent cookie to remember your cookie preferences; and affiliate partner cookies, which are set by destination sites when you click outbound affiliate links and are governed by those partners' cookie policies.

Internal Cookies

• rec_referral — 30-day cookie used to attribute sign-ups and bookings to the referring user.
• cookie_consent — 365-day cookie that stores your consent preference so we do not show the cookie banner again.

Affiliate Marketing Programs

Recommended.app participates in affiliate marketing programs. When you click a link to one of our partners and complete a qualifying booking, purchase, or sign-up, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

Active affiliate partnerships as of the date of this Policy:

• Viator (tour and experience bookings) — partner ID P00154930
• Hotels.com via Commission Junction
• Expedia via Commission Junction
• Angi via Commission Junction
• Clipp / LocalFlavor via Commission Junction
• AliExpress via Commission Junction
• 12go via Commission Junction
• Travelpayouts (Klook, TicketNetwork, Kiwi, GetTransfer, GetRentacar, Tiqets, LocalRent)
• Stay22
• Amazon Associates (US)
• Temu (direct partnership)

Affiliate cookies dropped by these partners may track click attribution for the purpose of crediting referrals. Cookie durations vary by partner (24 hours to 30 days). Recommended.app does not access or read these affiliate cookies directly; the partner's privacy policy applies once you reach their site.

Recommended.app's editorial recommendations are based on aggregated user reviews, ratings, and publicly available data. The presence of an affiliate relationship does not influence whether a business appears in search results or how it is ranked. We do not accept payment for individual placement, ranking position, or favorable review treatment. Featured placements are clearly labeled.

For a complete list of partners and disclosure language, see our Affiliate Disclosure.

8. Your Rights and Choices

You have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal information. You may request a portable copy of your data. You can opt out of promotional communications at any time by following the unsubscribe link in any marketing email. We currently do not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) browser signals. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@recommended.app.

9. U.S. State Privacy Rights (California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Nevada)

Recommended.app does not sell personal information as defined by California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, or Nevada state privacy law. Residents of these states have specific rights regarding their personal information:

California (CCPA / CPRA)

• Right to know what personal information we collect
• Right to request deletion of personal information
• Right to correct inaccurate personal information
• Right to opt out of sale or sharing of personal information
• Right to limit use of sensitive personal information
• Right to non-discrimination for exercising these rights

Virginia (VCDPA), Colorado (CPA), Connecticut (CTDPA)

• Right to access, correct, delete, and port personal information
• Right to opt out of targeted advertising and sale
• Right to recognize universal opt-out signals (Colorado)

Nevada (SB 220)

• Right to opt out of any future sale of personal information, even though we do not currently sell personal information

To exercise any of these rights, including submitting a "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" request, use our form at recommended.app/do-not-sell or contact admin@recommended.app. We will respond to verifiable requests within 45 days, as required by applicable state law. We may need to verify your identity before processing certain request types.

We do not discriminate against users who exercise these rights.

10. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to individuals under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under 16, we will take steps to delete that information promptly.

11. International Users

The Service is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your jurisdiction.

12. Third-Party Links

The Service contains links to third-party websites and services, including affiliate partners, hotels, tour operators, and home service providers. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these third-party sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make changes, we will update the "Last Updated" date at the top of this page. Your continued use of the Service after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

14. AI Assistants and ChatGPT Integration

Recommended.app operates Custom GPTs and AI assistants available through ChatGPT and other AI platforms (collectively, "AI Assistants"). When you interact with a Recommended.app AI Assistant:

1. Your conversation with the underlying AI platform (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) is governed by that platform's privacy policy. We do not have access to your conversation content, your account on those platforms, or any messages you exchange with the AI.
2. Our AI Assistants call public API endpoints at https://www.recommended.app/api/v1/* to retrieve city listings, recommendations, services, and deals. These calls are server-to-server. We receive only non-personal request parameters such as city slug, optional category filter, service type, and result limit. We do not receive your name, email, IP address, ChatGPT user identifier, conversation content, or any personal data through these API calls.
3. The data returned by our public API contains the same publicly visible information available on www.recommended.app: business names, descriptions, ratings, review counts, image URLs, geographic locations, and category tags. The API does not return phone numbers, email addresses, or business contact information.
4. When you click a third-party booking or affiliate link returned by an AI Assistant, the link contains affiliate tracking parameters that allow us to receive a commission on completed bookings. The third party's privacy policy applies once you reach their site.
5. We retain anonymized API request logs (city, category, timestamp, response status, geographic region of the requesting server) for up to 90 days for performance monitoring, abuse prevention, and capacity planning. These logs are not associated with any individual user, ChatGPT account, or device.
6. We do not use AI Assistant interactions to train our own AI models. We do not share AI Assistant API request logs with third parties except as required by law or for fraud investigation.

For questions about our AI Assistants, contact admin@recommended.app.

15. AI Search Bots and Web Crawlers

Recommended.app permits the following AI training, search, and indexing crawlers to access the publicly available portions of our site:

• GPTBot (OpenAI training)
• OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search results)
• ChatGPT-User (real-time ChatGPT browsing on behalf of users)
• ClaudeBot (Anthropic training and search)
• PerplexityBot (Perplexity AI)
• Google-Extended (Google AI training)
• Bingbot (Microsoft Copilot and Bing Search)

These crawlers may read, summarize, or quote our public content (city pages, business directory listings, blog posts, cost guides, reviews) and surface that content in their products. Information you encounter about Recommended.app inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, or similar products may originate from this crawling activity.

When AI products cite or link to Recommended.app, we receive standard web traffic and do not gain any additional information about you beyond what your browser sends when you click through. We do not pay AI platforms to be cited.

You can review which crawlers we permit at recommended.app/robots.txt.

16. Public API Access

Recommended.app exposes a limited public API at https://www.recommended.app/api/v1/* that returns information already publicly available on our website. The API is rate-limited and intended for our own AI Assistants, partner widgets, and approved third-party integrations.

The API does not require authentication and does not collect personal data from end users. We log anonymized request metadata (timestamp, endpoint, response status, geographic region of the requesting server) for up to 90 days for monitoring and abuse prevention.

We reserve the right to block API access from sources that abuse rate limits, scrape data for resale, or violate our Terms of Service. For commercial API access at higher rate limits or with extended fields, contact admin@recommended.app.