01Who we are
looksthread ("we", "us") operates looksthread.com, a community and reference library about improving your appearance. For data protection purposes we are the controller of the personal data described below. You can reach us at looksthread@gmail.com.
02What we collect
We only collect what the site needs to work. There is no advertising network, no data broker, and nothing is sold.
- Account data — your email address and a password. Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider and are never visible to us.
- Profile data — username, optional display name, optional bio, date of birth, sex, optional avatar image, the topics you follow, and a sequential member number.
- Content you post — threads, replies, votes and any files you attach. This is public by design.
- Preferences — your theme choice and which announcements you have dismissed, stored in cookies and against your account.
- Technical data — IP address, browser and device information recorded in server logs by our hosting and database providers for security and abuse prevention.
- Aggregate analytics — page-level traffic counts. Our analytics provider does not use cookies for this and does not build a profile of you.
03Health information you choose to share
This site is about skin, hair, body composition, medication and surgery. If you post about a condition, a prescription, a procedure or your body, you are choosing to publish information about your health in a public place.
We do not require you to share any of it. Anything you post is visible to anyone on the internet and may be cached or copied by search engines and other services beyond our control. Think carefully before posting photographs or clinical details that identify you.
Your date of birth and sex are used to keep the site age-appropriate and to shape what you see. Your date of birth is never displayed publicly — only your age is.
04Why we process it, and on what basis
- To provide the service — creating your account, showing your posts, keeping you signed in. Basis: performance of a contract with you.
- To keep the community safe — moderation, enforcing our rules, preventing spam and abuse. Basis: our legitimate interests in running a usable community.
- To meet our age requirement — you must be 16 or older because the library covers prescription medicines and surgery. Basis: legitimate interests and legal compliance.
- To remember your choices — theme and dismissed announcements. Basis: legitimate interests; these cookies are strictly functional.
05Cookies
We use a small number of first-party cookies and no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
- Authentication cookies set by our auth provider, which keep you signed in.
- lt_theme — remembers whether you chose light, dark or system.
- lt_seen_ann — remembers which site announcements you have dismissed so you are not shown them again.
06Who processes your data
We use a small number of processors, each under their own data processing terms:
- Supabase — database, authentication and file storage. Our database is hosted in the EU (Ireland).
- Vercel — application hosting, content delivery and privacy-friendly aggregate analytics.
- An email delivery provider, used solely to send account emails such as confirmation and password reset messages.
07How long we keep it
Your account and content are kept until you delete them. Deleting your account removes your profile, threads, replies, votes and badges immediately and permanently — it is not a soft delete and we cannot restore it afterwards.
Server logs held by our providers are retained for a short period for security purposes and then discarded.
08Your rights
Depending on where you live, you have rights over your personal data. In the UK and EU these include the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, and receive a portable copy of your data.
- Access and correction — most of your data is directly editable in Settings.
- Deletion — Settings → Account → Delete account does this yourself, immediately.
- Anything else — email looksthread@gmail.com and we will respond within one month.
- You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office.
09Children
looksthread is not for under-16s. We ask for your date of birth at sign-up and refuse accounts below that age. If you believe someone under 16 has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.
10Security
Access to your data is restricted at the database level, so one member cannot read or alter another's private information. Passwords are hashed, traffic is encrypted in transit, and administrative actions are authorised on the server rather than trusted from the browser.
No system is perfectly secure. If you believe you have found a vulnerability, please report it to us before disclosing it publicly.
11Changes
If we change this policy in a way that materially affects you, we will say so on the site. The date at the top always reflects the current version.