WHAT WE DO WITH YOUR DATA

CarsApexDrive is a reference and community site about cars. We store the driver reviews you choose to submit so other visitors can read them. We save one small flag in your browser's local storage to remember that you've dismissed the data-use banner — no cookie is set for this, and that flag never leaves your device. We use Google Analytics to understand visits and traffic sources. We do not sell or rent your data or enable advertising personalization.

• Reviews you submit — the display name, car, star rating, and review text you type into the reviews form. These are saved to our database and shown publicly.
• Account info, if you sign in — email address and an authentication identifier from your Google account or password sign-up. Only used to identify you to the site.
• Advisor conversations, if you sign in — the messages you exchange with the Car Advisor are saved to our database under your account so you can revisit them later. They are private to your account, are not shown publicly, and you can delete a conversation from the advisor sidebar.
• Contact-form messages — only what you type into the form, when you press send.
• Website analytics — Google Analytics processes page visits, traffic sources, browser and device information, approximate location, and cookie identifiers to help us understand site usage. We do not intentionally send chat messages or account details to Google Analytics.
• Standard server logs — IP address, browser user agent, and the page requested, kept short-term by our hosting provider to operate the site and prevent abuse.

• No advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
• No chat messages, email addresses, or contact-form contents intentionally sent to Google Analytics.
• No location data beyond the country-level inference any web server sees from an IP.
• No payment information — the site does not sell anything.

• To publish your review so other drivers can read it (only if you submit one).
• To let you sign in to features that require an account.
• To answer your message when you use the contact form.
• To keep the site up and defend against abuse (server logs).
• To understand which pages and traffic sources bring visitors to the site (Google Analytics).

We use Lovable Cloud for our database and authentication, Cloudflare for hosting and DNS, and Google Analytics for website usage measurement. Those providers process data so the site can run and we can understand visits. We do not share your data with advertisers or data brokers.

• _ga and _ga_* — Google Analytics cookies used to distinguish visits and sessions. Your browser can block or remove these cookies.
• cad_privacy_ack_v1 — remembers you've seen the data-use banner so we don't show it every page load. Strictly necessary, no tracking.
• sb-*-auth-token — set by our authentication provider when you sign in, so your session persists. Removed when you sign out.

Reviews stay public until you ask us to remove them or we remove them for policy reasons. Account data is kept while your account exists. Server logs are kept for a short retention window by our hosting provider.

You can ask us to access, correct, or delete the data we hold about you, including a review you submitted. Use the contact page and tell us what you want changed. We aim to respond within a reasonable time.

If we change what we collect or how we use it, we'll update this page and show the data-use banner again so you can review it.