Account email
If you sign up: to run your account, send outbid alerts you can turn off, and reach you about the service. We never sell it.
Salted IP hash
A salted hash of your IP address (we never store the raw address) to rate-limit bidding and curb abuse. Because the IPv4 space is small, treat this as pseudonymous rather than truly irreversible; under privacy law we treat it as personal data either way.
Public bidder name (optional)
The name you sign a bribe with. It is optional; if you leave it blank you bid anonymously. Whatever you type is published on the public ledger, marked UNVERIFIED. Anyone can type any name, so it is never proof that the named party paid.
Questions & answers
The questions you ask the bot and the answers someone paid it to give become part of the public, permanent record: the ledger, the opinion pages, and shareable receipts. Do not type anything you would not put on a billboard.
Bids & heckles
Your bids, owned truths, and heckles are the public ledger. The whole point is that corruption is on the record. This data is public by design.
Product analytics (first party)
To run and improve the service we log privacy-safe usage events: which pages and features you use and how far you get in a flow (via /api/event). These events are stored in our own database, use salted hashes rather than raw IPs, never include your message content, and are not shared with ad networks.
Vercel Analytics
We also load Vercel Analytics, which Vercel processes for us as our analytics provider: page-view counts and a client-error signal. Its script is served from our own domain, and the custom event it receives on an error carries only a context label, the page path and a short error description (at most 200 characters), never a bid, question, answer or email. It is not used to build advertising profiles.
Gift recipient name (optional)
If you gift a truth to someone, the display name you type is published on the public ledger as the owner of that truth (marked UNVERIFIED), shown to any visitor and rendered into shareable images. Do not gift using a real person's identifying details without their consent.
Gift recipient email (optional)
If you add a recipient email so they can be notified, we store it to send that one notification. Gift emails are currently OFF and stay off until we have a lawful basis to send them; the address is never shown publicly or sold.
Stipend streak
Two values on your profile: how many consecutive UTC days you have collected your stipend, and the date of the last collection. They exist to pay the streak bonus and to stop a second claim on the same day. They are never shown to anyone but you, and no other bidder can read them.
Watchlist
Which lots your account watches, so we can tell you when one changes hands. Watchlist email is ON by default (watching a lot is the opt-in), it is capped at one message per lot per hour, and every message carries a one-click unwatch link for that lot and an unsubscribe link for all watchlist mail. Neither link needs a login. Turning it off never affects your outbid notices.
Petition signatures
That your account signed against the current owner of a lot, and which regime you signed against. Signatures are NOT public: only the total count is, and only you can see whether you signed. We never publish, sell, or show a signer list, and we send no email about petitions at all.
Live presence
While a lot page is open we join an ephemeral realtime channel so the page can show how many people are reading it. No identity, no account, no IP and no row is stored: the count exists only while browsers are connected, and it disappears with them. If realtime is unavailable the lot simply says nothing.
Referral cookie
A cookie named btb_ref holding only the public referral code from a /r/ link, kept for seven days with SameSite=Lax. It is not a tracking or advertising cookie: it carries no identity, is readable only by this site, and the server treats it as a claim to re-check rather than a fact. If you never open a referral link, it is never set.
Referral ledger
When a new account signs up through your link and places its first bribe, we record the pairing and what each side was credited, so every dollar of house money minted this way is auditable. This ledger is private: it has no public surface, and you only ever see your own code and your own counts.
Bounty pledges
A bounty is a crowd buying one truth. Your pledge amount is recorded against that bounty, and a salted IP hash is kept for pledges made without an account, purely to rate-limit them. You choose whether to be NAMED on the public backer list: unsigned pledges still count toward the pool and the backer total, but are never listed.