I Made This finds the most interesting things people make and shares them in a newsletter and on imadethis.com. This page says what we collect, why, how long we keep it, where it is kept, which services help us run the site, and what you can ask of us.
I Made This is run by Alex. For anything about your data, email [email protected].
What we collect
- Your email address, when you sign in or join the newsletter.
- Your name, from your Google account or from the “About you” step. If you sign in with Google, we also get your profile picture.
- What you add in the “About you” step: where you are, a short bio, links to your profiles, and the people who helped you.
- What you submit about your make: its name, pitch, link and kind, your answers, the tools, the time it took and its category. We also save when you ticked each of the three boxes.
- Your pictures. Before we store a picture, we remove hidden details such as where it was taken.
- A screenshot and the icon of your make's website, when you give us its link.
- A copy of each email we send you.
- Your IP address. We use it to stop spam and to limit how often a form can be sent. When you sign in, we save it with your sign-in, together with the name of your browser.
- Campaign tags. If the link that brought you here has tags such as utm_source, we save them in a cookie. When you submit a make or join the newsletter, we keep them with it, so we know which links bring people here.
- How the site is used: which pages are opened and which buttons are pressed. The events we send never include your email address, what you type, or the words of your make. Microsoft Clarity also records replays of how pages are used, such as clicks, scrolling and mouse movement, to show us where a page is hard to use. The text of the sign-in box and of the submit, my makes and admin pages is hidden from it.
Cookies and browser storage
- imt_utm holds the campaign tags of the link you first came from. It lasts 90 days.
- Sign-in cookies keep you signed in for up to 7 days, and using the site while signed in renews that. Signing out removes them.
- Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity set their own cookies to tell one visit from another. Umami sets no cookies.
Why we collect it
- To sign you in and keep your account yours.
- To read and review your make, and to email you if we pick it.
- To show your make and your name when we feature it.
- To send you the newsletter.
- To stop spam and abuse.
- To learn which pages and links work, so we can make the site better.
The law asks us to say on what grounds we may do this: because you asked us to (signing in, submitting a make, the newsletter form), and because we have a good reason of our own (stopping spam, knowing how the site is used).
How long we keep it
- The imt_utm cookie: 90 days.
- Sign-in cookies: up to 7 days after you last used the site, or until you sign out.
- The IP address and browser name saved with a sign-in: until you sign out or ask us to remove them.
- The count of how often a form was sent from your IP address, your account, and your email address in scrambled form: up to 2 days.
- A guest account, with its drafts and pictures: 7 days after the last change, unless you sign in.
- The newsletter: until you leave it.
- Your account, your makes, your pictures and our copies of your emails: until you ask us to remove them.
Services we use
- Resend sends our emails.
- EmailOctopus holds the newsletter list. It gets your email address, your campaign tags, and your first name if you submit a make.
- Amazon Web Services S3 stores pictures, screenshots and icons.
- ScreenshotOne takes the screenshot of your make's website.
- Anthropic's Claude sorts submissions for us by kind, category, tools and themes. It gets the details and story of your make, not your name or email address. What it says is only for us and is never published. It also suggests tools from your story when you press “Suggest from my story”.
- Inngest runs our background jobs, such as sending emails and taking screenshots.
- Upstash counts how often forms are sent, so we can set limits. It gets your IP address, your account's id and your email address in scrambled form, never the address itself.
- CleanTalk checks email addresses for spam.
- Umami gives us visit statistics, and so do Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity.
Where your data is kept
- Our database is on a server in Germany. Pictures, screenshots and icons are in Amazon Web Services in Frankfurt, Germany. Umami runs on a server of our own, and the Upstash counts are kept in Frankfurt, Germany.
- EmailOctopus is a British company and keeps the newsletter list in the EU.
- Resend, Inngest, Anthropic, ScreenshotOne, CleanTalk, Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity are based in the United States and may keep what we send them there. We send each only what the list above says.
Your rights
You can ask us at any time what we hold about you and get a copy of it, have it corrected or deleted, or ask us to stop using it in a certain way. You can leave the newsletter at any time with the link in every email. Email [email protected] and we answer within a month. If you think we handle your data wrongly, you can complain to a data protection authority in the EU, for example the one in your country.
The newsletter
Submitting a make adds you to the I Made This newsletter, and so does the form on the homepage. Every newsletter email has a link to leave: one click and you're off the list. If you leave, submitting another make won't add you back.
Removing your data
To have your data removed, email [email protected]. We'll delete your account, your makes, your pictures and our copies of your emails, and take you off the newsletter list, within a month.