What we keep about you
What dialtone stores, why, who else handles it, and how to remove it.
Last changed
Reading without an account
You can read every watch and every story without an account. dialtone sets no advertising or analytics cookies. Your browser keeps a few settings on your device: light or dark, sound on or off, and your answer to the daily guess before you join. They never reach us.
As with any website, the servers that send you a page see your IP address and browser. To stop abuse, we count how many times an address asks to join or for a sign-in link within an hour.
When you join
You give us an email address and choose an @handle. The email is how you sign in and where we write to you. It is never shown on your profile. You can add a name, a photo, a short bio and your city.
When you send the join form, Vercel BotID checks that a person filled it in.
Signing in
You sign in with a link we email you, which works for 10 minutes, or with a passkey. For a passkey we keep only its public key. The private key stays on your device.
Once you’re in, a cookie keeps you signed in. A session lasts 7 days and renews while you use dialtone. With it we store the IP address and browser it started from.
What you add
- Your watchbox: the watches you own, want and once had, with any notes, photos, year bought, and box and papers you add. Each one can be shown to everyone, to your followers, or only to you.
- Comments on watches and stories, and the likes on them.
- Who you follow and who follows you. A private profile approves each follower first.
- Messages to other members.
- Fixes you suggest to the catalogue, and the votes and notes on them.
- Your answers to the daily guess and the daily pick.
- Searches you save.
Your profile can be open to everyone, to members only, or private.
The people in a conversation see its messages. When a member reports a comment, a message or a profile, the staff who handle reports can read it. Staff can see what is stored in order to keep dialtone running.
Resend sends dialtone’s email for us: sign-in links, invitations, and news of replies, follows and messages. In Notifications you choose whether that news comes in one email a day, as it happens, or not at all. Each of these emails has an unsubscribe link.
Where it’s kept
dialtone runs on Vercel. The catalogue and the stories are in one Neon Postgres database. Accounts and everything members add are in another. Photos you upload are kept in Vercel Blob.
Deleting your account
In Account, choose Delete your account. That deletes, at once: your account, sessions and passkeys, your profile, your watchbox, your comments, follows, suggested fixes, notifications and daily answers.
Photos you uploaded go with it: your profile picture, the photos in your watchbox and any you added to a suggested fix. Messages you sent stay in the other person’s conversation, without your name on them. Fixes already made to the catalogue stay in it.
Questions
Write to hello@dialtone.app.