Privacy policy

You can browse, search and read everything without an account. Vumble keeps no record of you when you do. Google Analytics counts the visit, as described below. There are no advertising trackers on the site, and our fonts are served by us rather than a font service.

• Your email address, so we can send you a sign-in link and recognize you when you come back. It is never shown to anyone.
• A handle made from the part of your email before the “@” (for example “sam-lee”). It is public: it appears next to anything you publish.
• The age bands you watch with, such as “3–4 years”, if you choose any. They are bands on your account, never a child’s name, birthday or profile, and they only change which scores you see first.
• Your star ratings of titles, and the optional age band you watched each one with. Only averages and counts are shown publicly, never who rated what.
• Reviews you write. These are public under your handle.
• Your saves: the titles you save, any folders you sorted them into, and the lists you approve for an age.
• Your settings: the streaming services your household has and the household rules you choose (such as “no ads”), and whether you have seen the first-time setup.

Your age bands, approved lists, services and household rules are private to your account and are not shown to other people. So are your saves, unless you choose in Settings to show them on your profile.

We use Google Analytics to understand how parents use Vumble: which pages they visit, and what they do there — searching, choosing a filter, playing a preview, saving a title, rating it, writing a review, or following a link to watch it somewhere else. We use it to make Vumble quicker to decide with. We do not use it for advertising: Google’s advertising features and ad personalization are turned off, and the data is not linked to any advertising account.

With each event Google receives the page’s address, the title involved (its public name and our catalog id), what kind of page it was, your browser and device type, your approximate location (country and city, which Google works out from your IP address), and an identifier stored in a cookie so a later visit can be counted as a return. If you are signed in, it is told only that you are — not your email, your handle or any account id. What you type into search is sent, shortened to 100 characters.

It is never sent your email address, your handle, the text of your reviews, your age bands, your saves, your household rules or services beyond how many you chose, or anything about your children. Watch mode sends nothing to Google Analytics.

Google keeps this data for 14 months, then deletes it.

Turning it off. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, Google Analytics never loads. In Europe and the UK we ask first, and nothing is stored unless you agree. Anywhere, you can turn it off for this browser here:

Google’s opt-out browser add-on also works on every site, and Google explains how it uses data from sites like ours.

Critic applicants also give us their professional credential, a short bio, a link to their practice or publication, any conflicts of interest, and the evidence and writing samples we use to verify them. The credential, bio, link and conflicts are shown publicly once a critic is verified, along with their reviews. The evidence and writing samples are seen only by the editors who decide applications.

Vumble does not have child accounts. Children do not sign in, and we do not collect children’s names, birthdays, photos or any other information about a child. We do not record what anyone watches.

Watch mode, the screen a parent can hand to a child, remembers its timer and bedtime in your own browser only. It sends nothing back to us, and nothing to Google Analytics.

If you continue with Google or Facebook, that service tells us your email address, your name and your profile picture. We use only the email address. We do not use your name or picture: your handle still comes from your email, and your name is never shown next to anything you do. We ask for nothing else — no contacts, friends, posts, Gmail or Drive.

Supabase, which runs our sign-in, keeps the details the service sent alongside your account record. They are deleted with your account.

When you sign in we set cookies that keep you signed in. If you turn on household rules, a cookie also records which ones are on — for example “no ads” — so the home page and browse can list the right titles straight away; it holds nothing else, and it is removed when you sign out or turn the rules off.

Google Analytics sets two cookies, _ga and _ga_ followed by our site’s code. They hold a random identifier, so a return visit can be counted as one, and last up to two years. In Europe and the UK they are only set if you agree. We set no other cookies.

Your browser’s own storage also keeps Watch mode’s timer settings, your answer about analytics, and — for one visit — when it started, so we can measure how long finding something took. None of it leaves your browser except that last measurement, as a number of seconds, with the event it belongs to.

• Supabase hosts our database and runs sign-in, including sending the sign-in emails.
• Netlify hosts the website.
• Google Analytics measures how the site is used, as described above.
• Google and Facebook, only if you choose to sign in with them.
• YouTube, Vimeo and PBS host the videos. Vumble does not host any media. When you play a preview or a video, your browser connects directly to the service that hosts it, and that service’s own privacy policy applies. YouTube videos are played through YouTube’s privacy-enhanced (youtube-nocookie.com) player. Links to watch elsewhere take you to that service.

Supabase and Netlify keep their own request logs, which include IP addresses. We do not sell your information or share it with advertisers, and Google Analytics’ data sharing with Google for advertising is off.

You can ask for your account and its data to be deleted from Settings. A person carries out each request. What is deleted, and how.

When what we store changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top says when.