Last updated 2 Sep 2026 · This is a plain-English summary — please have your own legal counsel review before publication in your jurisdiction.
Who we are
chaogolden is an independent business-review platform. The controller for the information described here is the chaogolden operating entity. Contact [email protected] for privacy questions or requests.
Information we collect
- Account information — email address, hashed password, display name, and (optional) profile picture. Provided by you at signup.
- Reviews you write — rating, title, body, any photos or videos you attach, and the business you're reviewing.
- Interactions — replies you post, businesses you claim, and flags you file.
- Technical signals — a hash of the IP address that submitted each review (not the raw IP), user-agent, timestamps, and the fact of your account being signed in on this device.
- Verification tokens — for email confirmation, password reset, and domain-verification during a business claim.
How we use it
- To run the platform: sign you in, publish your reviews, deliver replies, count views on your reviews.
- To keep the platform honest: detect rate-limit violations, spot patterns of manipulation, review anti-fraud signals.
- To communicate operationally: verify your email, respond to reports you file, notify you about reviews on your businesses (if you opt in).
- To publish content you meant to publish: reviews, replies, your public reviewer profile.
What's public
Your display name, profile picture, and published reviews and replies are visible to anyone who visits your reviewer profile or a business you've reviewed.
Your email address is never shown publicly. Your IP address is stored only as a hash. Your account creation date is not shown publicly beyond "Reviewer since {year}".
What we share
We don't sell personal information. We share information with a small set of service providers who help us operate:
- Brevo — sends transactional email (verification, password reset, invitations, alerts).
- Cloudflare — content delivery, DDoS protection, and Turnstile anti-bot.
- Our hosting provider for the underlying infrastructure.
We may also disclose information if we are legally required to do so or to protect the rights and safety of users.
AI answer engines
Published reviews are indexed by search engines and, by design, by AI answer engines including GPTBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, CCBot, and Bingbot. That means an AI might quote a published review of yours in its answer. This applies to reviews you deliberately published — not to your account or contact information, which those crawlers cannot see.
How long we keep it
- Account information: while your account is open, plus a short retention window after deletion for audit and abuse-recovery purposes.
- Reviews: while your account is open. If you delete a review, the public listing is removed immediately and the row is retained for audit only.
- Verification tokens: 7 days for claim, 2 days for email verification, 1 hour for password reset.
- Flags and moderation logs: indefinitely, so patterns of abuse remain investigable.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete the personal information we hold about you, and to object to certain uses of it. To exercise any of those, email [email protected] from the address on your account.
Children
chaogolden is not for people under 16. If we learn we've collected information from a child without a parent's consent, we'll delete it.
Security
We use HTTPS across the site, hash passwords with bcrypt, session cookies are HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=Lax, and IP addresses are stored only as a hash. No system is perfect — if you suspect a security issue, please email [email protected].
Changes
We'll update the "last updated" date at the top when this policy changes. Material changes will be surfaced on the account overview when you next sign in.