Privacy policy

Who we are

TubeToppers is run by Joe Pitts, who is the data controller. Contact: tubetoppers@joepitts.co.uk.

The short version

No accounts, no cookies, no analytics and no adverts. We store nothing about you. Your IP address is used briefly to limit abuse, and that is all.

What you give us

When you paste a channel link, an @handle or a playlist link, it is sent to our server, which asks the YouTube Data API about it. TubeToppers uses YouTube API Services. We do not keep what you type, though the results of some searches are saved, as described below.

What we keep

For each channel we look up, we keep a list of its video ids, publish dates and whether each is a Short. It is public YouTube data, not data about you. It is stored in Cloudflare KV and deleted automatically 30 days after we first fetched it, then rebuilt if needed.

When a search for a whole year, a whole month or all time finishes, we save its ranked results: the channel’s or playlist’s name, picture and subscriber count, and the top videos with their titles, thumbnails and view counts. These saved results are shown publicly, as a page for that channel and period and in the rows on our homepage, for up to 30 days after the data was fetched. Then they are deleted, or replaced by a newer search. The details of each channel or playlist looked up are kept for the same 30 days so its results can be labelled. All of this is public YouTube data, stored in Cloudflare D1, and none of it says who searched.

We also keep anonymous daily counts of completed searches for each channel and period, to show what is popular this week. They hold nothing about who searched, and are deleted after a week.

Your IP address

Our server uses your IP address to count requests per minute, so that scripts cannot use up our YouTube quota. The count is held by Cloudflare’s rate-limiting service and is not stored as a record. Our lawful basis is legitimate interests: keeping the service available and secure.

Cloudflare hosts the site and may process request data, including IP addresses, as our host. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy (opens in a new tab).

Cookies and browser storage

We set no cookies. We store one item in your browser’s local storage, tubetoppers:view, which remembers whether you chose the grid or list view. It stays on your device, is never sent to us and can be cleared in your browser settings.

Because you choose that setting and it is not used to track you, we treat it as exempt from consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, so there is no cookie banner.

Google and YouTube

Thumbnails and channel pictures load straight from Google’s image servers (i.ytimg.com and yt3.ggpht.com), so Google sees your IP address when they load. Opening a video takes you to youtube.com, which has its own cookies and privacy practices. Our font is hosted on our own site, so no font service sees you.

Google’s handling of data is covered by the Google Privacy Policy (opens in a new tab).

Selling and sharing

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it except with Cloudflare and Google as described above.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you can ask to see, correct or delete personal data we hold about you, object to our processing, or ask us to restrict it. Because we store nothing that identifies you, there is usually nothing to find, but ask at tubetoppers@joepitts.co.uk and we will reply within one month.

You can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint (opens in a new tab).

Changes

If this policy changes, the date above changes with it.