Privacy Policy

Effective August 3, 2026

The short version: We use your email and vehicle selection to send alerts. We do not sell personal information or provide subscriber profiles to repair shops, dealerships, or advertisers. You can unsubscribe at any time or contact us to request access, correction, or deletion.

Information we collect

• Alert profile: email address, selected vehicle year, make, and model, and whether you request all records or safety recalls only.
• Security and preference data: verification state, opaque browser and unsubscribe token hashes, rate-limit counters, and suppression records.
• Delivery and operations data: queued alert content, delivery status, timestamps, and privacy-filtered application logs.
• Basic request data: our infrastructure and anti-abuse providers may process IP address, device, and network information to deliver and protect the service.

If you save bulletins on a search-results page, that shortlist is stored only in your browser’s local storage. Dipstick Alerts does not receive it.

How we use information

We use this information to verify subscriptions, match new records to selected vehicles, send and manage alerts, prevent abuse, diagnose failures, and secure the service.

How information is disclosed

We use service providers to host, secure, operate, and deliver emails for Dipstick Alerts. These providers may process personal information as needed to provide and protect the service. We do not disclose subscriber email addresses, vehicle profiles, or individual activity to repair shops, dealerships, advertisers, or AI summarization providers. Public vehicle and manufacturer-communication data comes from government and manufacturer sources described in our Data Sources & Methodology.

Retention

• Unverified subscription requests are normally removed after 3 days.
• Active alert profiles remain until the alerts are removed.
• Opaque verified-browser credentials expire after 90 days and are revoked on global unsubscribe.
• Unsubscribe capabilities expire after 1 year; token plaintext is never stored.
• Sent or rejected email queue records are normally removed after 30 days.
• Signup rate-limit counters normally expire after about 1 hour.
• A keyed, non-reversible suppression digest may be retained after global unsubscribe so an old browser credential cannot silently restore alerts.

Our service providers may retain security and operational records under their applicable service policies. We may retain information longer when reasonably necessary for security, legal compliance, or resolving a dispute.

Your choices

Every recurring alert includes a one-click unsubscribe mechanism and a link for removing selected vehicle alerts or all alerts. You may also email hello@dipstickalerts.com to request access, correction, or deletion. We may need to verify the request before acting on it.

Sale, sharing, and tracking preferences

Dipstick Alerts does not sell personal information, disclose subscriber profiles to advertisers, share information for cross-context behavioral advertising, or use third-party advertising cookies. Because we do not engage in sale, cross-context sharing, or third-party advertising tracking, browser Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals do not change the service’s behavior.

Children

Dipstick Alerts is intended for people age 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Contact us if you believe a child submitted information so we can remove it.

Security and changes

We use access controls, encryption in transit, opaque revocable capabilities, bot protection, and data-minimizing logs. No system is completely secure. We will post material policy changes here and update the effective date; when appropriate, we will also notify active subscribers.

Contact

Dipstick Alerts is operated from Michigan. Privacy and accessibility questions may be sent to hello@dipstickalerts.com.