Collect less. Need less.

Reading the public research

You can read the public database without creating an account. LessBother does not need an advertising identifier to provide the core research.

Sale checks

When you submit a product URL, the service has to receive that URL to fetch or analyze the listing. LessBother keeps listing-level observations needed to build the price record. Useful live listings may also enter a bounded automatic recheck queue so price history can grow over time.

The watch record contains the product/listing URL and basic listing identity needed to recheck the public page. It is not tied to an account, email address or saved raw network address, and it is not used to build an advertising profile about the person who submitted it.

For abuse control, public Sale Checker requests use a short-lived salted hash derived from the network address plus an hourly request count. The raw network address is not stored in the Sale Checker rate-limit table. Automatic background rechecks bypass the public counter through an internal code path; a visitor cannot request that internal mode through form or API JSON.

Product research requests

If a search has no researched result and you request it, LessBother stores the product/search text and an aggregate request count so repeated requests can move a product up the queue. Full http(s) URLs are rejected from this queue; product links are handed locally to Sale Checker instead so tracking parameters do not become research-request records. That request record does not store your email address, account ID, IP address or a browser fingerprint.

To stop automated queue flooding, the request endpoint keeps a separate short-lived salted hash derived from the network address plus an hourly count, capped at 10 requests per hour per connection. The raw network address is not stored in that rate-limit table. Cloudflare still processes ordinary network request data to deliver and protect the site.

Evidence submissions

If evidence submission is enabled, source URLs and notes are used for editorial research. Contact information should remain optional and only be used when follow-up is actually needed.

Contact messages

The public contact form sends your name (if provided), reply email and message to LessBother’s private inbox through a server-side relay. The destination inbox address is not published in the page or JavaScript. After successful delivery, LessBother scrubs the visitor email address and message body from its database and retains only delivery metadata. If delivery is temporarily unavailable, the message may be held for automatic retry for up to seven days, then purged.

For abuse control, the contact endpoint keeps a short-lived salted hash derived from the network address instead of storing the raw address in the contact-rate-limit table.

Political Money

Political Money sends the company name and election cycle you enter to LessBother’s server, which uses official Federal Election Commission data. Public result payloads are cached for up to six hours so repeated searches do not repeatedly consume the FEC service.

For abuse control, LessBother keeps only a short-lived salted hash derived from the network address and an hourly request count. The raw network address is not stored in the Political Money rate-limit table.

Media Check

Media Check v1 receives the Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud or Bandcamp link you submit because the server has to fetch that public page to inspect its metadata and disclosures. LessBother does not intentionally save the submitted media URL, song title, creator or result in D1.

For abuse control, Media Check keeps only a short-lived salted hash derived from the network address and an hourly request count. The raw network address is not stored in the Media Check rate-limit table. Cloudflare still processes ordinary network request data to deliver and protect the service.

Traffic measurement

LessBother does not need cross-site behavioral advertising to work. If basic traffic counting is used, it should favor first-party aggregate measurement instead of building profiles of individual browsing histories.

Future accounts

If sync features eventually require accounts, account creation should remain optional for people who only want the public database and local features.