Privacy policy

Draft, last updated 22 October 2026. To be reviewed before launch.

Who runs ipacen

ipacen.com is run by Alin Oajdea (the "controller"). Contact for anything about your data: alin.oajdea@gmail.com.

What we collect and why

• Account: your email address (to sign you in and, if you want, to tell you about new messages) and the username you choose. Other members never see your email. Legal basis: the contract with you (GDPR art. 6(1)(b)).
• What you publish: repair cases, comments, helpful votes and your directory listing (business name, specialties, city, optional phone and website). Cases and listings are public; the phone number is shown only to signed-in members who ask for it. Basis: contract.
• Known-problem confirmations: when you confirm an engine problem, we store which problem and the mileage you entered. Pages only show totals and a median mileage, never who confirmed what. Basis: contract.
• Known-good readings: the engine, the values you report, and optionally the year, mileage and a note. Pages only show medians and ranges from several members, never who reported what. Basis: contract.
• Private messages between members: stored so the two of you can read them. The site admin cannot read them. Basis: contract.
• Safety and abuse prevention: rate-limit counters, reports, blocks and a log of who voted for which case (visible only to the admin, to stop vote rings). Basis: our legitimate interest in a fair and safe community (art. 6(1)(f)).
• Donations: handled by Stripe or PayPal. We receive the amount, date and your account ID (for the Supporter badge), never your card details. Basis: contract and legal obligations for bookkeeping (art. 6(1)(c)).
• Technical logs: our hosting providers keep short-lived server logs (IP address, time, page) for security. Basis: legitimate interest.
• Visit statistics: which pages are opened, which site or search engine sent the visit, the country (from the IP address, looked up by our host) and whether it is a phone or a computer. No cookies and no outside analytics services. To count each visitor once a day, the IP address and browser type are turned into a code that changes every day and is deleted after two days; the IP address itself is never stored. We keep only daily totals. Visits are not counted if your browser sends "Do Not Track" or "Global Privacy Control", or if you use the button under Cookies below. Basis: our legitimate interest in knowing which pages are useful (art. 6(1)(f)).

Cookies and local storage

We only use what the site needs to work: a sign-in cookie, a short-lived cookie that remembers where to return after signing in, and your unsent case draft saved in your own browser. No advertising or analytics cookies (visit statistics are counted without cookies), so there is no cookie banner. Affiliate partners may set their own cookies after you click a "Sponsored" link and leave ipacen.

Who processes data for us

• Supabase (database and sign-in), servers in Frankfurt, Germany.
• Vercel (hosting). Data may pass through the USA under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
• Stripe and PayPal (donations), Google (only if you choose "Continue with Google"), and an email provider for sign-in and notification emails.

How long we keep it

Your account data stays until you delete your account. When you do, we delete your profile, listing, phone number, comments, votes and conversations. Published cases stay in the library without your name, because other mechanics rely on them. Donation records are kept as long as accounting law requires.

Open data we use

City names in the directory form come from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Car makes and models for the case form come from Wikidata (CC0). Both lists are only suggestions; you can type anything.

Your rights

You can see and download your data (Account settings → Download my data), correct it, delete your account (Account settings), object to processing based on legitimate interest, and complain to the Romanian data protection authority (ANSPDCP, dataprotection.ro) or the authority where you live. Write to alin.oajdea@gmail.com for anything else.