Backrow privacy policy

Last updated: 2026-04-28

Backrow is a household movie / TV tracking and recommendation app. This page describes what data the app collects, how it's used, and what third-party services it relies on.

What we collect

• Account data: your email address (used for sign-in via Google or Apple).
• Library activity: titles you add, ratings, watch statuses (watching / watched / want / paused), reviews you write, lists you create.
• Recommendation outcomes: predicted-vs-actual rating residuals so the curation engine can self-tune over time.
• Search activity: queries you type, whether you clicked a result. Used by the search teacher to learn synonyms and rewrites that help future searches.
• Device-local state: theme, layout preferences, recent searches. Stored in your browser only.

How we use it

• To show you and your household members the library you've built together.
• To rank recommendations using only your own household's rating signal — no third-party behavioral profile is built or shared.
• To improve the search and curation engines via periodic AI-assisted batch passes (see below).

Third-party services

• Firebase (Google) — authentication, real-time database, Cloud Functions. Subject to Google's privacy policy.
• The Movie Database (TMDB) — title metadata, posters, external ratings. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
• Anthropic Claude — used by Cloud Functions for monthly batch teaching of the search and curation engines (proposing rewrites, deriving feature axes, refining theme taxonomy). Queries are anonymized server-side; user identifiers are replaced with opaque handles before any LLM call.
• EmailJS — transactional email (digest notifications, recommendation forwards). Only the email addresses you've shared with the household are used.

What we don't do

• We don't sell or share your data with advertisers.
• We don't track you across other apps or websites.
• We don't build a behavioral profile beyond what's needed to recommend titles you'll like.

Your data, your control

You can request a full export of your account data, or delete your account entirely, by contacting hello@backrow.video. Deletion removes your ratings, reviews, lists, and search history from our database within 30 days.

Children

Backrow is designed for adult household use and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13.

Changes

We may update this policy as the app evolves. Material changes will be announced in the app before they take effect.

Contact

Questions? Email hello@backrow.video.