Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes how DreadQ (“DreadQ,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) collects, uses, shares, stores, and protects information when you browse our website, create an account, maintain movie lists, publish reviews, or use features we make available.

The specific information involved depends on the features you use. Some features are optional, some need an account, and some third-party services load only when their content or sign-in tools are used. The separate Terms of Service explain the rules for using DreadQ.

Registration and account security

When you register, we process a username, email address, WordPress password hash (if using a password), signup method, verification and approval status, acceptance of site terms, relevant account timestamps, and information needed to maintain sessions or restore account access. Passwords are not stored as readable text. If optional Google sign-in is enabled and selected, we may store your Google account identifier, email address, and verification status, but not your Google password.

Your profile and movie activity

Depending on what you choose to do, DreadQ stores your display name, biography, uploaded avatar, visibility preferences, selected streaming services and country, Watchlist, Watched list, Avoid List, movie ratings, reviews, spoiler flags, helpful votes, and review reports. We may also calculate and store your personal DreadQ Score, participation history, DreadPoints, reward transactions, and share-related records. Searches, filters, and preferences can be processed to return the movies and recommendations you request.

Visits, technical data, and contact messages

Web servers, WordPress, and security systems may process IP addresses, approximate country, browser or device information, page requests, referring pages, timestamps, authentication records, and security-related events. If you submit our contact form, we receive the name, return email address, message category, and information you enter. Please do not include passwords, financial data, or sensitive personal information.

• Create, verify, secure, administer, and recover accounts, including sending essential account or security notices.
• Save movie collections, visibility choices, streaming preferences, ratings, and reviews, and provide relevant recommendations.
• Display approved public contributions, personal scores, DreadPoints, and optional sharing features in accordance with applicable settings.
• Detect spam, bot activity, fraud, duplicate actions, unauthorized access, and abuse of community or reward systems.
• Moderate reviews and other contributions, investigate reports, correct catalog information, and respond to questions.
• Understand aggregate website traffic, improve performance, maintain the website, and comply with legal obligations.

Where applicable privacy law requires a legal basis, processing may rely on providing the service you request, legitimate interests in operating and securing the site, legal obligations, or consent for optional technologies when required. A film preference or personal DreadQ Score is an entertainment feature, not a medical or psychological diagnosis.

New member profiles are public by default. Certain collections and personal activity remain private unless you change their visibility.

A public member profile may show your username, chosen display name, avatar, biography, membership month and year, and approved reviews. Your Dread Profile, personal DreadQ Score, Watchlist, and Watched list have separate visibility options; the Watchlist, Watched list, and Dread Profile default to private. Streaming selections, your Avoid List, email address, and account-security information are not intended for display on a public profile.

Review settings under Account → Privacy. Public movie reviews can remain visible on movie pages even if you later make your profile private. If public sharing, achievement displays, or leaderboards are introduced or enabled, the information shown will depend on the feature and its applicable privacy settings. Material already published may be copied or indexed by others.

Uploaded avatar files can have direct public URLs. Treat them as public-facing images, not as private file storage.

Ratings, approved reviews, helpful votes, Watched activity, and other participation may influence community aggregates, your personal DreadQ Score, and your DreadPoints history. Reward records may include event type, amount, date, and an internal reference so we can verify credits, correct errors, and prevent repeated awards.

If DreadQ introduces discussion forums, badges, ranks, or public leaderboards, information you deliberately post or make public through those features may be shown to other visitors. Forum features described in future site announcements are not necessarily active merely because they are mentioned in this policy.

DreadQ Traffic Insights, our own WordPress analytics tool, measures pageviews, referring sites, traffic sources, approximate country, broad device category, reported crawler activity, and an estimate of visitors active recently. A browser may send a pageview event and limited presence signals to DreadQ’s own server. The tracker distinguishes ordinary browser events from requests identified as bots by user-agent patterns; these are estimates, not verified identities.

To estimate unique visitors without a persistent visitor ID, the plugin hashes the server-visible IP address and user-agent information using a site secret and a day-specific input. The tracker does not store raw IP addresses, full URL query strings, or individually identifiable Google search queries in its analytics event tables. Referring URLs are trimmed to omit query strings and fragments; campaign source/medium values may be recorded.

The browser-tracking script honors supported Global Privacy Control (GPC) and Do Not Track (DNT) signals. Logged-in users are excluded from the plugin’s ordinary browser tracking. The site owner can additionally exclude a browser using the plugin’s opt-out setting; that uses an exclusion-only cookie or local-storage flag.

Individual analytics events are generally cleaned up after approximately 90 days, subject to scheduled maintenance. Separately, administrators may manually import aggregate Google Search Console query reports. Those reports contain search terms and performance totals, not a mapping between search terms and named visitors.

WordPress may set essential authentication and session cookies to keep you signed in, remember your session, and protect account actions. DreadQ Authentication uses a session-oriented browser-security cookie named dca_browser. If you register using Google, the temporary dca_google_pending cookie can be used during registration and is scheduled to expire after approximately ten minutes.

If the site owner excludes a browser from first-party analytics, dqti_optout and/or a local-storage preference may remember that exclusion. DreadQ Traffic Insights does not require a tracking cookie or long-lived visitor ID for ordinary pageview measurement.

Third-party sign-in, reCAPTCHA, embedded videos, advertising (if introduced), and linked services may use their own cookies or similar technologies. You can manage cookies and site storage in your browser; rejecting essential cookies may prevent sign-in or account actions. Browser controls do not automatically delete data saved in your account.

If Google sign-in is offered and you choose to use it, Google Identity Services can exchange identity details needed to identify or register your account. DreadQ does not request access to your Gmail, Google Drive, or YouTube viewing history through that sign-in feature. You may be able to disconnect Google in Account → Security after arranging another working sign-in method.

Our contact form uses Google reCAPTCHA v3 for spam prevention, along with local validation and request limits. Account forms may also use reCAPTCHA if enabled. Google may process browser, device, and interaction information for fraud and abuse prevention. See the Google Privacy Policy and Google Terms of Service.

YouTube: DreadQ uses YouTube API Services and embedded trailer players, including privacy-enhanced player URLs where supported. Loading or playing a video can transmit your IP address, device details, and viewing interactions to Google or YouTube, and those services may use cookies or display advertisements. Privacy-enhanced embeds do not guarantee that no information is transmitted. See the YouTube Terms of Service and Google Privacy Policy.

Movie catalog and artwork: Movie titles, descriptions, posters, trailer references, and other metadata may be obtained from TMDb. Streaming availability may come from Movie of the Night. Queries to these providers may include movie identifiers and a selected country. Images or other assets loaded from third-party servers can reveal ordinary network information to those servers.

Off-site streaming and affiliate destinations: When you click through to a streaming service or retailer, it independently processes your visit, account, purchases, and payment details under its own policies. DreadQ does not obtain your streaming-service password simply because you select that service as a preference.

When enabled by the site administrator, DreadQ can send movie titles, years, descriptions, genres, keywords, and editorial evidence to OpenAI to help with movie summaries, categories, or catalog decisions. In the plugin version reviewed for this policy, those AI requests do not intentionally include member account records, private lists, or member reviews.

AI-generated material may contain mistakes. AI tools are used for selected catalog enrichment, not as a substitute for independently calculated DreadQ intensity scores.

Google AdSense is planned, not currently active as of this policy draft.

DreadQ may introduce display advertising in the future, including Google AdSense and other advertising partners. If and when advertisements are enabled, Google and other third-party advertising vendors may use cookies, identifiers, or similar technology to display, measure, and personalize advertisements based on visits to DreadQ and other websites. Google’s advertising cookies can allow Google and its partners to serve ads using previous visits.

When applicable, visitors can manage Google ad personalization using Google My Ad Center or learn about advertising-industry opt-outs at YourAdChoices. Available choices and their effects depend on region, browser, and provider. DreadQ will update disclosures and implement legally required consent or preference controls before activating advertising that requires them.

Some movie or streaming links may be affiliate links. If you follow a qualifying link and take an eligible action, DreadQ may earn compensation without an additional charge to you. Affiliate partners may use tracking parameters or their own cookies for attribution.

Authorized website administrators and providers supporting web hosting, WordPress infrastructure, security, backups, email delivery, analytics, and maintenance may access information needed to perform those services. DreadQ uses DreamHost hosting services and WordPress-based tools; account and contact messages pass through the website’s configured email-delivery provider.

If the optional remote country-lookup setting is enabled, the DreadQ Traffic Insights plugin sends a visitor’s public IP address from the server to country.is to obtain an approximate two-letter country code. This option is off by default in the supplied plugin. The resulting country code and a short-lived hashed lookup cache may be stored; geographic estimates can be inaccurate.

We may also disclose information when required by applicable law, to respond to lawful process, prevent misuse, protect rights or safety, or as part of a lawful business transition. Your public submissions are accessible to others as described in this policy. We do not describe data as anonymous when it may remain pseudonymous or linkable in some circumstances.

Account details, lists, preferences, review history, and reward records are generally retained while your account remains active and the data are needed to provide the service. The current authentication plugin has configurable settings whose defaults include: 30 days for saved signup or recent-login IP records (when enabled), 90 days for account activity, 30 days for email delivery-status history, and 48 hours for cleanup of eligible abandoned, unverified registrations. Actual site settings can differ, and certain failed or delayed registration emails can postpone cleanup.

Under Account → Privacy, you can download supported account data. To request deletion, use Account → Delete Account. The standard self-service flow provides a configurable cancellation period (default seven days), displayed when you submit the request. Approved reviews and ratings ordinarily remain with your account identity removed; private lists, profile data, and account-specific rewards are removed. A previously used username can remain reserved to prevent impersonation.

To request further removal, including personal details you may have written inside a review, use the Contact page. Security records, support correspondence, and backups may remain for legitimate operational or legal reasons until their applicable retention periods expire. An account download or deletion may not include every record held independently by hosting or third-party services.

You can edit account information under Account → Profile, adjust visibility and download supported account data under Account → Privacy, request deletion under Account → Delete Account, and manage sign-in methods and sessions under Account → Security. You can also limit optional browser storage using your browser settings.

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a portable copy of personal information; restrict or object to certain processing; withdraw consent where applicable; opt out of certain advertising disclosures or uses; appeal a decision; or complain to a privacy authority. Rights and exceptions vary by law. For requests, verification, or privacy complaints, use our protected Contact form and choose the privacy/account category.

The DreadQ Traffic Insights script respects supported browser GPC signals. This technical behavior is not a representation that every third-party provider or future advertising integration automatically honors the same signal. We will provide any additional opt-out mechanism required by applicable law when relevant.

DreadQ covers intense and often adult-oriented film topics. The website is intended primarily for adults, and DreadQ accounts are intended for people who satisfy the minimum age in our Terms of Service. We do not knowingly seek personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has registered or submitted personal information improperly, please notify us through our Contact page.

Please avoid including health information or other highly sensitive personal details in your biography, reviews, or community posts.

We use measures such as WordPress password hashing, access and session controls, verification steps, request limits, and moderation to reduce security risks. No website or transmission method can guarantee complete security.

We may update this policy as features, technologies, laws, or data practices change. The date above identifies the current text. Where required, we will provide additional notice or seek appropriate consent. Requests, corrections, and policy questions should be submitted through the DreadQ Contact page.

You may also review the Terms of Service.