Privacy Policy
Learn how we handle your data and protect your privacy.
Last updated: 18 February 2026
Overview
CheckItFirst is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains what information we collect and how we use it.
Information We Collect
Lookups: When you look up a phone number, email address, or domain, we record the lookup to track popular searches and improve our service. We do not store your IP address.
Reports: When you submit a report, we store the structured responses you select and any optional context description you provide. We use a hashed identifier (not your actual IP) for rate limiting purposes only.
User-submitted content: Reports may include free-text descriptions of your experience (up to 500 characters). Before submitting, you are asked to confirm that your report does not contain personal information. It is your responsibility to ensure you do not include personal data in your submissions.
What We Don't Collect
- We don't require registration or login
- We don't store your IP address in plain text
- We don't collect names, email addresses, or other personal identifiers
- We ask users to avoid including personal information in reports
Cookies
We use essential cookies to ensure the website functions correctly. We may use analytics cookies to understand how visitors use our site. See our Cookie Policy for more details.
Data Retention
Lookup statistics and aggregated reports are retained indefinitely to provide our service. Hashed rate-limiting identifiers are automatically deleted after 24 hours.
Scam Reports as Public Record
Community reports about potentially suspicious phone numbers, email addresses, and websites are retained indefinitely as a public safety record. These reports help others identify potential scams and threats. We do not store reporter email addresses, names, or require accounts to submit reports. No raw IP addresses are stored at the application level. A short-lived pseudonymous hash may be used solely for abuse prevention and rate limiting, and cannot be used to identify individuals.
Email Address Lookups
Email addresses may be personal data. We process email lookups to help identify scams and phishing, and we design this feature to be privacy-protective:
- No search engine indexing: email result pages are marked noindex and are excluded from our sitemap.
- Direct access only: results are shown only after a user search or via a direct link.
- Aggregated signals: we display community report counts and safety indicators rather than personal profiles.
- No search tracking: we don't publish who searched for an email address.
Advertising
We use Google AdSense to display advertisements on our website. Google and its advertising partners may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites. You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ad Settings. For more information about how Google uses data, please visit Google's Privacy Policy.
Your Rights
Under UK GDPR, you have rights regarding your personal data. However, as we don't collect identifiable personal data, we cannot identify or retrieve information related to specific individuals.
Contact
If you have questions about this privacy policy, please contact us through our contact page.