Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal information Tire Reviews collects when you use tirereviews.com, tire-reviews.com and our language editions, what we use it for, who we share it with and the choices you have.

Who we are

The websites are operated by Tire Reviews LLC, trading as Tire Reviews, which is responsible for your personal information (the "controller" under UK and EU data protection law).

Full company details are in our Legal Notice. Our merchandise shop at shop.tirereviews.com has its own privacy policy.

When you browse the site

• Our own analytics. To see which pages are read and how the site performs, each page view records the page address, the type of site that referred you, your device type, screen width, browser and operating system family, your country (from our network provider), and how long and how far you read. We do not store your IP address for this: a visitor code is calculated from it using a key that changes every day and is deleted after two days. Individual page view records are deleted after 90 days; only totals are kept after that.
• Google Analytics. We also use Google Analytics, which sets its own cookies and receives your IP address and information about your device and visit.
• Server logs. Our web server records each request: your IP address, the address requested, the referring page and your browser. These logs are kept for 14 days for security and troubleshooting.
• Security and delivery. All traffic passes through Cloudflare, which protects the site from attacks and delivers it quickly, and processes your IP address to do so.
• Comparisons. When you view a tire comparison, we record your IP address to count views. These records are deleted after 60 days. If you create a new multi-tire comparison, the IP address it was created from is stored with it.

Advertising

Advertising pays for our testing. Programmatic adverts on the site are served through the Ezoic advertising network and its partners, which use cookies and similar technologies to show and measure adverts and may receive your IP address and device information. Visitors in the UK and the European Economic Area are asked for their choices about advertising cookies through Ezoic's consent tool when it is in use.

We also sell advertising directly, for example a site skin for a month. For those campaigns we count how often an advert is shown and clicked, without storing your IP address or anything that identifies you.

How we keep advertising separate from our tests is explained in Ethics and independence.

When you write a tire review

• What is published: the tire, its size, your car, the distance you have covered, your driving style, your ratings, your review and any photos you add, under your display name. Please remove location data from photos before you upload them.
• Your email address is optional and never published. If you give it, we create an account for you so you can manage your review, send you a link to activate it, and tell you when your review is published. We may also email you, at most once every 60 days in the years after your review, to ask how your tires are wearing or how long they lasted. Every one of these emails has a link to stop them.
• Your IP address is recorded when you submit a review, to help us spot fake and duplicate reviews.
• While you write, your draft review, including any email address you have entered, is saved in your browser for up to seven days so it is not lost. It is removed when you submit the review.

Comments, questions and votes

• Comments: your name, your comment and, if you give it, your email address (never shown), together with your IP address and browser details to prevent spam. We email you when your comment is approved and when someone replies to it. Reply emails have a link to stop them, and members can switch them off in their account settings.
• Questions about a tire can be asked by members and are shown with your display name. We email you when your question is answered.
• Helpful votes on reviews record your IP address, so each review can only be voted on once from each address.

Accounts

To create an account we need your email address, a display name and a password, which is stored only in hashed form. We record the IP address you registered from, and for each sign-in the IP address and browser used, to keep accounts secure. If you choose to stay signed in, a cookie keeps you signed in for 30 days.

Your profile page, with your display name and your reviews, is public unless you turn it off in your account settings. In your account you can also edit or delete your reviews and choose which emails you receive.

Tire Health reminders. If you turn them on, we store the tires, mileage and reminder dates you give us and email you reminders, which you can switch off at any time.

When you contact us

Messages sent through our contact form are stored with your name, email address, IP address and browser details, and forwarded to us by email. We reply from [email protected]. If you ask us to add a missing tire, your request and your IP address are emailed to us.

Email

We send email through Amazon Web Services and keep a log of each email sent: the recipient, subject, type and whether it was delivered. If an email to you bounces or is reported as spam, your address is added to a list so we stop sending to it.

Translation and automated analysis

So that reviews and comments can be read in every language we publish in, approved reviews are translated using OpenAI, and comments, questions and replies using Google Cloud Translation. Review text, ratings, mileage, car and tire size, but not your name or email address, are also analyzed with OpenAI to summarise what owners say about each tire.

Videos and embedded content

Our own video players use YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode, and most only load when you press play. Some older articles embed standard YouTube players, Google charts or posts from X (Twitter); those services may set cookies and receive your IP address when the page loads.

Cookies and storage in your browser

Our own code sets these cookies:

Our pages also keep a few things in your browser's local storage: a random code that groups the pages of one visit for our analytics (forgotten after 30 minutes of inactivity), the tires and car you add to your shortlist, whether you have already seen our review prompts, and your display preferences.

Google Analytics, our advertising partners and embedded services set their own cookies. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, though some features, such as staying signed in, will not work without them.

Service providers

We use these companies to run the site. They process personal information on our behalf, under their own terms:

• iomart: the servers that run the site, in the United Kingdom.
• Cloudflare: network delivery and security.
• Amazon Web Services: sending email, storing our backups, and a standby copy of our servers in Germany.
• Google: Analytics, our email mailboxes, Cloud Translation, and YouTube.
• OpenAI: translation and analysis of review text.
• Ezoic and its advertising partners: programmatic advertising.
• jsDelivr and BootstrapCDN: deliver standard code and fonts used by our pages.

We do not sell your email address or contact details to anyone. We may disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the site and its users.

International transfers

Tire Reviews LLC is based in the United States, and our service providers process information in the United States and other countries. If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, your information is therefore transferred outside it. Where the law requires it, these transfers rely on the safeguards our providers offer, such as standard contractual clauses.

Legal bases

If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, we rely on these legal bases:

• Our legitimate interests in running, securing and improving the site, preventing fake reviews and spam, understanding how the site is used, and asking reviewers for updates on their tires.
• Performing our agreement with you when you create an account, publish a review or ask for reminders.
• Your consent for advertising cookies, where we ask for it. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligations, where the law requires us to keep or disclose information.

How long we keep information

Page view records are kept for 90 days, comparison view records for 60 days and server logs for 14 days. Reviews, comments and accounts are kept for as long as they are published or the account exists, and contact messages for as long as we need them to deal with your enquiry.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or send it to you in a portable format. You can object to our use of it based on legitimate interests, and withdraw any consent you have given. To make a request, email [email protected] from the address linked to your account if you have one. We will reply within one month.

If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, you can also complain to your data protection authority; in the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office.

Children

Our websites are not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update it on this page and change the date at the top.

Contact

For questions about this policy or your personal information, email [email protected] or write to us at the address above. For anything else, use our contact form.