Privacy Policy

What we collect

• Account data. Your email address, login credentials (stored hashed by our authentication provider), and — if you sign in with Apple — the Apple-issued identifier and the email Apple passes us, which may be a private relay address. Used to create and secure your account: legal basis, performance of our contract with you.
• Email signups. If you join the waitlist, subscribe to the Field Report, or save a watchlist, we store your email address, which form you used, and (if you're logged in) your account ID. Legal basis: consent, or contract where it is part of your account.
• Scan photos and camera input. When you take a photo scan in Scout, the image is sent to our servers and on to our AI identification provider to identify the item, then discarded — we keep the identification result and the fact that a scan happened, not a photo library. Camera access is only used while a scan screen is open. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you.
• Scan and identification records. What was identified, the category, the price reading returned, and when. Private to your account. Legal basis: contract; also our legitimate interest in enforcing tier allowances and preventing abuse.
• Collection, hauls and watchlists. Items you log, what you paid, trips you record and categories you follow. Private to your account and never used to move the public Heat Index. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you.
• Location. If you allow it, your device's approximate location is used to find shops and shows near you. We send coordinates to our own nearby-places endpoint for that request; we do not store a location history or track you in the background. Legal basis: consent, withdrawable in your device settings.
• Subscription data. Tier, status, renewal date and the store or reseller reference for your subscription. Card details never reach us — see "Payments" below. Legal basis: contract, and legal obligation for tax records.
• Community submissions. Anything you choose to send via /transmit — tips, photos, stories, corrections. Legal basis: consent.
• Analytics. Aggregate, cookie-based pageviews and CTA clicks. We use Google Analytics 4 loaded through Google Tag Manager on the production domain only. GA4 anonymizes IP addresses by default and we do not enable Google Signals or cross-site advertising profiles. See Google's privacy policy for how they process this data. Legal basis: consent.
• Anti-abuse metadata. A coarse IP hash and user-agent, used only for rate-limiting and spam prevention. We do not sell, share, or profile on this data. Legal basis: legitimate interest in keeping the service available.
• Concierge chats. Your questions, AI replies, time, page path and a random chat-session identifier are saved privately so Ryan can review incoming questions and improve support. Messages are sent to our AI provider to generate replies. No account is required; chat text is not sent to analytics. Do not include passwords, payment details or IDs. Legal basis: legitimate interest in providing and improving support. Contact Ryan to request deletion.

AI identification

Photo and text identification runs through a third-party AI model provider on our behalf, as a processor. Your image or description is sent for identification and is not used by us to train models. Identification is best-effort: it can be wrong, and the price reading attached to it is the live asking market, never an appraisal. Check the exact printing and condition yourself before you buy.

Payments

Website subscriptions are sold through Paddle.com, which acts as Merchant of Record and handles checkout, billing, tax and invoicing. Paddle collects your payment details directly — we never see or store a card number. We receive the subscription status and reference needed to unlock your tier. Purchases made inside the iOS app are processed by Apple; we receive a verified transaction record, not your payment details.

Who we share data with

• Service providers acting on our instructions: hosting and database, email delivery, analytics, and the AI identification provider.
• Merchant of Record and app stores — Paddle and Apple — for sale of the product, subscription management, payments, tax compliance and invoicing.
• Professional advisers (legal, accounting) where needed.
• Authorities where we are legally required to disclose.

We do not sell your personal data. Some providers are based outside the UK/EEA; where data is transferred internationally we rely on adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

Account, collection, haul and scan records are kept for as long as your account exists. Scan images are not retained after identification. Email signups are kept until you unsubscribe, then held on a suppression list so we do not mail you again. Anti-abuse metadata is short-lived. Billing records are kept as long as tax law requires. When data is no longer needed it is deleted or anonymised.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit, access to production data is restricted to those who need it, and per-account data is isolated by row-level access rules so one collector cannot read another's collection, hauls or scans.

Cookies

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in and to remember your cookie choice, and analytics cookies only after you accept them. There are no advertising cookies. You can change or withdraw your choice at any time from the cookie preferences control on the site, or by clearing cookies in your browser.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account and everything attached to it from inside the Scout app — open the account screen and choose Delete account. That removes your scans, collection, hauls, watchlist, reminders and entitlement records along with the login, permanently. You can also email us and we will do it for you. Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription bought through Apple — cancel that in your Apple ID settings — and billing records we must keep for tax purposes are retained.

How email works

Transactional and newsletter email is sent through Resend. Every email includes a one-click unsubscribe link and an unsubscribe header. Unsubscribing is instant — your address is added to a suppression list and we never mail it again unless you opt back in.

Affiliate relationships

Some outbound links are affiliate links:

• eBay Partner Network. If you buy something after clicking an eBay link on AOM, we may earn a small commission. Prices and availability are set entirely by eBay.
• PriceCharting data attribution. Retro-game and card reference prices are provided by PriceCharting under their public data license. AOM adds editorial context but the underlying numbers belong to PriceCharting.

Affiliate revenue helps fund AOM's research — it never changes the price you pay.

Not financial or appraisal advice

Heat scores, top movers, ask prices, and every other signal on AOM are editorial market color derived from public listings. They are not appraisals, not offers, and not financial advice. Always verify condition, authenticity, and recent sold signals before buying, selling, or trading anything.

Your rights

You can request access, correction, or deletion of anything we hold on you — including full account deletion — by emailing ryan@ageofmillennials.com. We reply from a real inbox, usually within a few days.

Contact

Corrections, takedowns, or general questions: ryan@ageofmillennials.com or the contact form.