About your privacy
Privacy of users has been a very important issue on the site and has been a fundamental part of the design since day one.
Here are some ways how the site protects you and guidelines to follow to keep yourself safe.
How the site protects you
We don't collect any personal information
The only actual piece of information that the site will require is an email address, and we will only use it to reach you or send the site's notifications. At no point we ask for your name, address or other data that could link to you.
The email you provide is not shared to any user or third party, ensuring that the persona you use on Bratabase is isolated from the world.
Users cannot reach you
By default, users cannot send you private messages or "talk" to you unless the reach a certain reputation level (currently 100). Read more on the rules for private messaging.
The only way that a user can send you a private message if she does not have the required reputation is if you have an active listing, then it is required that arbitrary users be able to contact you to inquire about your bra. Read more about your profile privacy preferences.
You can manage this on your Privacy settings and change them any time.
Your pictures are not linked to your profile.
This is a tricky one. By design, when visitors see your pictures to the site, they are not linked to your profile. That is that when enough people have added their bras and pictures, it is very difficult to tell which pictures belong to which user.
There are situations when this is not true:
- When you specify that you want your pictures shown next to your review, this can be very helpful to make points in your review but means that whoever reads your review, will also see your pictures.
- When you add a listing, then the pictures of your bra will be shown in the listing and your name with it. This is necessary for the benefit of the listing.
- When you ask for fitting help. The pictures are shown in your fit request next with your username.
- When you are the only owner of the bra, then even if you did not ask to show your pictures next to your review, it can be deduced that the pictures belong to the only current owner.
Usernames are not shown to anonymous visitors
This means, that any content on the site, such as reviews, fit requests or listings will not show the author next to it, the main goal is that search engines do not record which user belongs to which bit of content.
If you are a blogger though, then your profile will be visible by search engines, this is so your blogger/bra profile is better spread across the Internet.
You can make your profile non-accessible by not logged users
In your Privacy settings you can configure your profile to be only accessible by logged users. This is not enabled by default, because we encourage users to share their Bratabase profile on other bra related places. Remember that your profile is not linked to you, so anybody that lands on it will not know anything about you. It is purely informational.
The pictures you upload are watermarked
All the pictures shown on the site have the Bratabase logo plastered on top. This ensures that the pictures cannot be used on other places, and if they do it will be obvious that they are misusing the picture.
Also, all the EXIF information from your pictures is stripped, and only generated thumbnails are exposed, that means that the original picture is never available to the public.
Your measurements are private
The measurements you add on the site are private and inaccessible by other users, the only place where you can choose to share them is when asking for fitting help, you can choose to share or not your current measurements for others to see.
We don't expose your information on the API unless you explicitly authorize another party
The API exposes information about the bra directory to the public, but it shares the same information that is available through the website. It does not exposes user profiles, nor user information.
The only way a third party can read that via the API is by asking for your authorization, if you decide to do so, then they will get read only access to your shared resources. The API terms of use indicate that they should not permanently store that information.
How to keep yourself secure
Use an arbitrary username that you don't use somewhere else.
This is extremely important because even though Bratabase does not link to you anywhere else (unless you do it so), it is trivial to type your username on a search engine and find where else you participate.
Don't reuse passwords
It is very important not to reuse passwords across different services. This allows for a hacker to be able to access other accounts once one has been compromised.
Be careful of the information and links you share
Don't share links to places that can further link to your real profile, like to another forum where you are also active, to images or pictures on websites that link to you or to a personal blog/page unless you want others to know this.
Don't share personal information on private messages
When making arrangements to close a listing, it may be necessary to disclose a physical shipping address or a Paypal account.
If possible have items shipped to a P.O. box or a work place, or make sure you trust the person you're dealing with. Check their reputation. Remember that you don't have to sell to the first person who asks!
If you get inappropriate messages make sure to report them.
Set your privacy settings as you see fit
Please remember that there is a Privacy settings page on your profile where you can configure who has access to which pieces of information.
Only authorize applications that you trust to access your data
When using a Bratabase application that needs to read any of your user information you will be prompted for approval. Check the origin of the application and make sure you trust it. They will get read only access to your information. So they will read whatever you choose to share (your username, your bras or your email, depending on what you allow).
Be wary of phishing messages
If you receive any message from Bratabase, make sure that the links on your browser point to "https://www.bratabase.com" and never to other domain.
Frequently asked questions
Why isn't the complete site accessible for members only
This is the most frequently asked question regarding privacy and there are many reasons, the first one is that it is a false sense or privacy.
Anybody can just create an account, the computer cannot know a priori whether a person has the right intentions or not at signup time. We cannot just block people from accessing the site and benefiting from it.
It also has a number of downsides.
It makes the site's content invisible to search engines, making it impossible for the site's information to be available to new people searching online for bra advice. They will never discover the site and never benefit.
It makes it impossible for others to share the content. That is blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook and other places. Wallgardening the site would require anybody clicking a Bratabase link require to have an account and stop them from accessing the information.
This is detrimental to the site's goals of spreading bra information, and we are still not protected from people with bad intentions, since they are going to create an account anyway.
Why don't you just block that user?
Dealing with unwanted people is tricky, the course of action to take will depend a lot of the behavior of this person.
If the person is a creep trying to reach women, blocking the account will only cause that person to be mad, then to create another account and to be more sneaky this time making it harder for us to spot. The action we take will have to be thoughtful and according to each situation. We prefer to have these people observed than not.
Is there an option to block a user I dislike?
Yes, just in during Valentine's week 2019, the option to block users was added to the site. More information on the announcement blog post.