Privacy Policy

what-to.watch is operated by Emstra tölvuþjónusta ehf, registration number (kennitala) 5710251240, Öldugerði 4, 860 Hvolsvöllur, Iceland. We are the data controller for the personal data described here.

For anything about your data, email [email protected]. A human reads it.

If you use the site without an account, we do not ask for anything about you. We count searches against a short-lived identifier so the free limit can be enforced, and we record which searches were made so we can tell whether the product works. That is not linked to a name or an email.

If you create an account, we hold your email address, a display name and username if you set one, and a password hash if you signed up with a password rather than with Apple or Google. We never store a readable password.

As you use it, we store the things that make the recommendations work: films you marked as loved, liked or not for you; films you marked as seen; films you skipped; recommendations you told us were not relevant; your watchlist; which streaming services you have; and any taste report you generated. If you connect Plex, we store the access token for your Plex account and the list of servers you chose, so we can show what you already own.

If you subscribe, we store the subscription status and the identifiers Apple sends us. Card details never reach us. Apple handles the payment and tells us only whether you are subscribed.

Under the GDPR we rely on three grounds, and it matters which is which:

• Performance of a contract — your account, your subscription, your lists and your recommendations. You asked us for the service; this is the service.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the service working, preventing abuse of the free tier, and understanding aggregate usage so we can improve it.
• Legal obligation — accounting records relating to payments, which Icelandic law requires us to keep for seven years.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for anyone else’s advertising.

We run no analytics and no advertising trackers. There is no Google Analytics, no Meta Pixel, no session recording and no third-party tag of any kind on this site. We mention it because it is unusual and because it means we do not need to bury you under a consent banner.

The only cookies we set are the ones that keep you signed in. They are strictly necessary for a service you asked for, so they do not require consent. If that ever changes, we will ask you properly before it does, not afterwards.

Recommendations, mood search and taste reports are generated by a large language model operated by Anthropic. When you run one of those, we send the film you searched for and a summary of your taste — the titles you have loved, liked and rejected — to Anthropic’s API so it can pick matches.

We do not send your email address, your name, your account identifier or your payment information. Anthropic acts as our processor and does not use this data to train its models.

We keep this list short on purpose. Everyone on it is a processor acting for us:

• Supabase — the database holding your account and lists.
• Hostinger — the server running the site, located in Manchester, United Kingdom.
• Anthropic — the AI that generates recommendations, as described above.
• TMDB and JustWatch — film information and streaming availability. We request data from them; we do not send them anything about you.
• Brevo — sends the occasional transactional email, such as telling you a film you wanted is now streaming.
• Apple and Google — sign-in, if you chose it, and Apple additionally for subscription payments.
• Plex — only if you connect it, and only to read what is on your own servers.

Our server is in Manchester, United Kingdom, and the database is hosted in the European Union. Some processors above are based in the United States. Where data reaches them, it is covered by the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses or an equivalent safeguard.

Your account data stays until you delete your account. Anonymous search records are kept so we can see how the product is used. Records of payments are kept for seven years because Icelandic accounting law requires it — but see the next section for what happens to the link between those records and you.

You can delete your account yourself, at any time, from your profile page on the web and from the Account tab in the iPhone app. You do not need to ask us and we will not try to talk you out of it.

Deletion is immediate and it is real. Everything personal goes: your profile, your ratings, your watched and skipped lists, your watchlist, your taste reports, your streaming services, any Plex connection and token, your sessions and your sign-in identities.

Two things survive, and we would rather say so plainly than pretend otherwise. Records of payments are kept because accounting law requires it, and aggregate usage records are kept so our own cost figures stay accurate — but both are detached from you. The row remains; the link to your identity is removed. Nothing left behind can identify you.

Under the GDPR you can ask us to:

• Give you a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Correct anything that is wrong.
• Delete your account and its data — which you can also just do yourself.
• Restrict or object to how we use it.
• Send your data to you, or to someone else, in a portable format.

Email [email protected] and we will respond within 30 days. There is no charge.

If you think we have handled your data badly, you are entitled to complain to Persónuvernd (Icelandic Data Protection Authority). We would rather you told us first so we can fix it, but it is your right either way.

This service is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will remove it.

If we change something that materially affects you, we will update the date at the top and tell account holders by email. We will not quietly rewrite this page and hope nobody notices.