Reel Draw

Privacy Policy

Last updated 2026-10-29. This policy describes how the website works today.

1. Who we are

Reel Draw is operated by Reel Draw Studio. To contact us, including about your data, use the Give feedback form on the home page (see section 5); there is no public email address.

2. Short version

  • No account, no sign-up, no advertising and no cookies.
  • We count visits and button use with our own analytics, under a random ID that isn’t linked to you. You can turn it off below, and browsers that send Global Privacy Control are never counted.
  • Your filter choices are sent to our server to pick a movie and are not kept there. Our analytics separately counts which filters and buttons are used (section 9).
  • The movies you have already seen are kept in your browser tab only; the country you choose and the films you save are remembered in your browser.
  • Feedback is stored only if you choose to send it.

3. Using the generator

When you change filters or press the button, your browser sends the filter settings (genres, years, length, fame, family-friendly, streaming services and country) and the list of movie IDs already shown in this session to our server. When you open a shared link, it sends the ID of the movie in that link and your country. The server uses this to count matching movies and pick or show one, then forgets it. We do not attach it to a name, account or advertising ID. Which filters and buttons you use, and the films shown, are also counted by our analytics (see section 9).

4. Data kept in your browser

To avoid showing the same movie twice, the IDs of movies you have seen are saved in your browser’s session storage. They disappear when you close the tab, and “Start over” clears them.

The country you choose for streaming is saved in your browser’s local storage (key reel-draw:region) so the page opens with it next time. Until you choose, the page suggests a country from your browser’s language setting (for example en-GB means the UK); that setting is read in your browser and not sent to us. Clearing this site’s data in your browser removes the saved country.

Films you Save are kept in local storage too (key reel-draw:saved: each film’s ID, title, year and poster address), so your list is there next time on this browser. The list is not sent to us and is not synced to other devices. Remove a film with its × button, or clear this site’s data to remove the whole list.

The current movie and filters also appear in the address bar after the # sign so you can share the page; that part of a URL is not sent to our server when the page loads.

5. Feedback you send

The Give feedback button opens a form. Only if you press send, we store the message you typed, this website’s domain and the page path (with any query string and # part removed), together with the time it was received. The form is processed by a hosted database service (Supabase) that we use for feedback from our websites; to limit abuse, the service briefly keeps a protected, one-way-hashed form of your network address to cap submissions at 10 per hour. Please don’t include passwords, contact details you don’t want stored, or other private information in your message.

6. Hosting and server logs

Like any website, the servers that deliver these pages receive technical information such as your IP address, browser type and the time of the request, and may keep it in short-lived logs for security and troubleshooting. The site is hosted by Vercel Inc., whose handling of this data is described in its privacy policy.

7. Posters, service logos and trailers

When a film is shown, its poster and the logos of the streaming services that carry it are loaded directly from The Movie Database’s image servers (image.tmdb.org). Your browser therefore sends your IP address and browser details to TMDB, without a referrer, under the TMDB privacy policy.

To find the poster, synopsis and current streaming services, our server asks TMDB using only the film’s identifier and the country; nothing about you is sent in those requests. TMDB’s streaming data comes from JustWatch. To check that a trailer may be played on this site, our server asks YouTube about that video ID only. When TMDB lists no trailer and you press Play trailer, our server searches YouTube for the film’s title and year; the search carries no information about you. Its answer (the video ID, or that none was found) is stored with our hosting provider, Vercel, and reused for up to 30 days (7 days when nothing was found) so the same film isn’t searched again; after that the film is searched again and the old answer is replaced. These stored answers contain nothing about you.

Films have a Play trailer button. Nothing is loaded from YouTube until you press it. When you do, the trailer plays in YouTube’s own player in privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com). YouTube then receives your IP address and browser details and may store data in your browser according to the Google Privacy Policy.

Movie cards link to TMDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata, IMDb and JustWatch. We do not load anything from those sites until you click a link; after that, their own privacy policies apply.

9. Analytics, cookies and advertising

To see which features people use and where the site fails, we run our own first-party analytics. It records page views (the page address without anything after ? or #), time spent and how far you scroll, clicks on labelled buttons and filters, and the outcome of using the generator: whether a pick succeeded or found nothing, the ID of the film shown, the number of matches, the country you chose and whether a trailer was played. It does not record what you type, your IP address, your name or anything that identifies you.

Events are grouped under a random visitor ID kept in your browser’s local storage and a visit ID kept in session storage (keys starting with wa_); they are not linked to any account or to other websites. The data is stored in a database we run on Supabase and is used only to improve this site, under our legitimate interest in understanding how it is used. It is never sold or used for advertising.

Turning analytics off deletes the visitor ID from this browser and stops all events; your choice is remembered in local storage. Browsers that send a Global Privacy Control signal are never counted.

The site sets no cookies and uses no advertising or social-media trackers. Fonts are served from our own domain. Other third-party content is limited to posters and service logos from TMDB and, only after you choose to play it, a YouTube trailer (see section 7). If this changes, we will update this policy first.

10. How long data is kept

Generator requests are not stored with any identifier. Session-storage data stays in your browser until you close the tab; the saved country, your saved films and the analytics visitor ID stay until you change them, turn analytics off or clear this site’s data. Analytics events are kept only as long as they help us improve the site and are reviewed for deletion at least once a year. Feedback messages are kept until they have been handled and are reviewed for deletion at least once a year. Hosting logs follow the hosting provider’s retention period.

11. Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR or US state privacy laws) you may have the right to ask what data we hold about you, to correct it or to delete it. Because we don’t collect names or accounts, we can usually only find feedback you sent if you tell us its text and approximate time. Contact us through the feedback form.

12. Children

The site is a general-audience tool and does not knowingly collect personal information from children. Please don’t send personal details through the feedback form.

13. Changes

We will update this page when the way the site handles data changes, and change the date at the top.