Privacy
The whole point of PlateCatcher is storing as little as possible. Here is everything we keep, and everything we don't.
What we store
- For claimed plates: the plate number, state, your email address, and claim status.
- Your registration photo — only until a moderator reviews your claim (and never more than 30 days). It is deleted at review time, approved or not.
- For each relayed report: a timestamp and a salted hash of the sender's IP (for rate limiting). Never the report itself.
What we never store
- Report text, videos, or photos — they stream through to the owner's email and are gone.
- Reporter identities. The optional reply email goes into the relayed message only.
- Any DMV or vehicle-owner data. We have none and can look up none.
Who sees what
- Reporters never see the owner's email or identity — only "claimed" or "not registered".
- Owners never see the reporter's identity unless the reporter includes their email.
- Emails are delivered through our email provider (Resend) as a processor.
Deleting your data
Hit "Unclaim & delete" on your dashboard: the plate record, your email, and all associated rows are permanently removed, immediately.
Ads & cookies
We use one session cookie (sign-in state) and show banner ads to keep the service free. If an ad network is enabled it may set its own cookies, subject to its own policy.