Effective date: September 8, 2026

Anime Characters Database ("ACDB", "the Site", "we", "us", or "our") is operated by Goral Software, a sole proprietorship based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

This Privacy Policy explains what information ACDB collects, why we collect it, how it is used and retained, and the choices available to you.

We try to keep this policy understandable rather than burying our practices in legal terminology. If something is unclear, please contact us.

1. Information We Collect

The information we collect depends on how you use ACDB.

Account information

If you create an ACDB member account, we may collect and store information necessary to operate your account and provide member features, including:

• username;
• email address;
• password information in the form necessary to authenticate your account;
• account preferences;
• account activity and site-related information;
• membership level, rank, points, or other account-related values;
• content you submit to ACDB; and
• information associated with your use of member features.

You are not required to create an account simply to browse most of ACDB.

Information you submit

When you voluntarily submit information to ACDB, we may retain it as necessary to provide the requested feature or maintain the Site. This can include character information, comments, votes, favourites, lists, photographs, profile information, or other content.

Some information you submit may be displayed publicly. You should therefore avoid submitting information that you do not want other visitors to see.

Technical and usage information

When you visit ACDB, our servers and applications may record technical information associated with your visit.

This can include:

• IP address;
• browser and operating-system information;
• user-agent string;
• timestamps;
• pages or resources requested;
• session identifiers or cookies;
• information used to detect or prevent abusive activity;
• request and activity counts;
• information concerning whether a request was blocked; and
• other technical information reasonably necessary to operate, secure, and troubleshoot the Site.

Some of this information is stored in our internal usage and security statistics.

For example, our session and usage records may associate a randomly generated cookie identifier with technical information about a visitor. This identifier is used to recognize a browser or session and is not intended to serve as your name or other direct identity.

An IP address and other technical information can constitute personal information where it can reasonably be associated with an identifiable individual. We therefore treat such information appropriately rather than assuming that it is completely anonymous.

2. Why We Collect This Information

We collect and use information for purposes including:

• providing and maintaining ACDB;
• operating member accounts and features;
• remembering account and site preferences;
• displaying and maintaining user-submitted content;
• maintaining site statistics;
• understanding how the Site is being used;
• diagnosing technical problems;
• detecting and preventing spam, scraping, abuse, fraud, and other harmful activity;
• enforcing our terms and site rules;
• protecting the security and integrity of ACDB;
• serving and measuring advertising;
• responding to questions, requests, and support inquiries;
• complying with legal obligations; and
• other purposes reasonably related to operating the Site and providing its features.

We do not collect personal information simply because it might be interesting to have. Information is collected and used for purposes connected to the operation, security, improvement, or monetization of ACDB.

3. Cookies and Sessions

ACDB uses cookies and related technologies to operate the Site and maintain sessions.

A session cookie may be used to associate your browser with information stored on our servers. Depending on whether you are logged in, our retention of session information differs.

Logged-in visitors

For logged-in users, session information is retained until approximately 90 days after the account has been inactive, after which the relevant session information is deleted according to our normal cleanup processes.

Visitors who are not logged in

For visitors who are not logged in, session information is retained for approximately 1 day after inactivity.

These periods refer to our server-side session/usage records. Individual browser cookies may have their own expiration characteristics.

You can configure your browser to restrict or delete cookies. However, disabling cookies may prevent some ACDB features from functioning correctly, particularly features involving accounts and sessions.

4. Analytics

ACDB uses analytics and usage measurement technologies to understand how the Site is used and to help us improve it.

Where Google Analytics is used, information may be processed by Google according to Google's own policies and terms.

Our current Google Analytics configuration has Google's data-redaction feature for email addresses enabled.

Google Signals is not enabled in our current configuration.

Analytics information may include information such as pages visited, approximate geographic information, device and browser information, referral information, and interactions with the Site, depending on the features enabled by the analytics provider.

We do not intentionally configure Google Analytics to collect the contents of private account information as analytics data.

5. Advertising

ACDB is supported in part through advertising.

We may use advertising services including Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, and other advertising partners. These services may use cookies, device information, IP addresses, advertising identifiers, and similar technologies to provide, measure, personalize, or otherwise support advertising.

Advertising providers may collect information directly from your browser when advertisements are displayed.

Their collection and use of information is governed by their own privacy policies and applicable choices or consent mechanisms.

Because advertising technology can change over time, the specific providers used on ACDB may change without requiring a complete rewrite of this Privacy Policy. We will update this policy when a material change to our privacy practices occurs.

6. Information Shared With Third Parties

We do not sell our member database or provide personal information to unrelated parties simply for them to use for their own purposes.

Information may nevertheless be disclosed to third parties where reasonably necessary to operate ACDB.

Examples include:

• hosting and infrastructure providers;
• analytics providers;
• advertising providers;
• email or communications providers;
• security, fraud-prevention, or abuse-prevention services;
• technical service providers;
• professional advisers where necessary; and
• government, law-enforcement, or other authorities where required or permitted by law.

Third-party service providers may process information outside Canada. Information processed outside Canada may be subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which it is processed.

We expect service providers handling personal information on our behalf to use it only for purposes necessary to provide their services and to maintain appropriate safeguards.

7. Publicly Visible Information

ACDB is a public website, and some information submitted by users is intended to be publicly accessible.

For example, content contributed to character, series, image, profile, or other public-facing areas of the Site may remain visible to other visitors.

Creating an account does not mean that everything associated with the account is private.

Before submitting content, consider whether you are comfortable with it being publicly accessible.

8. Uploaded Images and Other User Content

Users may upload images and other content to ACDB.

Deleting an account does not necessarily mean that every piece of content previously associated with that account is immediately or automatically deleted.

For example, information stored in our database may become inaccessible from public-facing pages when the account or associated database relationships are removed. An uploaded image file may, however, continue to exist separately and may remain publicly accessible unless it is separately removed.

Where appropriate, users may request that information or content be deleted.

We may retain information that is necessary for legitimate technical, security, legal, accounting, or other operational purposes even after an account or content has been removed.

9. Account Deletion

You may request deletion of your ACDB account.

When an account is deleted, information that depends on the account's database relationship may no longer be associated with the account and may consequently disappear from public-facing portions of the Site.

Because ACDB contains many interconnected records, account deletion does not necessarily mean that every historical record, contribution, image, or technical record is physically erased from every system.

Where you specifically request complete deletion of personal information, we will consider the request and delete information that we are able to delete, subject to legitimate reasons for retaining it.

In some circumstances, we may need to retain limited information for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, dispute resolution, or other legitimate purposes.

10. Retention

We retain information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, or for other legitimate purposes such as security, legal compliance, accounting, dispute resolution, or preventing abuse.

Different types of information have different retention periods.

For example:

• anonymous/inactive session information is generally removed after approximately 1 day of inactivity;
• logged-in session information is generally removed after approximately 90 days of inactivity;
• account information may be retained while an account exists;
• publicly contributed content may remain available independently of an account;
• security and abuse-prevention records may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary for those purposes; and
• backups and technical copies may persist for a limited period after information is deleted from active systems.

We periodically remove information that is no longer needed for its intended purpose.

11. Security

We take reasonable measures appropriate to the nature of the information we hold to protect it from unauthorized access, use, alteration, disclosure, or destruction.

These measures include technical and administrative safeguards and controls intended to protect the Site and its databases.

No Internet service can guarantee absolute security. If a security incident occurs that creates obligations under applicable privacy law, we will respond in accordance with those obligations.

12. Abuse Prevention and Security Monitoring

ACDB receives automated traffic, including search-engine crawlers, legitimate bots, malicious scraping, spam, and other automated requests.

We use technical information such as IP addresses, user-agent strings, cookies, request patterns, timestamps, and related information to:

• identify potentially abusive traffic;
• limit excessive requests;
• prevent scraping and automated abuse;
• protect the availability of the Site;
• investigate suspicious activity; and
• enforce technical restrictions.

This information may be processed even when a visitor does not have an ACDB account.

13. Email Addresses

If you provide an email address to ACDB, we may use it for purposes such as:

• account authentication and recovery;
• important account-related communications;
• responding to requests;
• security notifications; and
• other communications you have requested or consented to receive.

We do not intentionally use private account email addresses as publicly displayed profile information unless the feature specifically makes that information public.

Where supported by our analytics configuration, we use Google's email-address redaction functionality to reduce the risk of email addresses being unintentionally transmitted to Google Analytics.

14. Children's Privacy

ACDB is a general-interest website and is not specifically directed toward children.

We do not knowingly request unnecessary personal information from children.

If you believe that a child has provided personal information to ACDB in circumstances where it should not have been collected, please contact us so that we can review and, where appropriate, delete it.

15. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on applicable law and the circumstances, you may have rights concerning personal information we hold about you.

These may include the ability to:

• ask what personal information we hold about you;
• ask how that information is being used;
• ask about disclosures of your information;
• request correction of inaccurate information;
• request deletion of personal information where appropriate;
• withdraw consent where consent is the legal basis for processing; and
• raise a concern about our handling of your personal information.

Canadian privacy law provides individuals with rights concerning access, accuracy, appropriate collection and use, safeguards, retention, and complaints.

Some requests may be subject to legal or practical limitations. For example, we may not be able to delete information that we are required to retain, information that is necessary to establish or defend legal claims, or information that is necessary for security and abuse prevention.

16. Requesting Access or Deletion

If you would like to ask what personal information we hold about you, request a correction, or request deletion, please contact us.

When making a request, provide enough information for us to identify the relevant account or information and understand what you are requesting.

For security reasons, we may need to verify that a request is actually coming from the person to whom the information relates.

We will respond to legitimate privacy requests within the time required by applicable law.

17. Privacy Contact

The organization responsible for ACDB's privacy practices is:

Goral Software

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Privacy contact: Stephen Goral

Privacy-related requests may be submitted through the contact information provided on the ACDB website.

18. Complaints

If you have a concern about how ACDB handles your personal information, we encourage you to contact us first so that we can investigate and attempt to resolve the issue.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may have the right to bring your concern to the appropriate privacy regulator.

For organizations subject to Canada's federal private-sector privacy framework, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada provides information about privacy rights and complaints.

19. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to ACDB, our technology, our service providers, or applicable legal requirements.

The effective date at the beginning of this policy indicates when the current version took effect.

If we make a material change to the way we collect, use, or disclose personal information, we will take reasonable steps to make the change apparent to affected users.

20. Contact

If you have a privacy question, request, or concern, please contact Goral Software / Stephen Goral through the contact information provided on ACDB.

We would rather answer a privacy question directly than make you decipher a privacy policy.

3rd Party Ads Privacy Policies

• Google Adsense and Analytics - Privacy Policy
• anymindgroup - Privacy Policy