We collect almost nothing, and we share none of it.

The short version

You give us a VIN and, if you buy, a payment record. That is the deal. We do not ask for an account, a password, or your life story, we do not sell or share your data with anyone, and the only email you could ever get from us is a reply to one you sent.

This site is run by WrenchReport, owned and operated as a sole proprietorship based in Missouri, United States.

What we collect

The VIN you enter, and the report generated from it. VINs identify a vehicle, not a person; nothing links a VIN to you unless a payment does.

A payment record when you buy: the Stripe receipt ID, the report or pack it paid for, and the email address Stripe passes us from the checkout. Card numbers never reach us — card details are entered on Stripe, and we cannot see them.

Basic server records every website keeps: pages requested, IP address and rough region, browser type. Used to keep the site working, stop abuse, and count visitors.

Measurement data from the analytics script named below: pages viewed, clicks, referring site, screen size, and an identifier stored in your browser so a return visit is not counted twice.

If you use a 5-report pack, the pack link acts as your access key. Anyone with that link can use the remaining credits, so keep it the way you would keep a ticket.

We do not ask for your date of birth, your address, or any government ID, and you should not send them to us.

What we do with it

Generate and store your report so its link keeps working, process your payment, and answer support email. Aggregated counts (how many reports run, which pages get read) tell us what to build next.

We do not sell, rent, trade, or share personal data with advertisers, data brokers, or anyone else. There is no advertising on the site.

Who else touches your data

Four kinds of company, and no others:

• Stripe runs checkout and holds the card details we never see. Their privacy policy also applies to your payment.
• phospho is our one analytics provider — the measurement service run by the platform that hosts this site. See the section below for exactly what it does and does not do.
• Our hosting and network providers serve the pages and store the reports. They necessarily process IP addresses to do that.
• Law enforcement, if we are ever legally compelled. It has not happened.

NHTSA, the EPA and fueleconomy.gov are where our data comes from, not places we send yours. We read their public records; we do not tell them who asked.

Cookies, analytics and Do Not Track

We use one analytics provider: phospho, the measurement service run by the platform that hosts this site. It counts visits and clicks so we know which pages help people. It may store an identifier in your browser for that purpose.

There are no advertising cookies on this site — no ad network, no retargeting pixel, no social media tracking pixel, and no profile of you built for advertising. We do not use our analytics to follow you onto other websites, and we do not receive from them any record of your activity on sites that are not ours.

We do not respond to browser "Do Not Track" signals, because no agreed standard exists for what a site must do when it receives one. If you would rather not be measured at all, blocking scripts or using a tracker-blocking extension works: the site and your report still function normally.

Public data, not your data

The substance of every report — complaints, recalls, failure patterns, crash ratings, fuel costs — comes from public federal records (NHTSA and the EPA). Those records are about vehicles and vehicle builds, not about you. WrenchReport is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for any government agency or vehicle manufacturer.

How long we keep things

Paid reports are kept indefinitely so your permanent link keeps working. That link is the product; deleting the report would delete what you bought.

Free lookups are cached to make repeat lookups fast — the federal decode for a VIN can be kept up to a year — and otherwise age out of our working cache on their own.

Payment records are kept as long as tax and accounting law requires us to keep them. We cannot delete a receipt inside that window, and neither can Stripe.

Analytics data is kept for each provider’s default period; we do not extend it.

Seeing, correcting or deleting your data

There is no account to log into, so there is no self-service settings page. Email us instead and a human will handle it.

Email us at owner@wrenchdecode.com from the address on your receipt, and tell us what you want: a copy of what we hold about you, a correction, or a deletion. We will reply within 30 days, usually much sooner.

On deletion, we remove your email address and the link between your payment and any report. We keep the payment record itself for as long as tax law requires, and the report text stays because it describes a vehicle build from public records, not you.

Where the law gives you rights over your personal data — including California rights to know, delete, and correct — we honor them. We will never charge you more, give you a worse report, or refuse service because you exercised a privacy right.

Children

WrenchReport is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us something, email us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we post the new version on this page and move the "Last updated" date at the top. Material changes get a plain-language note here saying what changed. We keep no mailing list, so this page is the notice — but if you have written to us and the change affects your request, we will reply to you directly.

Contact

Questions about any of this: owner@wrenchdecode.com. A human reads it.