Privacy Policy

costdecoded.net — last updated 29 September 2026. This policy covers this website and every channel page on it (/cases, /verses, /life, /skin, /guess), and the private posting tool described at the end.

Who runs this

This site is run by one person. It publishes short educational videos about what everyday things cost and where familiar products came from, and indexes them so a viewer can find the one relevant to them. There are no employees, no customer accounts and no logins.

Email addresses

Some pages offer a one-page PDF and ask for an email address to send it. Giving an address is optional — every one of those pages also offers the same file as a direct download with no address required.

If you do give an address, this is what happens to it:

• What is stored: the address itself, the time you submitted it, which download you asked for, the numeric id of the video you arrived from, and which version of this notice you were shown. No name, no location, no payment details.
• What it is used for: sending you the file you asked for, and occasionally telling you about new cost breakdowns. Every such message carries a one-click unsubscribe, and unsubscribing does not affect anything you have already downloaded.
• Where it is stored: Google Firebase (Cloud Firestore), on Google's servers in the United States. Google processes it on our behalf under their own terms.
• Who else sees it: nobody. It is never sold, rented, traded, or shared with advertisers or affiliate partners.
• How long it is kept: until you ask for it to be deleted.

To have your address removed, contact us (below) and say so. No reason is needed and there is nothing to verify.

Visit counting

Pages carry a counter from GoatCounter, an analytics service that does not use cookies and does not track people across sites. It records that a page was viewed, roughly where in the world from, and which link brought you here — the ?s= value in the address says whether you came from a video description, a comment, Facebook or elsewhere. It does not record who you are, and nothing it collects is connected to an email address.

The counter only fires after a real interaction — a tap, a scroll or a keypress — so a page rendered by a bot is not counted.

Affiliate links

Some video descriptions contain Amazon affiliate links, marked as such. As an Amazon Associate this channel earns from qualifying purchases. If you follow one, Amazon — not this site — sees your visit and applies its own privacy policy. This site receives only anonymous totals: how many people clicked and whether anything was bought. It never receives your name, address or order details.

Children

Nothing here is directed at children under 13, and no address is knowingly collected from one.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted, and it will be done. Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and other states with privacy statutes have these rights by law; they are offered to everyone regardless. Nothing here is sold, so there is nothing to opt out of selling.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. A change is never applied retroactively to an address already given — if what an address is used for ever changes, that applies only to addresses given afterwards. This is not a matter of good intentions: each address is stored with a note of which wording it was given under, so the older promise can still be honoured after the wording has moved on.

Addresses given before 29 September 2026 were promised the file “and nothing else unless you ask”, and that is what they will get.

The posting tool

Separately from this website, the operator uses a private tool — “HomeCostDecoded Poster” — to upload their own videos to their own TikTok account. It is not offered to other users and has no customers.

The tool authenticates with TikTok using TikTok's Login Kit and uploads video files to the account holder's own TikTok drafts using the Content Posting API (video.upload). Videos arrive as drafts; they are reviewed and published manually inside the TikTok app.

No personal data is collected from anyone through the tool. It stores a single OAuth access token for the account holder's own TikTok account, on the account holder's own computer, readable only by that user account. Nothing is transmitted to any third party and no data is sold or shared.

The user.info.basic scope is granted by TikTok alongside Login Kit. Any profile information returned is used only to confirm the correct account is connected, and is not stored beyond the session.

The stored token can be deleted at any time by removing the local credentials file, or by revoking the app under TikTok Settings → Security & permissions → Manage app permissions.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request to delete an email address, can be sent to the operator via the Home Cost Decoded YouTube channel.