What we collect, why we collect it, and the choices you have over your data.
What we collect, why we collect it, and the choices you have over your data.
Last updated: October 29, 2026
Ranked合同会社 (Ranked G.K.; “Ranked”, “we”, “our”) operates ranked.jp, a job board and professional network for software engineers and related professionals in Japan. This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have. It applies to ranked.jp and our related subdomains, including employers.ranked.jp and the chat assistant at chat.ranked.jp. Accounts are for people aged 18 or older (see the Terms); we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact admin@ranked.jp and we will delete it.
When you create an account or profile, we collect information you provide directly, including:
When you apply to a job hosted on Ranked, we collect the application details you submit, including your name, email address, resume, language abilities, work authorization answer, and role-specific message. After a successful application, your browser also keeps the applicant details and resume on that device to prefill the next application form. It does not keep the role-specific message. This works without an account, and clearing Ranked site data in your browser removes the device-local copy.
If you use the chat assistant, we process the messages you send it. Section 6 describes that in full — what is sent onwards to produce a reply, what we keep, and what does not survive the page.
If you use the optional AI job assistant, we collect what you tell it and the answers you give to its emails, as described in Section 6.
We also automatically collect limited technical and usage data through Google Analytics, including:
Chat analytics use a random identifier created for the conversation on that page. Events may also say which language is in use, whether the visitor is signed in, and whether personalization is enabled. We do not send Google Analytics the text of a message or reply, an email address, resume or profile contents, search requirements, or an account identifier. We may export the same analytics events to Google BigQuery for our own analysis.
Separately from analytics, our own servers process one further piece of technical data: when a signed-out visitor uses the chat assistant, we derive a one-way salted hash of their IP address and use it to count how many messages and enquiry emails have come from that visitor today. We store the hash, never the address itself, we do not use it for anything except those limits, and the record deletes itself seven days after it is written. Signed-in visitors are counted against their account instead, and no address is hashed.
The email box on our homepage. If you enter an email address in the box on our homepage, we send one email to that address from our AI job assistant, inviting its owner to start it. Nothing else happens unless the owner replies YES: no account is created and no permission is recorded. Because the address may have been entered by someone other than its owner, we keep only these records, each keyed by a one-way hash of the address rather than the address itself: a note that the invitation was sent, for 90 days, so the same address is not invited again in that time; a record of the invitation (its language, the version of these terms it showed and the sending service's message ID), for 30 days, so a reply can be matched to it; and, if the owner replies NO or STOP, a record of that decision, without time limit, so that address is never invited again. To limit how many addresses can be entered, we count entries per visitor with the salted IP hash described above. The email is sent through Amazon Simple Email Service, which delivers all of our emails.
Your profile is private by default. Creating an account, accepting these documents, or keeping an earlier sharing permission does not enable any of the optional permissions below.
Let employers discover me. This optional permission allows verified employers and their authorized AI tools to search and compare an approved talent profile through Ranked. The profile can contain skills, broad experience, languages, location and job preferences you choose to show. Names, photos, contact details, resume files, identifying links and exact employer history are excluded from discovery. Before any profile becomes discoverable, you must approve what will be shown. Identity or resume disclosure requires a separate approval naming the recipient, or your instruction to send an application. This is not permission to publish your profile to the open web or public search engines; that is the separate public-profile choice below.
Discovery does not by itself enable contact or arrange an introduction. We enforce the visibility choices you have approved, and the same restrictions apply to browser and API/AI access alike. Hiding identifying details is not a guarantee that nobody could recognize you from the remaining facts.
Help improve matching. This separate optional permission allows Ranked to use your structured profile, saved jobs and application status/outcomes to evaluate and improve matching for all users. Such information may remain linked to your account. The scope excludes resume files, names, contact details and chat text; it does not authorize external AI providers to train their general models. It is separate from providing your own requested profile analysis and recommendations, and from the content-free analytics described above.
Show my profile publicly. This separate optional permission makes your profile public: it is listed in Ranked's Talent directory and has its own page, which search engines such as Google may index, and anyone can view it without an account — on Ranked's site and in search engines (and the AI assistants that use them), and through Ranked's public API once that is offered. A public profile shows what the Profile tab of your Profile page shows: your name, photo, cover image, headline, About and career highlights, the area where you are based (not your exact location), your Japanese, English and other languages (and a JLPT certificate), your current job and school, work history, education, certifications, skills and top skills, the links you add, and when the profile was last updated. This includes what Ranked read from your resume and what you told the AI job assistant, exactly as your Profile tab shows it, including what is added to those sections after you turn it on — review that tab, and correct anything, before you turn the public profile on. Your job-search details — such as the role, salary and start date you want, your years of experience, work authorization and visa, work style, willingness to relocate, deal-breakers and company preferences — are never shown on a public profile or returned by the API. Your current salary, if you give it, is stored with your account but never shown on your profile or returned by the API. A public profile always has a Message button: anyone can write to you through it, and the message is forwarded to your account email through your private relay, so neither the relay address nor your email is ever shown to the sender. Your replies are relayed back the same way. Turning the public profile off stops new messages through that permission. If you still have an earlier opportunity-message permission enabled, turn that off too to stop messages through that route. Your account email, resume files, applications, saved jobs and chat text are never shown. Turning the permission off in Settings or Profile removes your profile from the directory, its page and the API immediately. Copies that search engines, AI assistants or other people made while it was public may take time to disappear, and we cannot recall them. Only enable it if you are comfortable with everything on your profile being public.
These choices are independent of AI job assistant emails, account creation and accepting the Terms. Public-profile publication is optional and off unless you explicitly enable it in Settings or Profile. Employer discovery and matching improvement are not offered yet: no profile is searched by employers or used for matching improvement through those permissions today (a public profile is visible only as described under Show my profile publicly), and an account that recorded either choice earlier can withdraw it in Settings. You may withdraw them there at any time. We record the permission, wording/version, language, server timestamp and source, including withdrawal history. Earlier evidence is not converted into new grants. A materially different use requires a new choice. Withdrawal stops further use under that permission; it cannot recall information already delivered to a recipient.
To protect your real email address, we may issue you a proxy address at our messages subdomain. Messages sent to that address are filtered and forwarded to your real email, so other users can reach you without seeing your actual address. We process the contents of these messages only as needed to deliver and filter them. Relayed messages are private communications: the automated checks cover only detected spam or viruses (and any blocked words you have set yourself), Ranked does not compare them with your profile or interests, and nobody at Ranked reads them. The relay accepts new messages while your profile is public (or while an earlier permission for opportunity messages is on). When neither is, new inbound relay messages are blocked, even if a sender already knows the address; replies to conversations you already received still work.
The assistant at chat.ranked.jp — also reachable at /en/chat/ and /ja/chat/ — is open to everyone, with or without an account. This section describes what happens to a candidate conversation.
What we send in order to answer. Replies are generated by a language model operated by OpenAI in the United States. To produce one we send OpenAI: a limited window of the most recent messages in the conversation (each one truncated), any search requirements you have stated in it (for example a salary floor or that you need visa sponsorship), short labels for the matching facts in play (for example “React”, “JLPT N2”), and job and company information drawn from Ranked’s own listings. We do not send your name, your uploaded resume, or the text extracted from it, and we do not automatically send your account email address. Anything you type into the chat yourself is part of the conversation and is sent with it.
What we keep. We do not store your conversation. It is held in your browser while you are on the page and sent up with each message so the assistant has context, and it is gone as soon as you reload, close the tab, or move to another page — including the round trip through a sign-in link. The facts the assistant records as you talk (shown in the “Memories” list under the message box) live in the same place and disappear with it. Nothing you say in this chat is written to your profile. The AI job assistant described below is the one exception, and only after you opt in to it.
What can change your account from this chat. Two things, and both are deliberate actions rather than side effects of talking:
Personalize. When you are signed in, a toggle under the message box decides whether your saved profile and resume are applied to the conversation. Turning it off stops the assistant reading them; it never edits or deletes anything on your profile.
Emailing us from the chat. The assistant can prepare an enquiry draft addressed to admin@ranked.jp. It displays the subject and message with a link to open them in your email app. Nothing is sent by the assistant: you review the draft and press Send yourself. We keep enquiries you send as ordinary business correspondence.
The AI job assistant. Everything above describes the conversation-only (classic) chat. The main site chat also offers the AI job assistant, which works differently after you opt in: it does build your profile from what you tell it. It runs only after you opt in — by replying YES to its invitation by email (chat@ranked.jp), by ticking its box after a sign-in link, accepting the explicit invitation in chat, or switching it on in Settings or Profile — and we record that choice with its wording, version, language and time. It reaches you by email, on its own page of the site. A connected AI assistant uses separate permissions (below); connecting one does not turn on AI job assistant emails or publish your profile.
The profile editor. On your Profile page you can describe a change in a sentence. Your message and your current profile are sent to OpenAI to work out which fields you mean, and the page shows the proposed change. Nothing is saved until you confirm it.
Connected AI assistants. Where offered, you can connect an AI assistant you already use (for example Claude or ChatGPT) to your Ranked account. You approve each permission on a Ranked page — reading your matching profile and saved jobs, and, separately, saving jobs and saving what you tell it to your profile — and we record that approval per assistant. What the assistant reads is then processed by its provider under your own agreement with that provider, which we do not control. We keep a short record of the jobs it has been shown for you, so results are not repeated. It cannot change your contact details, privacy settings or consents. You can disconnect an assistant in Settings at any time; it stops working at once.
Limits and usage analytics. We count how many messages and enquiry emails come from one visitor per day — keyed to your account when you are signed in, and to the salted IP hash described in Section 2 when you are not — and we keep a running monthly total of what the assistant costs us to run. Neither record contains any part of a conversation. Separately, Google Analytics receives the content-free interaction events described in Section 2. These events let us measure, for example, how many messages are sent in one conversation, whether answers succeed, how long they take, and whether they lead to job cards, saves, applications, or enquiries. Google Analytics does not receive the text of the conversation.
Employer AI tools. On employers.ranked.jp, authenticated company administrators can use AI to manage company/job information and application statuses. Requests to OpenAI may include the employer conversation, company/job facts and an applicant roster containing names, applied-for jobs, application dates/statuses, language levels and work-authorization answers. The roster excludes applicant email addresses, resumes, links and application messages, although information typed by an employer into the conversation is transmitted. Company-scope requests can include this roster even when the question is not about applicants. This application-management processing is separate from the employer-discovery permission in Section 4. The AI can execute requested shortlist/rejection changes; employers remain responsible for reviewing the affected people and decisions.
We use a strictly necessary, HttpOnly session cookie to keep you signed in. It is set for ranked.jp and its subdomains, so it is also sent to our API and chat hosts — that is how the chat knows you are signed in. Google Analytics also sets cookies to collect the usage data described above. You can control or disable cookies through your browser settings; disabling the session cookie will prevent you from staying signed in.
Your account and profile data are stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the Tokyo (ap-northeast-1) region. Uploaded profile and cover images are stored privately in AWS S3. Ranked checks access each time an image is requested: only you can view it while your profile is private; other people can view it while you have opted in to publish your profile. Turning publication off stops new public image requests. Copies someone already saved cannot be recalled. Uploaded resumes are stored in a separate S3 bucket that blocks all public access — the only way in or out is a signed, time-limited link scoped to your own account. Account emails are sent using AWS Simple Email Service (SES).
How we protect your data. We take the following measures to keep personal information secure:
Some processing takes place outside Japan. When you upload a resume, its contents are sent to OpenAI (in the United States) to extract structured profile details; we use OpenAI to analyze job and profile text for the ranking and matching described above; and chat and AI job assistant messages are sent to OpenAI to generate their replies. This means some of your data is transferred to and processed in the United States. We send only what is needed for these purposes.
We use the following third-party providers, who may process data according to their own privacy policies:
How OpenAI handles what we send. OpenAI does not use data sent through its API to train or improve its models, and we have not opted in to any programme that would change that. It keeps API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring and then deletes them, unless it is required to keep them longer by law.
Transfers outside Japan. Amazon Web Services stores your data in its Tokyo region. Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are established in the United States and process data there. We provide personal data to these providers only as processors acting on our instructions, under each provider’s data processing terms. Information about the personal-data protection regime of the receiving country, and about the measures each provider takes to protect personal data, is available on request from admin@ranked.jp.
We do not sell or rent your personal data. When you apply to a hosted job, we send the submitted details to the employer's company administrators and the job's configured application email recipient. Notification emails contain application details and the applicant's reply address. Authorized company administrators can view applications and download the submitted resume through a time-limited link. Uploaded application resumes are separate snapshots, so later replacing or deleting an account resume does not change an application already sent.
We retain the submitted application and the employer's current status update (new, shortlisted or rejected), including when and by whom the status was changed, to operate the application service. A complete candidate-facing tracker and interview, offer and hire reporting are future features, not currently available. External applications follow the destination site's policies. Separately, if you use the AI job assistant, what you tell it about your own applications (Section 6) is kept on your account for your own matching and is not shared with employers.
Profile details reach an employer under the discovery permission in Section 4 only within the limits described there, and never your account email or uploaded resume. Earlier private-introduction permission is retained as a historical record, not used to arrange introductions. An enquiry draft prepared by the candidate chat is addressed to Ranked itself; you choose whether to send it in your email app. We otherwise share data with the service providers described above for the disclosed purposes, on your specific instruction, or where required by law.
We retain your account and profile data — including any resume text and the profile vector derived from it — for as long as your account is active. When you ask us to delete your account or your data by emailing admin@ranked.jp, we remove your account, profile, resume, and the data derived from it from our systems within 30 days. Our account database also keeps an automatic point-in-time recovery copy for 35 days, used only to recover from an incident; deleted data leaves it within 35 days of deletion, and if we ever restore from it we delete again anything you had asked us to delete. Chat conversation contents are not retained, as described in Section 6. AI job assistant records — the jobs it has shown you, your answers about them, and your consent evidence — are kept while your account is active and deleted with it; its change log is kept for 90 days. The per-visitor counting records behind the chat’s limits expire seven days after they are written. The monthly running total of what the assistant costs is kept as a business record and contains no personal data. Enquiries you asked the assistant to send are kept in our email as correspondence. Analytics data is retained according to Google Analytics settings.
Hosted application records and their resume snapshots have no automatic expiry currently. Contact admin@ranked.jp to request their deletion or correction, including if you applied without an account. We handle requests for copies under our control; removing them cannot recall employer emails or files already downloaded, which are subject to the recipient's obligations.
The application details and resume remembered by your browser remain on that device until they are replaced or you clear Ranked site data. They are separate from the application record sent to the employer.
Relay messages. A message sent to your messages.ranked.jp relay address is stored only as long as it takes to filter and deliver it: the message itself is deleted automatically 30 days after it arrives. We keep the surrounding thread record — the sender’s address and the delivery timestamps, but not the subject or any other content — for as long as you use the relay, so that we can operate and secure it, trace delivery failures, and investigate spam and abuse. Ask us at admin@ranked.jp and we will delete your relay history along with the rest of your data.
Requests about your personal information. Under Japan’s Act on the Protection of Personal Information you may ask us to tell you the purposes for which we use your personal information; to disclose the personal information we hold about you, including our records of providing it to third parties (such as an application sent to an employer); to correct, add to or delete it where it is inaccurate; to stop using or delete it where we use it beyond the stated purposes, obtained it improperly, no longer need it, or its use could harm your rights or legitimate interests; and to stop providing it to third parties.
How to ask. Email admin@ranked.jp from the email address registered to your account (or the address you applied with), saying what you are asking for. To protect your data we confirm your identity by replying to that address; if you write from a different address we may ask you to sign in or to confirm from the registered one. A legal representative or a person you authorise may ask on your behalf, with proof of their authority. We respond without undue delay, normally within two weeks, and provide disclosures electronically unless you ask for another method we can reasonably provide. There is no fee. If we cannot do all or part of what you ask, we will tell you why. Complaints about how we handle personal information go to the same address.
Depending on your location (including Japan and other regions), you may have rights regarding your data, such as the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict processing of your information, and to object to processing. You can edit or remove most profile information yourself while signed in — including downloading or deleting your uploaded resume from your Profile page — or contact us using the details below. You can also opt out of Google Analytics using the browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated date. A policy update or continued use does not enable optional permissions.
The business operator responsible for your personal information is Ranked合同会社 (Ranked G.K.), Shibuya Startup Support, Shibuya Bridge B-5, 1-29-3 Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0011, Japan. Representative: THURESON TOM MELKER, Representative Member (代表社員).
If you have any questions or complaints about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal information, contact us at admin@ranked.jp.