Privacy & cookie policy

The short version

Our tutorials, articles and code pages show adverts from Google AdSense. With your analytics consent, those pages also use Microsoft Clarity to help us make the site easier to use. Visitors in the UK, EEA and Switzerland are asked for consent through Google's certified consent message, and Google only uses cookies for personalised ads if you agree. Clarity stays off until Google reports that you have accepted analytics. Messages sent through the contact form are used only to reply to you. The contact page loads Cloudflare's Turnstile spam check, which is strictly necessary to protect the form and is not affected by your ad choices.

Who is responsible

TechnicalGIS, run by Sean Blaney, is the data controller for the information we handle to run this site. For a privacy question or request, please use our contact form. Google and Microsoft also process information as controllers under their own privacy policies, linked below.

Why we process information

We ask for consent for optional analytics and personalised advertising. You can say no or withdraw consent without losing access to the site's content. We rely on legitimate interests to answer enquiries, provide the tools you request and keep the site secure, weighing those needs against your privacy.

What is stored on your device

Neither preference leaves your browser, except that the climate tools send their random identifier with each request, and our server stores only a one-way hash of it. If you never press the theme toggle, nothing is stored and the site simply follows your operating system's light/dark setting.

The contact form

When you send a message through the contact form, the name, email address, optional telephone number, reason, optional budget and timeline, subject and message you enter are emailed to the TechnicalGIS team so that we can reply. We use these details only to respond to your enquiry and do not add you to any mailing list or share them with anyone else. Emails are kept for as long as needed to deal with your enquiry and any follow-up, after which they are deleted.

To protect the form from spam, our server keeps a short-lived record of a one-way hash of your IP address and the time of each submission (deleted after 24 hours) to limit how many messages can be sent from one network. When a submission is blocked as likely spam, we log the time, the hashed IP address, which checks it failed and the length of the message, but not your name, email address or message text; these logs are deleted after about two months. No cookies are used. You can ask us to see or delete a message you sent by contacting us through the same form.

The contact page also loads Cloudflare Turnstile from challenges.cloudflare.com to check that messages are sent by a person rather than a bot. While the contact page is open, Turnstile processes technical signals such as your IP address, browser user-agent and TLS fingerprint; it usually runs invisibly and only shows a "Verify you are human" checkbox when it is unsure. Cloudflare processes these signals on our behalf to protect the form, and also uses them to improve its bot detection. They are not used for advertising or to profile you. We treat this check as strictly necessary security for the form, so it doesn't need your consent, and it is loaded only on the contact page and the climate tools page. See Cloudflare's Turnstile privacy addendum.

The climate time-series tools

When you submit a request with the climate time-series tools, our server stores the request itself (dataset, place or area, dates and options), a one-way hash of your IP address and a one-way hash of a random identifier that the tool page keeps in your browser's local storage. Both hashes use a key that changes every day, so they cannot be reversed or linked from one day to the next. They are used only to apply the limit of one job at a time and the daily request allowance, and they are removed from job records after seven days. Results are deleted after seven days. The page also remembers your most recent job in local storage, so that you can return to it; this is cleared when you start a new request. No cookies are used. The tool page loads Cloudflare Turnstile to keep the service free of automated requests, on the same basis as the contact form described above. The same applies to the community tools and Farm check.

Farm check only asks for your location when you press "Use my location". Your phone rounds it to the centre of a 5 km square before sending it, and only that square is stored with the answer, which is deleted after seven days. If you open the map, its imagery is loaded from Esri's servers, which see your IP address as for any web request.

Advertising

Our tutorials, articles and code pages show adverts from Google AdSense. Other pages, such as the home page, the data catalogues and atlases, the news desk, the tools, and the contact and consulting pages, don't load any Google ad code. When the ad script loads, Google receives standard request information such as your IP address, browser user agent and the page you are reading. Google may use cookies or similar technologies to serve, personalise and measure ads.

If you are in the UK, EEA or Switzerland, Google's certified consent message (IAB TCF) asks for your choices first; if you don't consent, Google shows only non-personalised or limited ads. You can review or change your choices at any time with Privacy settings in the footer. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services and manage ad personalisation at My Ad Center.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your previous visits to this and other websites, subject to your consent choices. You can also find advertising opt-out controls at aboutads.info and youronlinechoices.eu.

Microsoft Clarity

With your permission, Microsoft Clarity helps us understand how people use our tutorials, articles and code pages. It provides heatmaps of clicks and scrolling and session recordings, with form contents masked. We use aggregated heatmaps and masked recordings to improve navigation and make the pages easier to read. Microsoft processes technical information such as your IP address, browser details and the page you are reading. See Microsoft's privacy statement.

Clarity's script does not load, and it records nothing, until Google's existing consent message explicitly signals that you have accepted analytics and its European regulations message holds a recorded consent choice. A default or region-based grant does not count. Where that explicit choice cannot be verified, Clarity stays off, including outside the regions covered by that message. We also honour Global Privacy Control and Google US-state privacy opt-outs. Advertising and analytics are separate choices; accepting ads alone does not enable Clarity. The home page, News Desk, archive, Press, tools, atlases and contact page do not load Clarity or Google's consent prompt.

TechnicalGIS decides whether to use Clarity on these pages. Microsoft provides the service and processes the collected data under its own privacy statement; Microsoft's Clarity documentation describes Microsoft as a data controller. Data is stored in Microsoft Azure and may be processed outside the UK or EEA, including in the United States. Microsoft describes its international-transfer safeguards, including standard contractual clauses, in its privacy statement and Clarity privacy FAQ.

Session recordings are available for 30 days. Labelled or favourited recordings and heatmap data can be retained for up to nine months under Clarity's retention policy. Withdrawing consent stops new collection; it does not erase previously collected data. For a privacy or deletion request, use our contact route; Microsoft's policy explains your rights and how to contact Microsoft.

Use Privacy settings in the footer to reopen the same Google consent choice. On pages without ads, the link takes you to the tutorials page to make your choice. Opening settings stops Clarity on that page immediately, and withdrawing analytics consent keeps it off. If you accept analytics again, it can resume on your next page. There is no separate analytics banner.

Other third-party content

The site's pages, fonts, images and search index are all served from our own server. Some pages load content from other services:

• Interactive maps in tutorials load the Leaflet mapping library and plugins from public content delivery networks (jsDelivr, cdnjs, code.jquery.com and bootstrapcdn) and map tiles from OpenStreetMap and/or Esri. They load lazily, only when you scroll to them.
• The data sources globe is drawn by code and country outlines served from our own server; it does not load any external map tiles.

These providers receive standard request information, such as your IP address and browser user agent, as with any web request. Their own privacy policies apply.

Server logs

Like nearly every web server, our hosting keeps standard access logs (IP address, requested URL, time and user agent) for security and troubleshooting, on the basis of legitimate interests. We do not use these logs to profile visitors. Hosting logs rotate when they reach 10 MiB, keeping up to ten archives for each log. Their age depends on traffic, rather than a fixed number of days.

International transfers

Google and Microsoft may store or process information outside the UK and EEA, including in the United States. Their policies describe the applicable transfer safeguards, including adequacy arrangements and standard contractual clauses where required. See Google's data-transfer frameworks and Microsoft's privacy statement.

Your privacy rights

You can ask for access to your personal information, correction, erasure, restriction or, where applicable, a portable copy. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests and withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing that was lawful before you withdrew it. Use Privacy settings for advertising and analytics choices, or our contact form for other requests. We normally respond within one month. For data held by Google or Microsoft as controllers, their linked policies explain how to exercise your rights with them.

You also have the right to complain to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), or your local data-protection authority.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Please get in touch via the contact page.