Privacy policy

What this site stores, what leaves your browser and who else is involved. There are no accounts and nothing here is used to build a profile of you.

  • No account
  • Nothing to install
  • Effective 1 September 2026

Who runs this site

SunPosition.org is published by the owner of the sunposition.org domain, referred to below as the Administrator. The Administrator decides what this site does with the little data it handles and is, in the language of the GDPR, the controller for it.

Write about anything on this page, including any request about your data, to contact@sunposition.org. That is the only contact channel and it reaches a person, not a ticket queue.

The short version

  • No account, no sign-up, no newsletter, no contact form.
  • The astronomy runs in your browser. Your coordinates are not sent to this server.
  • This server keeps no log of who visits: it counts requests per page and nothing else.
  • Map tiles come from OpenStreetMap and place search from Nominatim, so those two see your request.
  • Advertising is served by Google AdSense, and only after you agree to it.
  • No analytics, no tracking pixels, no social network buttons.

What stays on your device

The site keeps a few things in your browser's local storage so it can pick up where you left off. They never leave your device and this server cannot read them.

Local storage entries
NameWhat it holdsHow long
sp.stateThe pin, the date and time you were looking at, the open tab and the calculator inputsUntil you clear your browser data
sp.prefsText size, letter and line spacing, contrast and colour schemeUntil you clear your browser data
sp.consentYour answer to the cookie question, so it is not asked again12 months, or until you change it

Clearing the site data in your browser removes all three. The site then behaves as it does for a first-time visitor and asks the cookie question again.

What leaves your browser

Map tiles — OpenStreetMap

The map is drawn from tiles served by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Loading a tile is an ordinary request to tile.openstreetmap.org, so their servers see your IP address, your browser identification and which part of the world you are looking at. Their terms are the tile usage policy and the OSMF privacy policy. Map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors, used under the ODbL.

Place search — Nominatim

When you type in the search box, or when the map looks up the name of the place you clicked, that text or those coordinates go to the OpenStreetMap Nominatim service. If you would rather not use it, do not search: enter coordinates directly, or use the calculator pages, which take latitude and longitude fields.

Advertising — Google AdSense

This site is funded by advertising served by Google. Ads and the cookies or device identifiers they use are loaded only after you agree in the cookie window; if you decline, the Google script is never fetched and no ad cookie is set. Google acts as an independent controller for what it collects, under its own terms for partner sites. You can review or change what Google does with your data in your Google Ad Center.

Fonts, styles and scripts

Everything else the page needs comes from this domain. The typeface, the icon font, the stylesheet and the map library are served from /assets, so no font service, CDN or analytics host ever sees your visit.

Browser geolocation

The "use my location" buttons ask your browser for a position. Your browser always prompts before answering, the position is used in the page, and it is sent nowhere — unless you then let the map look up the name of that place, which is the Nominatim request above.

What this server records

One counter per address, so the Administrator can see which pages people find useful: the path and how many times it was requested. No IP address, no browser identification, no time of visit and nothing that could be tied back to a person. The counters are a plain text file on the server and are never shared.

The hosting provider may keep its own technical logs, as any web host does, for the security and reliability of the machine.

Cookies

The site itself sets no cookies for its own pages. What it uses is local storage, listed above, which is there because you asked for a setting to be remembered. Advertising cookies are a separate matter and are set by Google only after you agree.

You can change that answer at any time from the link, which also sits in the footer of every page. Declining is one click and has no effect on anything the site does — every calculator and the map work the same either way.

The administration panel of the server uses one session cookie, but only for the Administrator after signing in. It is never sent to a visitor.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you may ask for access to your personal data, its correction or erasure, a restriction of processing, a copy in a portable form, and you may object to processing based on legitimate interest. You may also withdraw consent at any time, which for this site means declining in the cookie window.

In practice the Administrator holds no personal data about you: there is no account, no e-mail list and the visit counters are not personal data. If you write to contact@sunposition.org, that message and your address are of course kept for as long as it takes to answer you. For what Google collects for advertising, address Google directly — the Administrator has no access to it and cannot delete it for you.

If you believe your data is handled unlawfully, you may complain to the data protection authority in the country where you live.

Children

The site is a general-purpose tool and is not directed at children. It asks for no personal data from anyone, so it collects none from children either.

Changes to this policy

If what the site does with data changes, this page changes with it and the date below moves. A change that needs your agreement — a new kind of cookie, for instance — will ask for it again rather than assume the old answer.

In force since 1 September 2026.