Legal
Last updated: July 2026
This page explains what information observingthecity.ca collects when you visit, and what happens to it. The short version: there are no accounts, I never ask for your name or email, and the little that is collected exists to keep the site running and improve it.
Like most sites, this one automatically picks up some basic usage data when you visit: which pages you view, roughly where you’re visiting from, what browser and device you’re on, and what page sent you here. That happens through the analytics and advertising services described below, which also set cookies of their own.
The one place you actively give the site something is the “Where is Downtown?” tool, where the map area you draw is stored so it can be folded into the anonymous heatmap. Your drawing is saved against a one-way, salted hash of a randomly generated browser identifier, which is what lets you come back and update your own submission, plus a separate salted hash of your IP address that exists purely to limit spam. Your raw IP address is never stored, and nothing about a submission is tied to who you are.
The site uses Google AdSense to show ads. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. That’s what makes ads “personalized.” If you’d rather not have that, you can turn off personalized advertising in Google Ads Settings, and opt out of many other vendors’ advertising cookies at aboutads.info/choices or youronlinechoices.com. For the full picture of how Google uses data from sites like this one, see Google’s Privacy & Terms.
I use Vercel Analytics, a privacy-friendly tool, to see aggregate traffic: which pages get visited, roughly where visitors come from. I only ever look at it in aggregate, to figure out which tools are worth improving.
I don’t sell your personal information. The data described above passes through the third-party services that make the site work, principally Google for advertising and Vercel for hosting and analytics, each governed by its own privacy policy. Anonymous, aggregated data, like the downtown heatmap itself, is shown publicly on the site; that’s the whole point of it.
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and use the opt-out links above for personalized ads. Some parts of the site may behave differently with cookies blocked. For example, the downtown tool won’t remember that you’ve already submitted.
If this policy changes in any meaningful way, the “Last updated” date at the top will say so.
Questions about any of this? Email observingthecity@gmail.com.