Privacy Policy

Information we collect

CycleCalcs has no accounts. Nothing on this site asks you to register, and the calculators run entirely in your browser, so the words, names and numbers you type are processed on your device and are not transmitted to or stored on our servers.

One page sells something: the printable moon calendar. Buying it involves a payment processor, and there is an optional newsletter you can give an address to. Those are the only places any personal detail of yours is handled at all, and both are set out under Purchases and The newsletter below. Everything else on this site works exactly as it always has, without asking you for anything.

Location and place search

Several tools on this site can use your location to show what is in the sky from where you are. This includes the Planet Parade Tracker, the Sky & Tonight tools such as Today in the Sky, the Moon Phase Calendar, the Eclipse & Saros Explorer and the Sunrise & Sunset page, and the individual object pages for the Moon, the Sun and the planets, which show each one's position for tonight from your location. The astronomy itself is always worked out on your own device, and so is everything to do with your location:

• Use my location. If you click this and allow it in your browser, your coordinates are used on your device to work out what is visible. To label that spot with a city name, your browser searches a list of places that is served with the page like any other file. Your coordinates are not sent anywhere.
• Place search. If you type a city or place into a search box, your browser matches what you type against that same list of places. The text you type is not sent anywhere.

Neither feature contacts a third party, so no outside service learns your location, sees what you type, or is given your device's IP address by us. The place list comes from GeoNames and is downloaded once, in full, the same way for every visitor, so what your browser requests reveals nothing about where you are. A location you choose is remembered only in your own browser, on your device, so a tool can restore it on your next visit; it is never sent to or kept on our servers, and clearing your browser data removes it.

The developer API

The tools described above run entirely in your browser and never contact our servers. We also run a separate, optional developer API at cyclecalcs.com/v1 and cyclecalcs.com/v2, for people building their own applications. If you are only using the calculators on this website, nothing here applies to you: nothing on this site calls that API on your behalf.

The API needs no account, no sign-in and no key, and it sets no cookies. A response is JSON, CSV or plain text, not a web page, so there is nothing for a browser to store. If you call the API from your own application, any cookies that application sets are its own, not something the CycleCalcs API adds.

The API's rate limiter has to recognize repeat callers to enforce its published limits, but it does not do that by keeping your IP address. It hashes the address together with a random salt that is generated fresh each time the service is deployed and held only in memory, never written to disk. The raw address itself is never stored and never logged; only the salted hash is used, only to count requests against the limits, and it changes on every deploy.

We do not log the parameters of an API request, such as the coordinates, dates or other values you send, together with your IP address, its hash, or any other identifier. Our host, Netlify, may keep its own standard infrastructure-level access logs under its own terms; that is Netlify's platform logging, not something our code adds or can see.

Full detail for developers, including the output license, third-party attribution and acceptable use, is in the API Terms of Use.

Purchases

If you buy the 2027 moon calendar, the payment is taken by Stripe on a page Stripe hosts. Your card number, your billing details and your email address are entered there, on Stripe's page, and are held by Stripe. They never pass through this website and we never see them. We cannot see your card number at any point, including afterwards.

Stripe is the merchant of record for that sale. That means Stripe, not CycleCalcs, is the seller on the transaction: it calculates and remits any sales tax, VAT or GST that applies where you are, it sends your receipt, and it handles refunds and disputes. Stripe processes your information under its own privacy policy.

What this site keeps: nothing. There is no customer database here and no account to create. When a payment completes, this site asks Stripe whether that specific checkout was paid, and if it was, it generates a signed license for what you bought. That license records only the product, the dates it is valid between, and the one detail the product needs: for a calendar, the location you chose; for a widget license, the domain name you bought it for. It contains no name, no email address and no payment detail. It is handed to your browser and is not stored on our servers.

Your license travels in the address of your purchase page, after the # symbol. Browsers never send that part of an address to any server, so it stays between you and your own device. Bookmarking that page is how you return to your purchase; treat the bookmark like a receipt, since anyone who has it can download your calendar or read your widget key.

A widget license is different from a calendar in one way worth stating: the key is meant to be pasted into the HTML of your own public pages, so anyone who reads your page source can see it. That is expected. The key carries the domain and the dates and nothing about you.

Generating your calendar sends the coordinates and time zone you chose to this site, because that is the computation you are buying. Those values are used to make the file and are not stored afterwards or connected to you.

If you email us about an order, we hold that email as we would any other correspondence, and Stripe holds the payment record under its policy. If you would like your Stripe record removed, ask us and we will pass it on to Stripe, or you can contact Stripe directly.

The newsletter

There is a signup box in the footer of every page. It is entirely optional and nothing on this site requires it. If you enter your address there, it is sent to Resend, the service that stores our subscriber list and sends the mail, and it is held there rather than on this site: as with purchases, there is no database here to keep it in.

We use it to send occasional notes about the sky and about this site, and for nothing else. We do not sell, rent or share the list, and we do not use it to advertise anyone else. Every newsletter carries a one-click unsubscribe link, which removes you immediately and without asking why; you can also write to info@cyclecalcs.com and we will remove you.

Resend processes the address under its own privacy policy. If you have bought a calendar, that is a separate matter: the receipt and delivery emails for a purchase are sent because you bought something, not because you subscribed, and unsubscribing from the newsletter does not stop them.

Cookies and advertising

We intend to support this free site with advertising. When advertising is enabled, third-party vendors, including Google and Microsoft, may use cookies or similar technologies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.

• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the Internet.
• You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings.
• You can opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalized advertising at aboutads.info/choices.
• For more on how Google uses data from sites that use its services, see Google's Privacy & Terms.
• Microsoft, including its pubCenter advertising platform, and its partners may similarly use cookies and your device information to serve and measure ads. You can manage Microsoft's advertising choices in your Microsoft ad settings, and read more in the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

Advertising and analytics vendors may collect information such as your IP address, device and browser type, and interactions with ads, in accordance with their own privacy policies. We do not control these third-party cookies.

Affiliate links

Some pages include links to products on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, CycleCalcs earns from qualifying purchases. If you buy through one of these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. These are ordinary text links; we do not collect any extra information about you when you use them, and any data Amazon collects after you arrive on its site is governed by Amazon's own privacy policy. Our picks are chosen on merit, not on commission. See our gear page for the full disclosure.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 in a cookieless mode to see which pages are visited and how the site is used. It is configured not to store cookies on your device (its client_storage setting is none), so it does not keep a persistent identifier or track you across sessions or other sites. Google may process technical data such as your IP address (used briefly for approximate location, then discarded) and your browser and device type, in line with Google's privacy policy. We use this only in aggregate to improve the site, and we do not sell personal information.

Children's privacy

This site is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Your choices

You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings and use the opt-out links above. Disabling cookies will not affect the calculators, which work without them.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes take effect when posted on this page, and the "last updated" date above will be revised.

Contact

This website is operated by CycleCalcs LLC, a limited liability company formed in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States of America, which is the data controller for the limited processing described above. Questions about this policy? Email info@cyclecalcs.com.

This policy describes what this site actually does, and is kept in step with it. It is not legal advice.