Privacy

In short: you need no account, nothing is asked of you, and Guide never asks where you are. The walk is played in your browser.

What stays in your browser

The page keeps a few things in your browser’s own storage, so the walk is as you left it: your saved walks, the line of each walk (where the map puts the places you came to, for draw my walk), the colours you chose, your Settings, which hints you have been given and whether hints are on, and your answer about counting visits. They are never sent to us, and clearing your browser’s data for this site removes them.

What you type

Commands are read in the page. A postcode, a place or a latitude and longitude you type to begin a walk is looked up in the page itself, from the map it carries, and sent to no one.

Live sources

Some of what Guide says is asked as you read, from your browser, for the map’s own places and never for yours. Like any website, each of these sees your IP address and your browser when it is asked:

• Open-Meteo: today’s weather, asked for the map’s own place, never yours.
• Transport for London: what is due next at the bus and tram stops on the map.
• TfL road disruptions: works and closures on the roads near the map’s place, as you arrive.
• OpenFreeMap: the map shown with gps on a wide screen, drawn with MapLibre GL JS, around where the map puts the stop, never where you are.
• TfL JamCams: what the traffic camera nearest the map’s place last saw.
• CelesTrak: the orbits of the bright satellites, from which those overhead are worked out.
• Open-Meteo Air Quality: the air today, modelled for the map’s own place, never yours.

The aircraft overhead and the day’s news are asked through this site’s own functions, so the services that keep them (adsb.lol and the GDELT Project) see the site, not you. The map beside gps loads its code from jsDelivr. Each source can be turned off in Settings, and then nothing is asked of it.

Counting visits

If you agree, the site counts your visit with Google Analytics, and only after you say yes: a strip asks once, and Settings can change your answer at any time. It is told which page you opened, on the walk the kind of each command (a step, a look, a route), never what you type, and when you pass a distance mark. Google sets its own cookies to tell one visit from another, and keeps what it is sent under its own policy. Without your yes, nothing of Google’s is loaded at all.

The mailing list

You may sign up to hear what’s new. You give your email address to the mailing list, not to this site, and Substack, which keeps the list, holds it under its own policy. It is used only to tell you what’s new, and every message lets you leave the list.

On the front page, the sign-up form opens in place when you press “Sign up”: nothing is sent to Substack until you press it. Once it opens, Substack’s own page is loaded inside ours, and Substack may set its own cookies, as on its own site.

Feedback

If you type feedback on the walk, the page asks what kind it is, whether you would walk again, for your own words, and, if you would like a reply, for an email address. Everything that would be sent is shown to you before it is sent, and nothing is sent unless you say yes: your answers and words, the place you had reached and how many moves you had made, the date of the map, an email address, if you give one so that we may reply, and the kind of device (a phone, a tablet or a desktop) and the family of your browser, never your full browser string and never where you are. This site’s own function files it as an issue in a private GitHub repository, read only by those who make the walk, and GitHub keeps it under its own policy. Your words, and any address you give, are kept there until the issue is dealt with; the address is used only to reply to you, and the words may be quoted in fixing what they tell of; your IP address is used only to count how often feedback is sent, and is never stored or passed on. Your words are never counted with your visit.

The site’s host

The site is served by Netlify, which, like any host, sees each request’s IP address and keeps records of requests for a short time to run and protect the service, under its own policy.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you may ask what is held about you, and ask for it to be corrected or erased. The site itself holds only the feedback you choose to send; what the services above hold, you may ask of them. Write to privacy@hyperdimensional.net.