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Privacy Notice

Effective October 8, 2026

Wattlas has no advertising and no tracking cookies, and we do not sell or share personal data. We count how the site is used with PostHog, as described under "Usage statistics" below. There is no visitor account and nothing to sign up for. This notice explains the little we do handle, most of it the ordinary side effect of serving a website, and where the text you type into the assistant goes.

Requests to our servers

Like any website, our servers see your IP address and the usual request details (the page or tile requested, browser type, time). We use them to serve the site, to rate-limit the assistant and imagery proxy, and to detect abuse. Our hosting provider, Render, keeps server logs for a short period. Our own application log records assistant calls with a keyed hash of your address that changes every day, not the address itself, together with the model used and token counts. When the assistant uses a tool on our servers, the log also records the tool's name, the service it called and whether the call succeeded, never the address, position or question. The counters behind the assistant's rate limits and daily budgets are keyed by that same daily pseudonym rather than by your address, and they are kept for at most a day. What you type into the ask box is kept separately, as described under "What you type" below.

The assistant

Text you type into the ask box is sent to our API and forwarded to OpenRouter, which routes it to the AI model provider currently in use (models from OpenAI or Google). Each question travels with the map's current state (which layers and filters are active, the view position and zoom, what is highlighted), which contains no personal data; if you have shared your location, the assistant can also read the rounded position described below. It is processed to produce an answer. If you type a street address, a postal code or the name of a place, the assistant may send that text, from our servers, to Geocodio, a geocoding service, to turn it into a map position. If you ask about weather or alerts at a place, it may send that place's position, rounded to about one kilometer, from our servers to the US National Weather Service or to Environment and Climate Change Canada. Because these requests come from our servers, those services see our server's address, not yours, and their own privacy policies apply to their processing. While a question is being answered, the assistant's intermediate results (a looked-up position or matched address among them) are held on our servers for up to thirty minutes and then expire. Your questions and the answers are kept as described under "What you type" below. OpenRouter's and the provider's privacy policies apply to their processing. Please do not include personal, confidential or sensitive information in your questions.

What you type

To learn what people look for and where to take the product, we keep a record of each thing typed into the ask box: the text itself; what became of it (a suggestion picked, a command run, a question answered, or the error shown when the assistant failed); the map's state at the time (which layers and filters were active, the view position and zoom, what was highlighted), which holds no personal data; the map tools the assistant called, with the text of any address lookup and the position it found removed, and its answer, which may itself repeat the address the lookup matched; the time; and a pseudonymous identifier derived from your address that changes every day, so one sitting's entries can be told apart from another's without keeping the address itself. No account, name, address or location is stored with it. If you have shared your location, the tools and the answer are left out of the record, which then only notes that a location was shared. We keep these records for as long as they are useful for improving the assistant, with no fixed period; they are used for nothing else and never shared. Please do not type personal information into the ask box.

Links you copy

When you press a Copy link button, we record the press, so we can see which views people share: the page address that was copied (the map view, the mode, the layers and the filters), whether it was the header button or a feature's panel and, for a panel, that feature's name, the time, and the same daily pseudonym as above. If you have shared your location, the view is left out of the record and only the mode, layers and filters are kept. No account, name, address or location is stored with it. We keep these records for as long as they are useful for understanding what people share, with no fixed period; they are used for nothing else and never shared.

Bug reports

If you use the Report a bug button, we store the text you type, the page address that was open (the map view, the mode, the layers and the filters), the time, and the same daily pseudonym as above. If you have shared your location, the map position is left out of that address. The text is kept as you typed it, except that invisible control characters are removed and repeated spaces and blank lines are shortened, and it is not shared with a third party or used for anything else, so do not type personal information into it: it is kept for as long as it is useful for fixing the map, with no fixed period, and never shared.

Error reports

When something breaks, the page and our servers send a technical report to Sentry, our error-monitoring provider: the error, the browser type, the page address without the map position, and the time. A report never includes what you typed into the ask box or your location, and reports from the page travel through our own servers, so Sentry does not see your address. Sentry keeps them for a limited period under its own privacy policy.

Usage statistics

To learn how the map is used, the page sends usage reports to PostHog, our analytics provider, whose servers are in the United States. A report is sent when the map is opened and when it is left, and when you open the Stories card, start a story, move between its stops or leave it, naming the story and the stop; switch a layer on or off in the Layers panel, naming the layer; open a feature from the map, naming its kind (a power plant, a line), not the feature; pick a search suggestion, naming its kind, not its name; send something from the ask box, saying whether it was a command or a question and whether it failed, never the text; and switch between Night and Day. Each report also carries the page address with the map view, layers, filters and everything after them removed; the address of the page you came from, if your browser shares it, shortened the same way; your browser, operating system, device type, screen and window size, language and time zone; the page title; and the time. A report never includes what you type, the map position or your location. Nothing is stored in your browser for this: each visit gets a random identifier that lives only in the page memory and is gone when you close or reload the page, so visits are not linked to each other or to you. Because your browser sends these reports to PostHog directly, PostHog sees your IP address and may use it to estimate your country, region and city; our PostHog project is set not to keep the address itself. PostHog keeps the reports for up to one year under its own privacy policy; we use them for nothing else and never share them.

Bot check

Before the assistant issues a session, and when you send a bug report, Cloudflare Turnstile runs a bot check. It may examine browser and device signals and set a cookie for that purpose, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. Nothing else on the site uses Turnstile.

Your location

The site asks for your location only when you press the Locate button or type "where am I", and only through your browser's own permission prompt. Your position stays in the page's memory: it is never stored, never sent to our servers on its own, and neither it nor the marker showing it is written to the page address. The map view, though, does go into the address: after Locate the map flies to you, so the view then centres on your position, and a link you copy or share carries that view. After you have shared your location, a position rounded to about one kilometre is included with your assistant questions so that "near me" works, and it is forgotten when you close or reload the page.

Files you open

When you open a file on the map, your browser reads it and draws it on your device. The file, its name and its contents are never sent to our servers, the assistant, our error reports or our usage statistics, and are never written to the page address or a link you copy. The file stays in the page's memory and is gone when you remove it, close the page or reload it, unless you turn on "Keep on this device" for it: then your browser stores the file, its name and its color in its own storage (IndexedDB) on this device, and opens it again when you come back, until you turn that off, remove the file, clear the site's data, or Wattlas can't open it again, which it tells you when it happens. Some browsers delete it sooner, Safari after seven days without a visit. It is still never sent to us. The map's view is in the page address, and links you copy and bug reports you send record it, so after the map moves to your file they show that area, though never the file itself.

Stored in your browser

Other services your browser talks to

Map data, imagery and the basemap are fetched directly by your browser, so those services see your IP address and the tile requested: our own storage on Cloudflare R2, OpenFreeMap (basemap), NASA GIBS (satellite imagery), Mapterhorn (terrain) and GitHub (a fallback boundaries file). Cloudflare also fronts our hosting for security and caching. Usage reports go to PostHog, as described under "Usage statistics".

Children

The site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct or delete personal data. The records we keep carry a daily pseudonym rather than an identity, so there is little we could tie to you, but write to us and we will help.

Changes and contact

We may update this notice; the effective date above changes when we do. Questions: hello@simplethread.com.