Privacy

The short version: an optional Google sign-in that keeps your saved list, anonymous traffic counts, and the details you send us when you add a photo or report an error.

Traffic statistics

Onsen Hopper uses Google Analytics, Datafast and Ahrefs Web Analytics to count visits and see which pages people read. The numbers are aggregated and anonymous. They tell us that a page was viewed, not who viewed it. We do not sell or share this data.

Saved onsen

When you tap the heart on an onsen, it is stored in your own browser (localStorage). If you are signed in, the list is also kept with your account so it reaches your other devices, and the browser keeps a short-lived copy of the onsen you marked as visited. Signed out, nothing is sent to us, and clearing your browser data clears the list.

Photos and reports you send us

If you add photos, we store your name, your role (owner, staff or visitor), your email, the caption and credit you typed, the photos themselves, the text of the licence you agreed to and when you agreed, a hashed form of your IP address and your browser's identifier string. We strip location, camera and other hidden metadata from every photo before it is stored. We use this to check the photos, to show your credit, to prove we have permission to show them, and to stop abuse.

If you report an error, we store what you wrote, the hashed IP address, the browser string and the email address if you gave one. We use the email only to reply about that report.

Approved photos stay on the site until you ask us to take them down; we keep the licence record for as long as we have ever shown the photo. Photos we turn down are deleted when we turn them down; the record of the request is deleted twelve months after that. Error reports are deleted twelve months after they are closed. Nothing you send us is sold, shared or used for marketing. To remove or change anything, email [email protected].

Accounts and cookies

You can sign in with Google to keep your saved onsen on all your devices. If you do, we store your Google account id, your email address, the name on your Google account (you can change it), a profile photo if you upload one, when you joined, when you last signed in, the onsen you save, and the onsen you mark as visited and the date you give. Nothing is public unless you turn on a public page in Settings. A public page is off by default. If you turn it on, your name, photo, numbers, map and stamped onsen (month only) are visible to anyone with the link; your email and saved list never are. Delete your account any time from Settings; it is removed at once, and a profile photo leaves caches within an hour.

Cookies: a sign-in cookie, a flag cookie that tells the page you are signed in, and a short-lived cookie during sign-in. The site's admin also has a sign-in cookie. Nothing else is set for visitors; the analytics scripts above may set theirs. There are no newsletters. Your colour theme preference is kept in your browser.

Third parties

Fonts load from Google Fonts and map tiles from OpenFreeMap. Each sees the request your browser makes, as with any website. Photos are served from this site; a few may still load from Wikimedia Commons. Most photos come from Wikimedia Commons or from the onsen itself, and every photo, cover photos included, is listed with its author, licence and source on the photo credits page.

Questions

Email [email protected].