Privacy Policy

Version 2.0, in effect from October 14, 2026.

The privacy of your data is a big deal to us. This policy sets out what data we collect and why, how it is handled, and your rights with respect to it. We never sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising.

Art Ecology is a noncommercial project. When we say “we” or “us”, we mean the people who run it, who are listed under Contact us at the foot of the landing page. This policy covers the website at artecology.org.

What we collect and why

Our guiding principle is to collect only what a feature needs. In practice, that means the following.

Your account

Your email address, which we use to verify the account, to sign you in and to send account messages such as a password reset. It never appears anywhere public. Your password is stored only as a one-way hash by our sign-in provider, and nobody can read it. If you sign in with Google, the only thing we take from Google is your verified email address. We also record which version of these documents you accepted, and when.

Your profile

A display name and a username, which are published with your contributions. Optionally, a few lines about yourself and a picture. You choose whether you have a public profile page, and whether those two appear on it. You can change any of this on your profile.

Your contributions

The clues you add, with their reasoning and the places they point to; your comments and agreements; the photographs you send, with the location you pin and any notes; and the paintings you propose, with their image and source. These are the record, and they are public once added or approved. Before a photograph leaves your browser, the application re-encodes it, which removes the metadata your camera embedded, including any GPS location. The only location we keep is the one you pin.

Signing in and sessions

A cookie keeps you signed in. It is limited to that purpose, and the page itself cannot read it. For each signed-in session we hold the kind of device, its network (IP) address and when it was last active, so you can see where you are signed in and sign out of any session from Settings. We do not work out a location from your network address. Accounts that hold an administrative role also hold the authenticator they use for the second sign-in step.

Keeping the Service working

Short-lived counters of how often an account has contributed, which enforce the Service’s limits and are deleted once the longest limit has passed. A record of every moderation decision and the administrator who made it, which is kept indefinitely. When something breaks, an error report goes to our error monitoring provider. It is configured not to collect personal data, and email addresses, network addresses and tokens are removed from each report before it is sent.

Your browser

The map remembers which layer you chose in your browser’s own storage. That choice stays on your device and is never sent to us.

Correspondence

When you email us, we keep the correspondence, including your email address, so we have it for reference if you write again.

What we do not collect

We use no analytics, no advertising and no tracking cookies. Our typefaces are served from our own site, not from a font service.

When we access or disclose your information

To run the Service. We use the following providers, each of which handles personal data only to provide its part of the Service:

Supabase, which holds the database, signs you in and stores images, in the United States.
Vercel, which hosts the website in the United States and keeps routine request logs.
Resend, which sends account email.
MapTiler, which serves the map. Your browser requests map images from MapTiler directly, so it receives your network address and the part of the map you are viewing.
LocationIQ, which answers place searches. It receives the text of a search, sent from our server rather than from your browser.
Sentry, which receives the error reports described above.
Google, only if you choose to sign in with Google.

Because it is public by design. Your contributions, display name and username are published on the Service. Approved photographs, their locations and their credit are part of the paired dataset, which we publish and share with researchers.

To moderate and support. The people who run Art Ecology can see account details, including email addresses, when reviewing contributions, managing accounts, investigating a breach of the Terms, or answering a request from you.

When required by law. We disclose data only when compelled by valid legal process under United States law, or in an emergency involving a risk of serious harm. Where we are allowed to, we will tell you before we disclose your data.

Aggregated and de-identified data. We may aggregate or de-identify information and use it for research and to improve the Service.

If the project passes to someone else, we will tell you before any of your personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Your rights with respect to your information

We apply the same rights to everyone, wherever they live. They include:

Right to know and of access. This policy lists what we collect and how it is used. You can see everything we hold about you on the What we hold about you page in Settings.
Right to correction. You can change your profile and your email address yourself, or ask us to correct anything else.
Right to erasure. You can delete your account from Settings, with the effects described below.
Right to portability. You can download your data as a file from the same page and take it elsewhere.
Rights to object and to restrict processing. You can ask us to stop or limit how we use your information in particular ways.
Right to complain. You can complain to the data protection authority where you live.
Right to non-discrimination. Exercising these rights will not change how we treat you, though some requests, such as erasure, will end your use of the Service.

For any request you cannot complete in Settings, email us at jawvt04@gmail.com. We may need to confirm that the request comes from the account holder before we act on it.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted in transit between your browser and the Service, and our providers encrypt it at rest. Rules in the database itself decide who may read and change each record, so a mistake in the website cannot open data that the rules keep closed. The administrative tools require a second sign-in step.

What happens when you delete your account

Deleting your account removes your email address, your display name and username, what you wrote about yourself, your picture, your sessions and your sign-in details. Your contributions stay on the record, credited to a deleted contributor, so the record keeps its shape without keeping you in it. Text you wrote in a contribution, such as a clue’s reasoning or a comment, stays with it, so please do not put contact details in that text. The record of an administrator’s past decisions keeps the identifier it was written with, which after deletion leads to no one. Copies in our database backups are removed as those backups expire.

Data retention

We keep your account information for as long as your account exists. Contributions are kept as part of the record. A photograph or proposed painting that a reviewer declines is kept as a decision, but its image is deleted. Limit counters are deleted once the longest limit has passed, and the record of moderation decisions is kept indefinitely. We may also keep information where the law requires it.

Location of the Service and data

The Service is operated in the United States, and your data is stored there. If you are outside the United States, the information you give us will be transferred to and stored in the United States. By using the Service, you consent to that transfer.

Children

The Service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email us at jawvt04@gmail.com and we will delete it.

Changes and questions

We may update this policy to reflect new practices or legal requirements. When we make a significant change, we publish it on this page as a new version with a new effective date, and we take reasonable steps to let account holders know.

If you have a question or concern about this policy, your data or your rights, email us at jawvt04@gmail.com and we will be glad to help.

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies under CC BY 4.0.