EarthquakeIndex

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 28 August 2026

EarthquakeIndex is built to show earthquakes — not to track you. We set no cookies on visitors, use no advertising or tracking services and build no profiles. This page explains exactly what data we process, why, and what rights you have.

In short

Anonymous visit statistics

For each page view and API call we record a few non-identifying details so we can see how the site is used: the time, which page, language, browser type, operating system, device type (mobile/tablet/desktop), country (derived from the IP address) and the external referring domain you may have arrived from.

We do not store your IP address and do not store your full browser string (user agent). The IP is used only momentarily to look up the country code and to form a pseudonymous visitor key, after which it is discarded. That key is a one-way hash of the date, the IP, the browser string and a secret salt; it resets every day and cannot be traced back to you — it merely lets us count unique visits per day. We also record whether a request came from a search-engine bot.

Time on page and device signals

A small measurement in your browser reports how long a page was open (capped at 30 minutes), your screen width and your browser language. It also confirms that a real browser opened the page (bots do not run this code). The details are attached to the anonymous visit record and used only for statistics.

Earthquake clicks

When someone clicks an earthquake on the map or in the list, we count the total number of clicks per quake. No information about who clicked is stored.

Comments

If you choose to comment on an earthquake, we store the name you provide (or "Anonymous"), the comment text itself (plain text, no HTML, up to 500 characters), the language and the time. Your name and comment are shown publicly on the site. We also store a one-way hash of your IP address — not the address itself — solely to limit spam. Please do not put personal information in a comment, and contact us if you want a comment removed.

Your location

If you turn on "Use my location" on the map, your position is used only in your own browser to calculate the distance to each quake, and it is stored only locally in your browser. It is not sent to our server. The "Did you feel an earthquake?" tool sends an approximate, rounded position to our server, but only to look up quakes near you — the position is not stored.

Cookies and local storage

We set no cookies on visitors. Your browser remembers a few choices locally (light/dark theme, a saved location, panel settings) using "local storage". That data stays in your browser and is never sent to us.

External services

Earthquake data comes from EMSC. Map tiles are provided by CARTO: when the map loads, your browser fetches tiles directly from CARTO, which can therefore see your IP address. Place-name search is resolved via OpenStreetMap/Nominatim through our own server, so your IP is not passed on to it. We use no advertising or analytics services such as Google Analytics.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you have the right to access, rectification and erasure of your data, and to object to processing. Because our statistics are anonymised, we usually cannot link them to an individual — but if you have, for example, posted a comment, we are happy to help. Contact us at the email below. You may also complain to your national data protection authority (in Denmark, Datatilsynet).

Data controller and contact

The data controller is EarthquakeIndex. Questions about privacy and data processing? Use our contact form.

Changes to this policy

If we update this policy we change the "Last updated" date at the top. Significant changes are noted in our changelog.