Privacy policy
What this site collects, what it doesn't, and the one server-side lookup that exists purely to guess your currency.
No accounts, no analytics, no first-party tracking cookies. Your quiz answers stay in your browser. Two third parties are involved: Google AdSense, which sets advertising cookies, and Netlify, which hosts the site and performs an approximate country lookup for currency.
Who we are
Hosting Finder ("we", "our", "the site") is a free web hosting comparison tool at hostfitcheck.com, run by an independent developer rather than a company. Contact: longhouse.future@gmail.com.
What we collect ourselves
Nothing. There are no accounts, no sign-up forms, no mailing list, no analytics of any kind, and no database we control.
Your quiz answers, theme preference and currency choice are held in your browser's local storage so the site remembers them next visit. That data stays on your device. It is not transmitted to us, and clearing your browser storage erases it completely.
Currency detection
To default prices to your local currency, the site tries to work out which country you are in. It does this in two steps, and neither involves a third-party geolocation service.
First, a Netlify edge function. Where available, the site calls a small function on Netlify's edge network which reads the country associated with your IP address — using Netlify's built-in geo lookup, which every web request already carries — and returns only a two-letter country code. No IP address is stored or logged by us or passed to anyone else, and the response is explicitly marked not-cacheable so one visitor's country is never served to another.
Second, your browser's time zone. If the edge function is
unavailable, the site reads the time zone your browser already reports (for
example Europe/London) and maps it to a country. This happens
entirely on your device — nothing is sent anywhere, and
no IP address is involved at all.
If neither identifies a supported country, prices stay in US dollars. You can override the result at any time with the currency selector; your choice is stored locally and takes precedence over both.
Exchange rates themselves are fetched from a public exchange-rate API (frankfurter.dev). That request contains no information about you — it asks only for current rates — and the result is cached in your browser for a day.
You can override the detected currency at any time using the currency toggle; your choice is stored locally and takes precedence.
Hosting (Netlify)
The site is served by Netlify, which processes IP addresses and request metadata in server logs for security and operational purposes, as any web host must. This is standard infrastructure logging and is governed by Netlify's own privacy terms.
Advertising (Google AdSense)
The site is funded by advertising served through Google AdSense (Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). Google acts as an independent data controller for what it collects, and we have no access to or control over it.
Through AdSense, Google and its partners may:
- Set and read cookies, or use similar identifiers, to recognise your device across sessions and across other sites in Google's network;
- Collect your IP address and derive approximate location;
- Use browsing history to select interest-based (personalised) advertising;
- Use web beacons and similar technologies to measure ad delivery, and to detect fraud;
- Collect device and browser characteristics for ad rendering and measurement.
This is governed by Google's privacy policy, and Google documents how it uses cookies in advertising.
Where required by law — for visitors in the UK, EEA and Switzerland — a consent notice is presented before personalised advertising cookies are set, and your choice is passed to Google. You can change or withdraw it at any time through the consent controls on the site.
Affiliate links
The site currently contains no affiliate links. Links to hosting providers are plain links; we receive nothing if you sign up, and no tracking identifier is attached to them.
If affiliate links are introduced they will be clearly labelled at the point of use and disclosed on the about page. Affiliate links typically involve the destination site setting a cookie to attribute a referral; this policy will be updated to describe that before any such link goes live.
Your choices
- Google Ads Settings — turn off ad personalisation across Google's network.
- Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out and Your Online Choices (Europe).
- Browser settings — block or delete cookies and clear local storage. Clearing local storage resets your quiz answers and preferences.
- An ad blocker — the comparison and quiz work perfectly with one installed. Nothing is gated behind seeing ads.
Other third parties
Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com and
fonts.gstatic.com), which makes your IP address visible to Google in
order to serve the font files.
The site links out to hosting providers. Once you follow such a link you are on their site, subject to their privacy practices, which we do not control.
Your rights
Under the UK GDPR, EU GDPR and comparable laws you have rights to access, correct, erase, restrict and object to processing of your personal data, and to data portability.
We hold no personal data about you, so there is nothing for us to retrieve, correct or delete — we could not identify you from our records because we keep none. Requests relating to advertising data must go to Google, which holds that data as its own controller; the links above are the route to it.
If you are in the UK you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office; in the EEA, to your national data protection authority.
California residents: we do not sell or share personal information as defined by the CCPA/CPRA, because we do not collect personal information. Google's practices are covered by its own CCPA disclosures.
Children's privacy
The site is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided personal information through this site, please contact us.
Changes to this policy
This policy may be updated from time to time; the "last updated" date above reflects the most recent revision. Material changes — including any introduction of affiliate links — will be reflected there.
Contact
Privacy questions or data protection requests: longhouse.future@gmail.com with "Privacy" in the subject line.