Privacy Policy
This policy explains what personal information Smoke Atlas handles when you visit the site. It is updated before any new advertising, analytics or newsletter feature is switched on.
What the site does not do
- Calculators and the rules database run in your browser. The numbers you enter are not sent to us.
- We do not ask you to create an account.
- We do not sell personal information.
Information we may receive
Technical data. Our hosting provider receives your IP address, browser type and the pages you request, so it can deliver the site and protect it from abuse. This is stored in standard server logs.
Aggregate visit statistics. If privacy-friendly analytics are enabled, they count page views without setting advertising cookies.
Messages you send. If you use the contact form, we receive your message, the page address and the reply details you choose to enter. All three are optional except the message. We use them only to reply and to correct the site.
Advertising
Smoke Atlas uses Google AdSense to show advertising. When ads are shown, these points apply:
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a person’s earlier visits to this and other websites.
- Google’s use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.
- You can opt out of personalized advertising in Google’s Ads Settings, and you can opt out of some third-party vendors’ use of cookies for personalized advertising at aboutads.info or, in Canada, youradchoices.ca.
- Ads are labelled, kept separate from the guides and tables, and never change what a page says. We do not accept payment to alter content, and no tobacco or vaping products are promoted on this site.
Visitors from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Quebec are asked for consent in a message from Google before advertising cookies are set, and they can change that choice with the “Privacy and cookie settings” link in the footer. You can also block advertising cookies in your browser settings. The cookie policy lists the cookies and tools in use.
Who is responsible and how to ask
The person in charge of personal information on Smoke Atlas is the Privacy Officer, a role held by the volunteer team that runs the site. We follow Canada’s federal private-sector privacy law and, for visitors in Quebec, the Quebec private-sector privacy law. Send access, correction or deletion requests, or privacy questions, through the contact page and write “Privacy” at the start of the message. We aim to answer within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or, if you live in Quebec, to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec. Visitors from the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom can also contact their local data protection authority.
Where information is processed
The site is delivered through a global hosting network and its advertising comes from Google, so server logs, ad requests and consent choices can be processed in Canada, the United States and other countries. Contact-form messages are stored with our hosting provider. We do not otherwise transfer personal information.
Why we use information
We use server data to deliver and secure the site, contact-form messages to reply and fix errors, and advertising data, only where you allow it, to show ads that pay for the site. We do not build profiles of visitors ourselves and we do not use automated decisions about you.
Children
The site is written for adults and general readers. It is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.
How long we keep information
Server logs are kept by the hosting provider for its standard retention period. Messages from the contact form are deleted automatically after 180 days.
Your choices and rights
You can ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it or delete it, and withdraw consent where we rely on consent. Use the contact page and include the page address you visited.
Changes
We update this page when our practices change and show the review date at the top. If a change is significant, for example a new analytics tool or newsletter, we will update this page before the feature is switched on.