Privacy Policy

Who runs this site

Realtime World Status is an independent, personal project developed and operated by John Makridis. There is no company or organisation behind it — for any privacy question or request, use the contact details on that site.

What we collect

• Analytics (with your consent): Google Analytics 4, which uses cookies to measure page views, approximate location (country/city level), device and browser type. It only runs after you accept analytics cookies in the banner shown on your first visit — declining, or not choosing, means no analytics cookies are set. See Google's own privacy policy for how it processes this data.
• Search: typing a place into search sends that text to our API to look up matching events. It is used only to return results and is not linked to your identity or stored against you personally.
• Server logs: like virtually every website, our servers keep basic technical logs (e.g. request path, timestamp, IP address) for a limited time, for security and operational troubleshooting.
• Local storage (not a cookie, but similar): your theme preference (light/dark) and your cookie-consent choice are kept in your browser's local storage, never sent to us.
• Donations: the "Support this project" link goes to PayPal. We never see or store any payment or financial information — that is handled entirely by PayPal, under its own privacy statement.

There is no sign-up or account for the public site, so we do not hold names, email addresses or passwords for visitors. (The /admin area is a separate, password-protected tool used only by the site's operator, not by the public.)

Legal basis and retention

• Analytics cookies are set only with your consent, which you can change any time by clearing your browser's site data (this re-shows the banner).
• Basic server logs are kept on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and working, and are pruned automatically after a limited period.
• Google Analytics data retention follows Google's own settings for this property (by default, event-level data is retained for a set number of months and then deleted).

Your rights

If you are in the EU/EEA or another jurisdiction with similar protections, you have the right to access, correct, delete, or object to the processing of your personal data, and to withdraw consent at any time. Since we hold very little personal data in the first place (see above), most requests can be resolved simply by declining analytics cookies or clearing your browser's local storage. For anything else, reach out via the contact details on makridis.dev.

Third parties

Beyond Google Analytics and PayPal (both described above), this site displays and links to public data from third-party sources — see Sources for the full list and each one's own licence. Visiting those linked sites is subject to their own privacy practices, not ours.

Children

This site is a general-audience news/information service and is not directed at children, nor does it knowingly collect personal data from them.

Changes to this policy

This policy may be updated from time to time as the site changes; the effective date at the top will always reflect the latest version.