Privacy policy

Flagpole Guides is a reading site. You do not need an account, and there are no forms, comments or newsletters on the site. Some guides show advertising from Google AdSense, as described below. The flag calculator runs entirely in your browser and sends nothing to us.

Advertising

Ads on the site are provided by Google AdSense. For visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland the service is provided by Google Ireland Limited, and elsewhere by Google LLC. Ads are only shown in marked ad spaces, labelled “Advertisement” or the same word in the language of the page.

The site only shows ads that are chosen from the content of the page being read, its language and an approximate location derived from the request. Personalised ads are turned off: ads are not based on a visitor’s interests, demographics or earlier visits to this or other websites. Google’s first-party advertising cookies are turned off on the site, and the full IP address is not shared with ad buyers.

Google and its advertising partners (third-party vendors) may still use cookies and similar technologies for these ads, for example to measure ads and to detect fraud and invalid traffic. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services and Google’s description of advertising cookies.

Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are asked for consent in a message from Google before any advertising cookies are used. The message comes from Google’s consent tool, which follows the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework and lists the advertising partners and purposes one by one. The message is a standard form from Google and also lists purposes such as personalised ads, which the site does not use. Without consent, Google only shows limited ads, according to Google’s own rules.

A consent can be withdrawn or changed at any time through “Privacy settings” at the bottom of every page, which opens the consent message again. Deleting the cookies for this site in the browser has the same effect: the message is then shown again on the next page.

Google may transfer data to the United States. Google LLC is certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework. See Google’s privacy policy for how Google handles personal data.

Settings saved in the browser

If a light or dark colour theme is chosen on the settings page, that choice is saved in the browser’s local storage on the device. It stays there and is never sent to us. Choosing “Same as device” removes it.

Visitor statistics

To see which guides are read, the site uses Vercel Web Analytics. It counts page views without cookies, and page views are not tied to an IP address or to any individual. For each page view it records the time, the page, the referring site, an approximate location (country, region and city) and the type of device, browser and operating system. Visits are grouped with an anonymous hash derived from the request, which is discarded after 24 hours, so a visitor cannot be followed from one day to the next or across other websites. We only see the statistics in aggregated form. The script is served from our own domain. See Vercel’s description of Web Analytics for details.

Server logs

The site is hosted by Vercel Inc. Like any web server, the hosting platform processes technical data such as IP address, browser type and the page requested, in order to deliver the page and protect the service against abuse. We do not use this data to identify visitors. See Vercel’s privacy policy for how the platform handles this data.

Legal basis

Advertising cookies, and the personal data collected with them, are used on the basis of consent under Article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR and the rules on cookies in the ePrivacy Directive. A consent can be withdrawn at any time, as described above.

The visitor statistics and server logs are processed on the basis of legitimate interest under Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR: knowing which guides are read, and delivering the site securely. The statistics are anonymous and aggregated, and they use no cookies and store nothing on the visitor’s device, which is why they need no consent. The colour theme saved in local storage is only stored when a visitor chooses one, as part of the setting itself.

Under the GDPR, anyone can withdraw a consent, object to processing based on legitimate interest and lodge a complaint with a data protection authority, in Sweden the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY).

Fonts and images

Fonts, flags and maps are served from our own domain. Every page loads Google’s AdSense script from Google’s servers, which shows the consent message and, on pages with an ad space, the ad.

Changes

If we add anything else that processes personal data, this page will be updated before it goes live and the date above will change.