Privacy
Canopy Watch has no accounts, no forms, no payments, and places no advertising. It measures usage with Google Analytics, remembers three interface preferences in your browser, and loads map data from the public sources it shows. That is the whole of it; the details follow.
Who runs this
Canopy Watch (canopy.watch) is built and operated by Quantum Bytes Inc. (quantumbytes.ca), Canada. Questions, corrections or requests about anything on this page: [email protected].
What is collected
Usage analytics (Google Analytics 4). The site sends Google Analytics page views and a small set of interaction events: which map layer was toggled, which kind of feature was opened, switching to the 3D globe, opening the live-orbit panel, timeline and time-lapse use, a webcam being played, the share and copy-link buttons, clicks through to the frontline organisations (from the Help page, the map's support cards and the area and country pages), and page-speed measurements (web vitals). No name, email or account exists here to attach them to. This is pseudonymous rather than anonymous: Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (_ga and _ga_…) holding a random identifier that tells one browser from another across visits, and by default it also records approximate location (derived from the IP address, which Google says it does not store) and browser and device details. Google processes the data under the Google Privacy Policy. There is no consent banner. To opt out, use a content blocker that blocks Google Analytics or install Google's opt-out add-on (blocking cookies alone only stops the identifier persisting) — everything on the site works the same without analytics.
Server logs. The site is served by Cloudflare, which — like any web host — processes each request's IP address and browser details to deliver and protect the site. Canopy Watch keeps no visitor database of its own.
Email. If you write to [email protected], your message is received through Cloudflare Email Routing and handled in Google Workspace. It is used to answer you and for nothing else.
What is stored in your browser
Besides the analytics cookies above, three small preferences are kept in your browser's local storage: that you dismissed the 3D-view callout, that you dismissed the mobile-data hint on the globe (browsers that ask for reduced data are shown that hint every time regardless), and whether the live-orbit panel is open. They never leave your device; clearing site data removes them.
Third parties your browser contacts
Google Analytics, described above, is loaded from Google (googletagmanager.com) and reports to Google's analytics servers. Beyond that, the map is assembled in your browser from public sources, so your browser requests data directly from them, and each sees your IP address and browser details as any website would: CARTO (basemap), Global Forest Watch (alert tiles), NASA GIBS, NOAA, Esri and Microsoft Planetary Computer (satellite imagery), GBIF and the World Bank (headline figures), Google Fonts (typefaces) and — in the 3D globe only — Google Maps Platform (photorealistic tiles). Fire and DETER alerts normally come through this site's own /api endpoints, so those providers see the site, not you; if the DETER endpoint fails, your browser falls back to asking INPE's TerraBrasilis service directly. None of these requests carries anything that identifies you beyond what a browser always sends.
Links to the frontline organisations — on the Help page, in the map's support cards and on the area and country pages — carry utm_source=canopy.watch so their analytics can see where the visit came from. Nothing about you is added to the link.
YouTube
Canopy Watch uses YouTube API Services. On this site that means the YouTube embedded player: the basin's public webcams are YouTube live streams. Separately, the project has its own channel (@canopywatchlive) for its own videos; any tool used to publish there is authorised for that channel only and never touches visitor data. When you open or play a webcam view you are also using YouTube, under the YouTube Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy.
The player is loaded only when you press play, and from YouTube's privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com host; until then the page shows a still image served from YouTube's image servers. Once it plays, YouTube is a third party serving content in the page — it may show its own advertisements and may store or read information on your device under its own policies.
Canopy Watch does not ask visitors to sign in with Google or YouTube, and does not access, collect, store or share any visitor's YouTube or Google account information. (For completeness: anyone who has granted an application access to their Google account can review and revoke it at the Google security settings page — Canopy Watch never requests such access from visitors.) Because no YouTube or Google account information is ever accessed, collected or stored, there is none to delete; to ask about anything else, write to [email protected].
What is not here
No advertising placed by Canopy Watch (a YouTube player, once you press play, may show YouTube's own), no ad or social-media tracking pixels, no sale or sharing of data with data brokers, no newsletter list on this site, and nothing that ties usage to a person: beyond the analytics described above, Canopy Watch builds no profile of anyone. Canopy Watch never receives or handles money: support links go straight to the organisations' own sites.