Privacy

Last updated 30 October 2026

Reading the site

You can read every page without an account and without allowing any cookie. One small cookie, _universe_session, protects the site's forms from forgery. It says nothing about you and is gone when you close your browser.

Like any website, our servers see your IP address and the kind of browser you use with each request. Our host, Railway, and our network, Cloudflare, keep that in logs for a short time so the site keeps running. We don't use the logs to follow anyone.

The analytics cookie

If you press Allow on the bar at the bottom of the page, Google Analytics loads and sets cookies (_ga and _ga_…, kept for up to two years). They record which pages you open, roughly where you are, and what kind of device you use. That is the only measurement on the site. It is not used for advertising, and nothing is sold. Google's privacy policy says what Google does with it.

Until you press Allow, nothing is sent to Google. Pressing Decline means Google Analytics never loads, and choosing Decline later deletes the analytics cookies already set.

Changing your mind

Your answer is kept for six months in a cookie named consent, so the bar doesn't ask on every page. Cookie settings, at the foot of every page, brings the bar back.

If you make an account

An account holds your email address, your first name if you give it, and a password. One account works on both The Universe Counts and The World Counts. Sign-in is run by WorkOS, and the emails with your codes are sent by Resend. Signing in sets a cookie that keeps you signed in. It is not used to measure anything.

You can delete your account at any time on your account page. That removes it from both sites.

Where your data is kept

Railway, Cloudflare, Google, WorkOS and Resend may keep data in the United States. They do so under the standard contractual clauses that EU law requires for it.

What we don't collect

No advertising cookies, no mailing list, and nothing sold. If that ever changes, this page will say so first, and the bar will ask again.

Your rights

You can ask what we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, or take a copy. Write to [email protected]. If you think we have handled your data wrongly, you can also complain to the data protection authority where you live.