The short version
- We ask for no personal information anywhere on the site.
- We set no cookies and keep nothing in your browser's storage.
- We count page views with Vercel Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and keeps no IP address with a page view.
- We run no advertising and no social-media trackers, and we never sell or share visitor data.
- Your exact location never leaves your browser.
Who we are
CornerFacts ("we", "us") is an independent website run from Ontario, Canada, with no connection to the City of New York, its agencies, the MTA or any other publisher whose data it carries. Privacy questions go to hello@cornerfacts.com.
What reaches us, and why
Hosting. Every page is served by Vercel, our host. Like any web host it receives each request: the page asked for, the time, your IP address and your browser's user-agent. The request logs we can see are kept for one day, and Vercel's own handling of them is governed by its privacy policy. We use them only to keep the site running and to spot abuse.
Page-view counts. Vercel Web Analytics records, for each page view, the page, the time, the site that linked to it, the country, region and city worked out from the request, and the browser, operating system and kind of device. It uses no cookies: a visitor is counted with a hash of the request that Vercel discards after 24 hours, and what we see are totals.
Search. The search box downloads an index of street and neighborhood names from this site the first time you use it, and matches what you type inside your browser. Choosing a street downloads that street's list of corners, again from this site; those downloads reach our host's logs like any page request, and your keystrokes are never sent anywhere.
Find my corner. If you press Find my corner, your browser asks your permission to share your location. Your position stays in your browser. The page works out which squares of the map you are in, each about 0.3 miles across, and downloads the list of corners in those squares from this site; those requests reach our host's logs like any page request and show a rough area, never your exact position. Nothing is stored.
Next buses and trains. When you use a corner page, by scrolling, tapping or typing, and its bus or subway part comes within about two screens of what you are reading, the page asks this site's server for the nearest stop's next buses or the nearest station's next trains, and asks again every 30 seconds while it stays that near, for up to 15 minutes. The server asks the MTA's real-time feeds, then sends back the MTA's predictions. The MTA sees only our server's requests, never your IP address or browser, and each request reaches our host's logs like any page request.
Email. If you write to us, the message passes through ImprovMX, the service that forwards mail for this domain, to our mailbox. We keep it for as long as it takes to deal with it and for a reasonable time afterwards, and use it for nothing else.
Services your browser contacts directly
- Vercel serves every page and counts page views (Vercel privacy policy).
- OpenFreeMap serves the map tiles on corner pages, once you scroll to the map. It is run by Hyperknot Software Kft. in Hungary, which says it logs no IP addresses except, during an incident, for at most 30 days, and sets no cookies; its tiles are delivered through Cloudflare (OpenFreeMap privacy policy).
Fonts and the map software are served from this site itself, so no font service or code library sees your visit. The aerial photos, when you press Photos on a map, come from this site's own server too, which fetches them from the City of New York's map tile service: the City receives this site's request, not your address. Links to publishers, the MTA's stop pages, OpenStreetMap and cornerfacts.ca lead to sites with their own policies.
Cookies and browser storage
The site sets no cookies and writes nothing to your browser's local storage, session storage or any other browser database; neither the map nor the page-view counter does. Your browser keeps its usual cache of the pages and images it has loaded.
Personal information in what we publish
The site publishes facts about places, drawn from datasets the City and State of New York release for public use. Crash, ticket and other counts carry no details about the people involved. Names of people appear only where a public record attaches them to a place: an honorary co-naming enacted by local law, printed as the law states it, or the name of a school, landmark or park. If you believe a page holds personal information about you that should not be there, write to us and we will look at it promptly; where it comes from a public dataset we will also point you to the publisher, who controls the source.
Children
The site is not directed at children, and since it collects no personal information it holds none about anyone, of any age.
Your rights
We follow Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). You may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, or withdraw consent to its use; in practice the only personal information that could exist is a short-lived log entry or an email you sent, and we will tell you plainly what there is. If our answer does not satisfy you, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Readers everywhere are welcome; the site is operated from Canada, and we do not sell or share personal information with anyone.
Security
Every page is served over HTTPS. The site is generated in advance from public data and keeps no database of visitors, so there is no store of personal information to breach.
Changes to this policy
If the way the site handles data changes, this page changes first and the date at the top moves. Continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated policy.
Contact
Questions, access requests and corrections: hello@cornerfacts.com. The terms of use describe how the site's content may be used.