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Ben’s Product LabsBPL

Privacy

Ben’s Product Labs is a personal project run from Australia. This page describes what the site does with information, and it is written to match what the code does rather than to cover every thing a site of this shape might one day do.

What the products do with your data

Products run in your browser. Where a product asks for something — a photo, a set of addresses, a date — that information is processed on your own device and is not sent anywhere. There is no account system on this site today, and no product stores anything about you on a server.

Lunch dice is the one exception, and it is worth reading. It works out what is near you, which it cannot do without knowing where you are. When you press “Use my location” your browser asks your permission and then gives the page your coordinates. Those coordinates, and the search radius you chose, are sent to this site’s server, which passes them straight to Google Places and returns the list of places to eat. Nothing about that request is written down here: no log line holding a position, no database row, no cookie. Your position is held in the page while it is open and is gone when you close the tab.

Two more requests go the same way, for the map. The map picture under a result is fetched by this site’s server from Google Maps and passed back to your browser, so it carries your position and how far you asked it to search. When the dice land somewhere, the walking route to that one place is fetched the same way, which sends Google where you are and where you are going. Both go through this server rather than straight from your browser, which is why Google is not handed your address or a cookie by either, and neither is logged or stored here.

Google receives the coordinates, the radius and the destination as part of answering those three requests, and what it does with them is governed by Google’s own privacy policy. If you would rather it did not, do not press the button: the rest of the page works without it, and no other product on this site sends your location anywhere.

The same product keeps your filter settings and the places you ruled out in your own browser’s local storage, under bpl-lunch-filters and bpl-lunch-dislikes. Both are set only when you move a control, both stay on the device in front of you, and clearing this site’s data removes them. Your location is deliberately not among them.

Still Grade opens a photograph, and the photograph stays here. The file you open is read by your browser, drawn on your own graphics card, and written back out by the same browser when you export. It is never uploaded — not to this site’s server and not to anyone else’s — and no request of any kind is made while you are editing. The one thing it keeps is a look you press Save on: the numbers that describe a grade, in your own browser’s local storage under bpl-stillgrade-looks. That holds no image and nothing about you, and clearing this site’s data removes it.

The video stabiliser opens a video, and the video stays here. It is read, measured, stabilised and written back out by your own browser, and never uploaded. The one thing it keeps is that you have closed its short introduction, in your own browser’s local storage under bpl-stab-intro, so it is not shown again. That holds nothing about you, and clearing this site’s data removes it.

Collage opens photographs, and they stay here too. They are read, laid out and exported by your own browser and never uploaded. So that a reload does not lose your work, the collage you are working on is kept in your own browser’s storage (IndexedDB, under bpl-collage): the layout, your text, and copies of the photographs it uses, including whatever metadata those files carry, such as the date, camera and any GPS position. Only one collage is kept, a photograph is deleted from it once the collage no longer uses it, and “Clear saved copy” on the page or clearing this site’s data removes it all. None of it leaves the device.

Surf’s forecast is fetched every fifteen minutes by this site, and what you do with it stays on your device. The swell and wind forecasts, the Sydney wave buoy’s latest reading, and Beachwatch’s pollution forecasts and water samples are fetched by this site’s server from Open-Meteo, the Australian Ocean Data Network and Beachwatch (NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water); the tide is predicted on the server itself, and checked against Manly Hydraulics Laboratory’s Sydney tide gauge, which the server reads. All of it is published as files your browser reads, with the swell, wind and tide scored on the way. The wind for the current hour comes from Google’s Weather API instead, which the server asks for at a few beaches along the coast once an hour; Google receives those positions and this site’s account key and nothing about you. The beach pictures are aerial imagery from NSW Spatial Services, fetched by this site’s server and served from this site, so your browser does not contact it. None of those requests carries anything about you, and a request for a file is logged by the host like any other page. The postcode you type (if you type one), the beach your drive times start from, the units you chose, how far you will drive and how you surf are kept in your own browser’s local storage under bpl-surf-prefs, and the last forecast you loaded under bpl-surf-cache, so it can still be shown without a signal. The testing tools, if you save a simulation run in them, keep it under bpl-surf-sim-baseline: scores of the model, nothing about you. “Use my location” asks your browser for your position and works out the nearest beach on your own device from the beach positions the page already holds. The position is not sent anywhere and not stored. A postcode is looked up the same way, in a table of Sydney postcodes the page already holds, and is not sent anywhere either. The planner’s share link holds the beach, times, drive and ability you typed into it, in the address, and nothing else. Clearing this site’s data removes what is stored.

Adding a product to your home screen. “Video stabiliser” and “Collage” and “Surf?” can be added to a phone’s home screen and opened as an app, and on a first visit from a touch screen each offers to be. Closing that offer, or adding the product, is remembered in your own browser’s local storage under bpl-home-screen- and the product’s short name, so it is not shown again. That holds nothing about you, and clearing this site’s data removes it.

Feedback

Every page has a thumbs up and a thumbs down, beside its main parts, in the footer and behind the Feedback button at the top. Nothing is sent until you press one. When you do, this site’s server stores which thumb you pressed, the product and the page it was on, which part of the page it was about, how wide your window is, how far down the page you were, and the country the hosting provider reports for your connection. If you then type something and press Send, the words are stored with it. Only plain letters, numbers and basic punctuation are accepted.

Nothing that identifies you is stored with it: not your address, not your browser, no cookie and no account. Your address is used for a few minutes, in memory only, to stop one source sending hundreds of these, and is not written down. So do not put anything in the box that you would not want kept, such as your name or email address; if you do, it is stored like the rest. It is kept in a database at Supabase, which processes it on this site’s behalf, and only I read it.

Cookies

Three, all set only in response to something you did. None of them is used to identify you.

  • bpl-theme records whether you chose the light or dark theme. Choosing “System” deletes it.
  • bpl-consent records your answer to the question below, so it is not asked again. It is set whichever way you answer, including when you decline.
  • energy-access is set only on energy.bensproductlabs.com, and only if you start a data collection there and type the shared password it asks for. Reading that page sets nothing. It holds an expiry date and a signature proving the password was correct, so it does not have to be typed again for a week. There is no account behind it: it records that somebody knew the password, not who. It is scoped to that one subdomain and is deleted after seven days.

The first two are scoped to bensproductlabs.com so a choice made on one product is honoured on the others, and none of them is read by anyone but this site.

Being asked first

If you are visiting from the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, a bar at the bottom of the page asks whether analytics may count your visit, and nothing is measured and nothing is stored until you answer. Declining is one click in the same place as accepting, and the site works identically either way. Elsewhere the bar is not shown, because prior opt-in is not what the law there asks for; this page is.

Your country is read from a header that the hosting provider adds to the request. It is not looked up by a third party, it is not stored, and it is used for nothing else.

Analytics and error monitoring

The following third parties process data on the site’s behalf:

PostHog (product analytics, EU hosting)
Records page views and events such as which parts of a product were used, so I can tell what people actually do here. Pseudonymous: it is not linked to a name or an email address, and it is not used to track you across other websites. Session replay is not enabled: your screen and your keystrokes are not recorded.

Advertising

The layout reserves space for advertisements, but no advertising network is loaded on this site at present and no advertising cookies are set. When that changes, this page will say which network and what it does before it is switched on.

Your rights

Because the site holds nothing about you on a server, and feedback is stored without anything that would let me find yours, there is generally nothing to request a copy of or to delete. The choices this site does give you are on the device in front of you: decline the consent bar, refuse or revoke the location permission, or clear this site’s cookies and stored data, and nothing from here remains.

There is no way to contact me through this site and get a reply. The feedback box reaches me, but it asks for no address, so I cannot answer it. That is a deliberate choice and you are entitled to know it rather than discover it.

This page changes in the same commit as the behaviour it describes. If you find a sentence here that does not match what the site does, that is a fault worth reporting.