Voltage Privacy.

CascadeLights is a free social pixel grid built by a small studio in Toronto. This page explains, in plain English, what data the relay handles, what it deliberately does not handle, the third-party services that sit alongside the page, and the rights you have under the privacy laws that apply to the studio. We have tried to write the page the way a friend would explain it, with concrete examples instead of legal abstractions.

1. WHAT WE COLLECT

Almost nothing. The relay does not have an account system, so there is no name, email, password, address, payment method, phone number, or birthday on file anywhere. The only items we collect are:

• Anonymous traffic counts — the number of visits per day, the country a visit came from at the country level, the device class (phone vs tablet vs desktop). Retention: 30 days, then aggregated into a monthly count and the daily detail is deleted.
• The age-gate confirmation flag — a single cookie / localStorage entry that records that you confirmed you are 18+. The flag does not contain a date of birth, just the boolean “confirmed”. Retention: 180 days; it expires by itself.
• The cookie-consent flag — a single cookie / localStorage entry that records whether you accepted or declined cookies. Retention: 180 days; it expires by itself.

That is the entire inventory. The relay does not have a database; it does not have a CRM; it does not have an email-sending pipeline. Most of what a typical website collects, this site does not.

2. WHAT WE DO NOT COLLECT

• No name, email address, password, phone number, postal address, or date of birth.
• No payment information — the relay does not accept payment, so the question never arises.
• No behavioural profile, no clickstream, no session recording, no heatmap.
• No cross-site tracking pixels, no third-party advertising cookies, no fingerprinting.
• No location data beyond the country level (and only at the aggregate count level).
• No friend list, contact list, social graph, or anything else from a phone's contacts.

3. THIRD-PARTY SERVICES

The relay uses two third-party services. Both are loaded over HTTPS, both are listed in the cookie policy with their full purpose, and you can decline both via the cookie banner without breaking the relay.

• Google Fonts — loads the Russo One and Roboto type families from Google's font CDN. Google sees that a request came from a visitor of CascadeLights but does not receive any other information from us. Google states it does not use Google Fonts requests for advertising profiling. If you decline cookies, the fonts still load (this is a content-delivery request, not a tracking cookie) but no analytics call is made.
• Anonymous traffic counter — a small first-party counter that records the items listed in section 1 above. The counter does not set a third-party cookie; it counts via a server-side log. If you decline cookies, the counter still records a single anonymous visit but stores nothing on your device.

4. COOKIES AND LOCALSTORAGE

The relay uses two browser-storage entries (a cookie and a matching localStorage entry, for cross-page persistence under file:// previews):

• cascadelights_age_ok — the age-gate confirmation flag, value 1, expires after 180 days. Without this entry, the age gate would re-prompt on every visit; with it, the gate is asked once.
• cascadelights_ck_choice — the cookie-consent flag, value accept or decline, expires after 180 days. Without this entry, the cookie banner would re-show on every visit; with it, your choice is remembered.

The full inventory, with retention windows and reopen-controls instructions, is on the Relay Cookies page. To withdraw consent at any time, clear the two entries above from your browser's storage settings.

5. HOW WE USE THE DATA

The anonymous traffic counts are used for a single purpose: to know whether the relay still has any readers. The studio is a side project; if a month goes by with five visits, we will probably retire the relay. The counts answer that question and nothing else. The age-gate and cookie-consent flags are used solely to avoid re-prompting you on every page navigation.

6. DATA RETENTION

• Anonymous daily traffic counts: 30 days, then aggregated to a monthly count and daily details are deleted.
• Monthly aggregated counts: 24 months, after which they are deleted.
• Age-gate flag: 180 days from the day you tapped the confirmation, then expired by the browser.
• Cookie-consent flag: 180 days from the day you tapped accept or decline, then expired by the browser.
• Email correspondence: kept until the conversation is closed plus 12 months, then deleted.

7. YOUR RIGHTS UNDER APPLICABLE LAW

The studio is based in Ontario, Canada, and the data we collect is also subject to laws in the visitor's jurisdiction. The rights below apply, regardless of where you live:

• PIPEDA (Canada): right to know what personal information we hold about you, to access it, to ask for correction of any errors, and to file a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
• Ontario Privacy Act / Information & Privacy Commissioner of Ontario: parallel rights under provincial legislation.
• GDPR (EU/UK visitors): rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, and to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority.
• Loi 25 (Québec): rights of access, rectification, and erasure, with the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec as the supervisory authority.
• Other jurisdictions: the studio honours equivalent rights under similar laws in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere.

To exercise any of these rights, write to [email protected]. We will reply within thirty days. Because the relay does not collect personal data, most requests will be answered with “we do not have the information you are asking about” — that is the honest answer and we will say it plainly.

8. SECURITY POSTURE

The site is served over HTTPS. The two browser-storage entries are first-party only; they cannot be read by other sites. Email correspondence is read on a single laptop with disk encryption and a passphrase-locked email client. The studio does not maintain a database; there is nothing to encrypt at rest because there is nothing held at rest.

9. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

Hosting is provided in Canada. Google Fonts may be served from Google's global CDN; the request itself contains no personal information. Email is hosted in Canada. There are no other international transfers.

10. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

If the policy changes in any way that materially affects what we collect or how we use it, we will update the “last updated” line at the bottom of this page and re-prompt the cookie banner so you can review the new policy before it applies to your visit.

11. CONTACT

For any privacy question, write to [email protected]. The inbox is read by Ana from the studio. Postal mail can go to 187 King Street West, Toronto, ON M5H 1J9, Canada.

Last updated: 2026-05-05.