Privacy Policy

Welcome to the privacy policy for s.thecat.dev. This document explains how we collect, use, and protect your data when you interact with our private link shortener.

1. Information Collected by the Link Shortener

This service operates using Shlink, an open-source self-hosted URL shortener located at s.thecat.dev. When you click a shortened link, the system automatically collects basic analytics data to help us understand link traffic. The data collected includes:

• Anonymized IP Address: Your network IP address is processed at the time of the click to derive general location, but it is automatically anonymized before being saved to our database. The raw IP address is never stored and is not viewable by the server administrator.
• Geolocation Data: Estimated general location (such as country and city) derived from the IP address before anonymization.
• User Agent: General information about your browser, operating system, and device type.
• Referrer URL: The webpage you were visiting before clicking the shortened link (if provided by your browser).
• Date and Time: The exact timestamp of when the link was accessed.

We do not collect or store personally identifiable information (PII) such as names, physical addresses, email addresses, or raw IP addresses within the shortener database.

2. Third-Party Infrastructure & Services

To keep our services secure and online, we rely on third-party infrastructure. The data processed depends on whether you are using the link shortener itself, or visiting this specific privacy policy page (which is hosted on a separate subdomain):

A. When you click a shortened link (at s.thecat.dev):

• Cloudflare Tunnels: The link shortener traffic is routed securely to our private server via Cloudflare Tunnels (cloudflared). When you click a link, your request passes through Cloudflare's network. Cloudflare temporarily processes your IP address and standard web log data for DDoS protection and network routing.

B. When you visit this specific Privacy Policy page:

• Cloudflare Pages: Because this informational webpage is hosted separately on Cloudflare Pages, Cloudflare processes your raw IP address to serve the content and ensure security when you view this document. You can read the Cloudflare Privacy Policy here.
• Google Fonts: This specific page uses Google Fonts for text styling. When your browser loads these fonts on this page, it establishes a direct connection to Google's servers, meaning Google receives your IP address and technical browser details. You can read the Google Privacy Policy here.

3. How We Use Your Information

The anonymized data collected by our shortener is used strictly for internal analytics and operational purposes, including:

• Tracking the performance and click-through rates of our shortened URLs.
• Understanding the broad geographic distribution of our audience.
• Ensuring the technical stability of our infrastructure.

4. Data Storage and Security

Because s.thecat.dev is a private, self-hosted service, your anonymized analytics data is stored securely on our private servers. We do not share, sell, or process this data with third-party analytics platforms (like Google Analytics).

5. GDPR and Your Rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other global privacy laws, you have specific rights regarding your personal data. However, because our service strictly anonymizes IP addresses within the shortener and does not collect any identifying information, the analytics data we store cannot be tied back to you as an individual.

As a result, while you have the right to request access to or deletion of your personal data, we are technically unable to identify which specific clicks or data points belong to you in order to fulfill such requests. We design our systems this way intentionally to maximize your privacy.

6. Cookies and Tracking

Our link redirection service does not use tracking cookies to monitor you across the web. The infrastructure routing our traffic (such as Cloudflare) may process requests and use strictly necessary functional cookies to ensure secure and stable connections, but no advertising or profiling cookies are placed on your device by our service.

7. Third-Party Links

Links shortened via s.thecat.dev will redirect you to external third-party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices, content, or data collection policies of those destination sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any website you visit after being redirected.

8. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:

Email: business@chaoskjell44.dev