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lakeglance

Privacy policy

Last updated October 26, 2026

Short version: Lakeglance has no accounts and no sign-up forms, and we never sell your personal data. We use Google Analytics, which sets cookies, to count visits and see which pages are useful. When ads are shown, Google and its partners may use cookies to serve and measure them. You can opt out of both. The details are below.

This policy covers lakeglance.com and the Lakeglance conditions widget that other websites can embed.

What we collect

We do not ask for your name, email address or any other personal details to use the site. Our host, Cloudflare, processes standard request logs (IP address, browser type, page requested and time) to deliver pages, block attacks and keep the site running, underCloudflare's privacy policy. We do not keep our own copy of these logs.

We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used: which pages are visited, how visitors arrive (for example from a search engine), the type of device and browser, and an approximate location at city or country level. Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (named _ga and_ga_*) to tell repeat visits apart. Google Analytics does not log or store IP addresses, and we only look at totals, never at individual visitors. Google processes this data under its own privacy policy. You can opt out on every site with theGoogle Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or by blocking cookies for this site in your browser.

If you email us, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to write. We use it only to reply and to fix what you reported, and we delete correspondence we no longer need.

Your location

If you tap "Near me", your browser asks for permission to share your location. The location is used only inside your browser to sort lakes by distance. It is never sent to Lakeglance.

To show lakes near you without asking, the home page reads the approximate city that our host, Cloudflare, works out from your connection's IP address. That rough location goes only to your own browser for this one purpose. We do not store or log it, and your browser keeps it only until you close the tab.

Cookies and data stored in your browser

Lakeglance's own pages use your browser's storage, not cookies, for a few conveniences:

  • the latest forecast and gauge reading for a lake, kept in session storage for 15 minutes so the page does not fetch them twice;
  • the lake you choose with "Save as my lake", and your knots or mph choice, kept in local storage until you change them;
  • your approximate area for the "lakes near you" list, kept in session storage for the current tab only.

None of this leaves your device, and you can clear it at any time from your browser settings.

The only cookies on Lakeglance's own pages are the Google Analytics cookies described above and, when ads are shown, the advertising cookies below.

Advertising

To keep Lakeglance free, we may show ads served by Google AdSense. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your previous visits to this website and other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to Lakeglance and other sites on the internet.

Visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are asked for consent before personalised ads or ad cookies are used, through a consent message certified by Google. If you decline, you may still see non-personalised ads, which use cookies only for frequency capping, aggregated reporting and fraud prevention. You can change your choice at any time from the privacy link in that message.

Third-party services your browser contacts

Lake pages load live data and images directly from these services:

  • api.weather.gov (National Weather Service) for forecasts
  • waterservices.usgs.gov and api.waterdata.usgs.gov (U.S. Geological Survey), and cwms-data.usace.army.mil (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), for water levels
  • soto.podaac.earthdatacloud.nasa.gov (NASA) for satellite water levels on lakes without a gauge
  • opengeo.ncep.noaa.gov (NOAA) for weather radar
  • tiles.openfreemap.org (OpenFreeMap) for map tiles
  • upload.wikimedia.org (Wikimedia Commons) for lake photos
  • www.googletagmanager.com and google-analytics.com (Google Analytics) on every page except the embeddable widget
  • Google advertising services, when ads are shown

Like any website, these services receive your IP address when your browser requests data from them. Their own privacy policies apply.

Embedded widgets

Sites that embed a Lakeglance widget load it from our servers. The widget shows no ads, does not load Google Analytics, sets no cookies and collects nothing beyond the standard request logs above.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, including under the EU and UK GDPR and California's CCPA, you may have the right to know what personal data we hold about you, to ask us to correct or delete it, and to object to or limit its use. Because Lakeglance does not run accounts, we usually hold nothing beyond emails you have sent us. Lakeglance does not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising in exchange for money. To make a request, email hello@lakeglance.com. For data held by Google or other advertising vendors, use the opt-out links above or contact them directly.

Children

Lakeglance is a general-audience site. It is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.

Security

Every page is served over HTTPS. Because we hold almost no personal data, there is very little that could be exposed, and we do not keep databases of visitors.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, we will update the date at the top of this page. Questions or requests: hello@lakeglance.com, or see the contact page. The terms and conditions explain the rules for using the site.