Privacy policy

This policy is issued by Think Discount, LLC, a limited liability company registered in the State of Washington, United States, which operates the Zodiac Signs website and the Zodiac Signs Astrology mobile app. You can reach us at privacy@zodiac-signs.net.

This is the part worth stating first, because it is the part people ask about. When you work out a chart, the date, the time and the place you enter are used to compute it on your own device — in your browser on the website, on your phone in the app. They are not transmitted to us or to anyone else, and we never receive them.

The resulting chart is not transmitted either. In the app, saved charts are stored on the phone, and we never receive them. There is no account, and nothing to sign in to.

One honest qualification: if your phone backs itself up, whatever is on it can be inside that backup, the same as anything else you keep on a phone. We take steps to keep saved charts out of those backups, and we say more about that below.

The website uses Google Analytics to count visits and to see which pages are read. That uses cookies, and it records the pages you view, an approximate location derived from your IP address, and general details about your browser and device.

A Google Analytics feature called Google signals is switched on for this website. If you are signed in to a Google account and have allowed ads personalisation there, Google can connect your visits here to that account and use it for advertising elsewhere. We never learn who you are from it, and it is the one thing we do that California law calls sharing personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising. You can switch it off — see “Your rights” below, or go straight to zodiac-signs.net/do-not-sell.

None of this touches your birth details. Those are worked out in your browser and are never sent to us, to Google, or to anyone else.

The birth chart calculator additionally records that a chart was completed, and whether the birthplace was chosen from the built-in list or typed in as coordinates. It does not record the place, the date, the time, or any part of the chart.

The app makes four kinds of outbound request.

Aspect descriptions. It fetches the written explanations of chart aspects from this website. That request is a plain download of a file. It carries nothing about you or your chart.

Anonymous usage counts. Through Google Analytics for Firebase, the app records that things happened — the app was opened, a chart was made, a saved chart was reopened. These carry no birth details, no place, no chart name, and no result.

Crash reports. Through Firebase Crashlytics, if the app stops working it sends the error and the point in our code it happened, along with the app version, the operating system version, the device model, and device settings such as your language and region. We deliberately strip the error message before sending, because our own error messages can mention a birthplace. Crash reports contain no birth details and no chart data.

Update checks. When the app starts it asks Expo, who host our app updates, whether a newer version of the app’s code is available. That request carries a random identifier for the installation, along with which version, platform and release channel the app is on — the things the answer depends on. It carries nothing about you.

The usage counts, the crash reports and the update checks each carry a random identifier that belongs to the installation, not to you. Their purpose is to tell one problem affecting fifty people apart from one person meeting the same problem fifty times, which is not possible from counts alone.

Google’s two services — the usage counts and the crash reports — are able to relate their own records to the same installation, and do: that is how a crash is reported as a proportion of the people who used the app. The identifier the update check sends to Expo is a separate one, and neither company receives the other’s.

None of them is shared with other apps, and we have no way to connect any of them to you. Deleting the app removes every chart you saved. On iPhone, the identifier itself is held by the system rather than by us, and may survive deletion and be reused if you install the app again.

Like any internet request, all of this carries your device’s IP address, which the receiving service sees. Google uses it to work out an approximate region — country or state level. We never see the address ourselves.

We have switched off the advertising identifiers that Google’s software would otherwise collect on Android, and the advertising-attribution registration it would otherwise perform on iPhone.

Charts you save in the app are written to the app’s own storage on your phone and nowhere we can reach.

On Android the app is excluded from Google’s backup, so charts are not copied off the device. On iPhone the app asks the system to exclude its chart storage from iCloud backup. That exclusion is implemented but we have not yet confirmed it against a real backup, so we do not claim more for it than that — if you have iCloud Backup switched on, treat your charts as potentially inside it until we can say otherwise here.

Google receives the website analytics, the app usage counts and the app crash reports, as our service provider. Expo receives the app’s update checks, as our service provider for delivering app updates. Their handling is governed by their own privacy policies, at firebase.google.com/support/privacy and expo.dev/privacy.

We have never sold anything about anyone, and we never will. There is no advertising on the website or in the app. The one exception to our not sharing anything is Google signals on the website, described above, which you can switch off at zodiac-signs.net/do-not-sell. The mobile app does not do this: the advertising features of Google’s software are switched off there, and its usage counts and crash reports are not connected to any advertising account.

As with any website or app, the servers that deliver our pages, our files and our app updates keep ordinary request logs, which include IP addresses.

All of this is processed in the United States.

Crash reports and their identifiers are retained by Firebase Crashlytics for 90 days. Aggregate counts of how often an error occurred are kept longer.

Analytics data is retained according to the retention setting on our Google Analytics property.

Anything computed and stored on your own device stays there until you delete it or remove the app.

Neither the website nor the app is directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.

The mobile app is not currently offered in the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom. The website is available worldwide, and readers in those places are asked for consent before any analytics loads — see “Your rights” below.

You can stop the app’s usage counts and crash reports entirely by uninstalling it, which also deletes every chart you saved. On the website, browser settings and tracking protection block the analytics cookies.

What we receive is tied to an app installation, not to a name, an email address or an account. We hold nothing that lets us find “your” data, and we will not collect anything extra in order to be able to. If you write to us we will explain what exists and how to remove it.

On the website you can stop the sharing described above, and the analytics along with it, at zodiac-signs.net/do-not-sell. There is a link to it at the foot of every page. The setting is remembered in the browser you set it in — we have no account to attach it to, which is the same reason we cannot identify you — so set it on each browser you use.

If you are in the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we ask first. Nothing is loaded and no cookie is set until you answer, declining is one button and costs you nothing, and not answering counts as declining. You can change your mind at any time at zodiac-signs.net/do-not-sell, as easily as you gave it. We work out which of these applies from your device’s time zone, which it already knows — we do not look your address up anywhere to decide.

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we honour it automatically and the analytics does not load at all. You do not need to do anything else, and the opt-out page will tell you that is what is happening. We do not act on the older “Do Not Track” header, which was never given an agreed meaning.

To ask anything about this policy, write to privacy@zodiac-signs.net.

If what the app or the website collects changes, this page changes in the same release, and the date at the top changes with it. It is not updated in advance of a change or left to catch up afterwards.