Berlin, an Atlas of Questions Jahresringe
Privacy (Datenschutz)
Who is responsible
Anubhav Das, Kochstraße 23, 10969 Berlin, Germany, e-mail anubhav.das@visinage.com. No data protection officer is needed (Art. 37 GDPR, § 38 BDSG).
In short
No cookies, no accounts, no ads, no newsletter, no comments. Cloudflare Web Analytics counts visits without cookies, as set out below. Photos come from other servers only when a building's card is opened.
Hosting
The site is served by Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St, San Francisco, USA, through Cloudflare Pages. When a page or file is requested, Cloudflare processes the IP address, the date and time, the file requested and the browser's details, to deliver the site and keep it secure. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, the interest in a working and secure website. Cloudflare processes these data on my behalf under its data processing addendum (Art. 28 GDPR, DPA).
Cloudflare is listed under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, for which the European Commission has adopted an adequacy decision. Its entry showed it as active, with its re-certification under review, on 19 October 2026. I don't receive these logs. How long Cloudflare keeps them is set out in its privacy policy and the DPA.
Network error reports
Cloudflare's servers ask the browser, through the NEL and Report-To headers, to report failed connections to Cloudflare at a.nel.cloudflare.com: the IP address, the time, the address requested and the kind of error, never successful visits. The headers set success_fraction to 0, as seen on 19 October 2026. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, finding and fixing network faults. Cloudflare as under Hosting.
Building photos from Wikimedia Commons
When a building's card with a photo is opened, the browser loads the photo directly from upload.wikimedia.org, run by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., San Francisco, USA. The Foundation receives the IP address, the browser's details and the address of the photo, so it can tell which photo was asked for. No referrer is sent. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, showing the freely licensed photo of the building the visitor chose.
The Foundation processes these data in the USA under its own privacy policy and, by its own account, deletes most personal data after about 90 days. It isn't certified under the Data Privacy Framework, and there's no adequacy decision for it. Whether a browser's direct request counts as a transfer by this site's provider is disputed among the data protection authorities.
Street photos from Panoramax
For a named building without a Commons photo, opening its card sends a search to api.panoramax.xyz with a small area around the clicked building, not the visitor's own location. The photo found is then loaded from the server of the Panoramax instance that holds it: panoramax.openstreetmap.fr of OpenStreetMap France, panoramax.ign.fr of the IGN in France, which serves its photos from a storage server at OVHcloud, panoramax.mapcomplete.org, panoramax-ulm.jjbaur.de or another in the federation. The search receives the IP address, the browser's details and the coordinates of that area. The photo's server receives the IP address, the browser's details and the photo's address. No referrer is sent. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, showing a street photo of the building the visitor chose.
Storage in the browser
The site sets no cookies. In the browser's own storage, its localStorage, three values are kept and nothing else. jahresringe.lang keeps the language picked, once one is picked. jahresringe.turnHint keeps whether the hint on turning the map has been shown and whether the map was turned, so the hint is shown at most twice, and not again once the map has been turned. jahresringe.visited keeps that the opening story has started or been skipped, so it doesn't start by itself again. For the visit alone, its sessionStorage keeps jahresringe.wayClosed once the start's panel has been closed, and forgets it when the tab is closed. None of them holds an identifier, and none is ever sent to me or anyone else. All can be deleted in the browser's settings for this site. Legal basis: § 25(2) No. 2 TDDDG, strictly necessary for a function the visitor asked for.
Cloudflare Web Analytics
The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, switched on in its Cloudflare Pages project. A script from static.cloudflareinsights.com measures each page load with the browser's Performance API and sends the result to Cloudflare at cloudflareinsights.com, with the page's address and the site the visitor came from. Cloudflare says it doesn't log query strings, uses no cookies or localStorage and doesn't fingerprint visitors.
Purpose: counting visits and the sites they come from, and finding slow or failed page loads. Legal basis: § 25(2) No. 2 TDDDG and Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, the interest in knowing how the site is found and whether it loads well. Cloudflare and the USA as under Hosting.
Links
Links to other sites, such as Wikipedia, Wikidata, the Berlin monument database, Commons and Panoramax pages, the stories' sources and GitHub, are followed only when clicked, and those sites' own privacy policies apply there.
If someone writes, their address and message are used only to answer, and deleted when done. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, or Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR where it applies.
Right to object (Art. 21 GDPR). Where data are processed on the basis of Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, as for the hosting, the network error reports, the photos, Web Analytics and e-mail, visitors may object at any time, on grounds relating to their particular situation (Art. 21(1) GDPR).
Rights
Visitors have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection (Art. 15 to 18, 20 and 21 GDPR), can withdraw any consent, and can complain to a supervisory authority, for example the Berliner Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit, Alt-Moabit 59-61, 10555 Berlin (datenschutz-berlin.de), or the authority where they live or work.
No automated decisions
No automated decisions are made. No one has to provide any data. Without the browser's storage the site still works, but it doesn't remember the language or the hint, and the opening story plays again on every visit.
In German: Datenschutzerklärung.
Last updated: 19 October 2026