Privacy

The short version

No accounts, no sign-up, no data sold, no advertising tracking. We set one cookie so we can tell a return visit from a first visit, and there is a switch below that turns it off. Everything else is anonymous traffic and performance counting, plus error diagnostics when something breaks. There is no contact form: writing in means sending an email from your own mail app, so nothing reaches us until you send it.

Anonymous usage & performance statistics

The site uses Vercel Web Analytics and Vercel Speed Insights to count page views and measure real-world page performance. Both are cookie-free: no personal identifiers are stored, and visits are counted with a short-lived hash that cannot be traced back to you.

We also use PostHog to understand which parts of the site people use. It stores a random ID in your browser for a year, and records the date we first saw that ID, which is how a return visit is told from a new one. The ID is not tied to your name or email, is never shared with advertisers, and is not used to follow you to any other site. Outside the US we ask before setting it. You can turn it off below, and if you do, nothing is stored in your browser at all.

Error diagnostics

When something breaks, Sentry receives the error message, a code stack trace, and the page route where it happened, so we can fix it. We do not attach your IP address, cookies, request headers, or the contents of your browser storage, and URLs are stripped of their query parameters first. Session replay is disabled. See Sentry's privacy policy.

What stays in your browser

The site sets one cookie of its own. No login cookie, no advertising cookie, and nothing that reports back to another site.

• The analytics cookie. Named ph_ followed by our PostHog project key. It holds a random ID and nothing else, and lasts one year. The switch below turns it off.
• Session storage. Your build selections and compare tray, so a refresh doesn't lose your work. Closing the tab clears them.
• Local storage. Your light/dark theme choice, whether the suppressor list shows as a grid or a table, and a record of your analytics answer so we do not ask twice. Settings, not identifiers. Clearing your browser's site data removes them.

Cloudflare, which fronts the site against automated abuse, may also set a short-lived cookie of its own to tell bots from people.

If you email us

The contact page has no form. Every option opens a prefilled draft in your own email app, and nothing is sent until you send it. When you do, we receive what any recipient receives: your address, your message, and whatever you included. We keep it only as long as it takes to deal with, and there is no mailing list.

Links out to other sites

The catalog cites its sources, so the site links out to manufacturer pages and test reports. Those sites have their own privacy practices.

Accessory pages carry clearly marked affiliate links to OpticsPlanet; see the affiliate disclosure. Clicking one may set cookies or other identifiers from that retailer or its affiliate network, on their domain and under their privacy policy, so a sale can be credited back to this site. We count the click itself, which needs no identity.

Who processes what

Four companies, and no others. Vercel serves the site and provides the traffic and performance statistics. Cloudflare fronts the domain and filters automated abuse. Sentry receives the error diagnostics and PostHog the usage events. Vercel and Cloudflare handle IP addresses and user agents transiently, as any web server must. We run no other third-party scripts, ads, or trackers, and no data is sold or shared for anyone else's marketing.

How long anything is kept

Baffled keeps no database and no server-side store of visitors, so there is nothing on our side to hold. What exists is what our providers keep under their own retention settings: anonymous counts at Vercel and PostHog, error reports at Sentry that age out, and short-lived request logs at Vercel and Cloudflare. None of it is tied to an account or to your name.

Your choices

There is no account to delete and no profile to correct, because the site never creates either one. The switch above turns the analytics cookie off. We honor your browser's Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals: if either is set, we do not set the cookie and we do not ask. Any content blocker or browser tracking protection will stop the analytics and diagnostics scripts entirely, and the site keeps working with them blocked. Clearing your browser's site data removes everything described above.

Questions, or something here that doesn't match what you observe? Email [email protected].

If this changes

When what this page describes changes, the page changes with it and the date at the top moves. Anything that would store more than what is listed here gets described before it launches, not after.