Privacy Policy

Who we are

MUSEENYC is an independent guide to New York City published at museenyc.com. For anything in this policy, write to museenyc.art@gmail.com.

What we don't do

• No cookies are set by this site.
• No tracking that identifies you: no session recording, no heatmaps, no fingerprinting, and no IP addresses stored in our analytics.
• No advertising networks, no tracking pixels, no social media embeds.
• No accounts, and no profile of you is built or bought.
• Nothing is collected as you read. The booking and feedback forms are the only places you are asked for anything about yourself, and only what you type into them. The trip planner keeps the plan it builds, which says nothing about who built it — see trip plans you build.
• Nothing about you is ever sold or shared for anyone else's marketing.

Because we set no cookies and nothing we count identifies you, there is no cookie banner. That isn't an oversight — there is nothing to ask you to consent to.

Your location

The “Use my location” button and the map's “Near me” control both use your browser's standard location feature. Your browser will ask your permission first, and you can refuse — everything on the site still works.

Concretely, when you allow it:

• Your device works out your coordinates. We never see them.
• The comparison happens on your device. The list of neighborhood centers is part of the page you already downloaded, so your phone does the arithmetic and decides which neighborhood is nearest.
• You're then sent to that neighborhood's page. That's an ordinary page request — the same as tapping the link yourself.
• Your coordinates are never transmitted to us, never written to storage, and are gone as soon as the page changes.

One honest caveat about the map: map imagery is served by Esri (see below), so centering the map on you means Esri's servers receive requests for the map squares around your area, along with your IP address. If you'd rather they didn't, don't use “Near me” on the map.

What is unavoidably collected

Server logs

The site is served by Netlify. Like every web host, their servers record standard request data — IP address, time, page requested, browser and referring page — to deliver pages and guard against attacks and abuse. We don't use those logs to build any picture of individual visitors, and their handling is described in their own privacy documentation.

Map imagery

Map tiles come from Esri, built on OpenStreetMap and other mapping data. Loading them tells Esri your IP address and which parts of the map you're looking at.

Two places load them: the map page, and the small map at the bottom of each individual review. The small one is deliberately lazy — it requests nothing from Esri until you scroll down far enough to see it, so reading a review without reaching the end sends nothing to them. The map software itself is served from this domain along with the rest of the page, so it reaches no third party either way.

Walking tours and Google Maps

Our walking tour maps are hosted on Google My Maps. Every “open the map” button on this site first takes you to a MUSEENYC page on our own domain, and from there to Google. The “Open in maps” links on reviews and tour stops, and the walking navigation links on each tour, open Google Maps directly.

Nothing is sent to Google until you tap one of those links. Once you're on Google Maps, you're on Google's service: Google's own privacy policy applies, and Google may set its own cookies.

Printable tour guides

The printable PDF guides are ordinary files served from this site. Downloading one is a normal request to our host, the same as loading a page, and the files carry no tracking of any kind.

Email you send us

If you email a tip, a pitch or a question about a tour, we have your message and your address, and we keep it as long as it's useful to reply and follow up. Nothing more happens to it.

We don't ask for your email address to see a map or download a guide. If we ever do, this policy will say what we collect, why, and who handles it before that form goes live.

Visit and search counts

To learn which pages, guides and tours are useful, we keep a minimal, anonymous count with our own small script, stored with Supabase, a database provider. None of it is personal information: it sets no cookies, stores no IP address, and can't be tied to you. This is the complete list of what it records:

• The page you opened, and the site you came from (just its domain, like google.com).
• Whether you're on a phone, tablet or computer, judged from screen width.
• What you type into this site's search box, and how many results it found.
• Taps on map, directions, printable guide, email and outside links, so we know which get used.
• A random ID kept in your browser's session storage. It lets us count one visit instead of ten page views, is never linked to who you are, and disappears when you close the tab.
• A small signal every 30 seconds while a page is open, so we can see roughly how many people are on the site right now.

We don't record session replays, mouse movements, anything you type outside the search box, or anything that identifies you. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, the script doesn't run at all. Supabase processes these requests for us and, like any web service, sees standard connection data such as your IP address when a count is sent. We look at the numbers only in aggregate, and keep them only as long as they're useful to us.

Trip plans you build

The free trip planner works out your days in your browser. When it builds a plan, and again if you save or print one, we keep a copy of the plan itself in the same Supabase database, under a random reference like TP-7K4M2-QX9WE that is printed on the plan. It is there so that if you write to us about your trip you can quote the reference and we can see exactly what you were looking at.

What is kept is the plan: how many days, your dates if you gave them, who is coming, the pace, the spending level, the interests you picked, and which places ended up in each day. What is not kept is anything about you — no name, no email, no stored IP address, no cookie, no session ID. Two plans built one after another have nothing linking them to each other, let alone to you. Anything typed into the box for places you already want to see is stored as the place it matched on this site, never as the words you wrote.

The reference belongs to the plan rather than to you: nobody who finds one can learn who made it. These records are deleted after two years.

Booking inquiries

The booking form on our services pages is the only place this website itself collects anything about you, and only because you typed it in and pressed send. It records exactly what the form shows: your name, your email address, which service you are asking about, your dates, how many of you there are, and anything you write in the last box.

There is no captcha, no tracking script and no cookie involved in sending it. It goes to our host, who passes it to us by email.

We use it to reply to you and to arrange what you booked, and for nothing else. It is never sold, never shared for anyone's marketing, and never added to a mailing list. We keep an inquiry while it is useful to reply and follow up, plus any record the law requires of a booking that happened, and delete the rest. Ask us to delete yours at any time and we will.

Photographs on a tour. If you book a walk or a ride, we take pictures of you during it, because that is part of the service. They are sent to you afterwards, and we keep our copies only as long as it takes to get them to you and sort out any problem with the delivery. We do not publish a photograph you are recognizable in, on this site or anywhere else, unless you have told us we can, and we never hand them to anyone else. Ask us to delete them and we will.

If you would rather not use the form, email us instead: the address is on every one of those pages, and then your message is simply an email, covered below.

Telling us we got it wrong

The feedback form on the about page collects exactly what you put in it: your message, and your email address only if you choose to leave one so we can reply. Nothing else is attached — no account, no cookie, and no record of what you were reading unless you tell us.

Messages reach us through Netlify, who host this site and pass submissions on to us. We keep them for as long as they are useful for fixing whatever you pointed at. An email left for a reply is used to reply and nothing else: it is never added to the newsletter or to any other list.

Who handles data for us

• Netlify hosts the site and keeps standard server logs, and stores what the booking form sends.
• Supabase stores the anonymous counts described above, on servers in the United States.
• Esri serves map imagery when a map is on screen.
• Google only once you tap through to Google Maps.

These providers act on our behalf or under their own policies as described above, and their servers may be outside your country, including in the United States. We have no advertising, data broker or marketing partners.

Why we're allowed to do this

For visitors covered by the GDPR or UK GDPR: we rely on our legitimate interest in running a secure site and knowing which pages are useful, using data that doesn't identify you. Your location is used only with the permission your browser asks you for. We don't use any data for automated decisions about you, profiling, or targeted advertising, and we don't process sensitive personal data.

Keeping it safe

Every connection to the site is encrypted. What little we keep is minimal by design, stored so that the public parts of the site can add a count but never read one back, and visible only to us.

Your rights

Depending on where you live — including the EU and UK under the GDPR, California under the CCPA/CPRA, and the other US states with consumer privacy laws — you have rights to know about, access, correct, delete, or obtain a copy of personal data held about you, to object to or restrict its processing, and to opt out of its sale, sharing or use for targeted advertising. We never do any of those last three.

We treat a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal from your browser as a valid opt-out, automatically, with nothing else for you to do.

In practice the only personal data we hold is any email you've sent us, plus any booking inquiry you submitted. Write to museenyc.art@gmail.com and we'll take care of it. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under California law, so there is nothing to opt out of.

We'll answer within 30 days, and we'll never treat you differently for asking. If you're unhappy with our answer, reply and ask us to reconsider; if you're still unhappy, you can contact your data protection authority or, in the US, your state attorney general. Because our visit counts can't identify anyone, we usually can't find, show or delete any single person's counts, and we'll tell you so plainly.

Children

This site isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them or from anyone under 16. Some of what we write about — bars, clubs, nightlife — is for adults, and venues set their own age limits.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change is significant — if we ever started collecting something we don't collect today — we'd say so plainly rather than quietly editing the text.