Privacy
What this site keeps
Almost nothing. Project Scroll has no accounts and no ads of its own. Two things count visits. One is a plain visit total that keeps nothing about you: no cookies, no internet address, no name. The other is optional and off until you say yes: a visit counter from Meta, used to see how the hunt is found and, later, to show Project Scroll’s own advertisements to people who have been here. You choose on your first visit, and you can change your mind here.
Kept in your own browser
A few things are remembered so the site works the way you left it. They are stored in your browser on this device, nobody else can see them, and we never receive them.
- Light or dark. The page colors you chose.
- The lantern. Whether you put it out.
- The opening flourish. That you have already seen the ink draw itself on your first visit, so it does not replay.
- Your tin badges. The badges you have earned around the site, and the days you visited, so the “Regular” badge can count them.
- Your followed cases. The cases you starred on the case board.
- Your case notes. Anything you write in a case notebook. See all your notes.
- Your answer about the visit counter. Allow or keep off, so you are not asked again.
- Your drafts. What you type into the message form and the family-history and family-legend forms, so it survives a reload. Nothing is sent from those forms; you copy the text and send it yourself.
To clear all of it, clear this site’s data in your browser settings.
Sent to other sites
- Where am I? On a then-and-now page, the “Where am I?” button asks your device for its location so it can put a dot on the old plan. The location is used only in your browser, to draw the dot. It is never sent to Project Scroll or stored.
- Maps. The modern map under the site’s maps (town names, highways, streets and aerial photographs) comes from the USGS National Map, a free public-domain service of the US Geological Survey. While a map is open, your browser asks the USGS server (basemap.nationalmap.gov) for its map pieces, so that server sees your internet address, as any website would, under the USGS privacy policies. No account, cookie or tracking is involved. Choose “Plain” or “Lines” on a map to use only what the site itself draws.
- The map room. The 1860 wall map is shown straight from the Library of Congress, so your browser asks the Library’s image server (tile.loc.gov) for the pieces of the map you look at. The other county maps in the map room come the same way from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries (cdm17272.contentdm.oclc.org) and the University of Michigan Library (quod.lib.umich.edu). The Sanborn sheets and the Cassopolis page’s 1884 corner come from Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org and its image servers). The 1860 half of the Penn Township slider on the Cassopolis page comes from the same server.
- Facebook. Links to Project Scroll’s Facebook pages and Messenger simply take you there. On a case page, or where a story offers a video, you can choose to show the live Facebook post or video; only then does your browser load it from Facebook, under Facebook’s own terms. Until you click, nothing from Facebook is loaded.
- The visit total (GoatCounter). Every page you open is added to a running total by GoatCounter, a small independent counter that sets no cookies and stores nothing that identifies you. Your browser sends it the page’s address, the site that sent you here, your browser and screen size, and the counter works out a rough location (the country and, often, the state or province) from your internet address and then throws the address away. We keep a dated record of each page view (the page, the time, the browser and screen size, the site that sent you, and the rough location), but it is never tied to a name, an account or an internet address, and no internet address is stored. The same counter also tallies a few plain events, with nothing attached to them but the page: when a story is read halfway and to the end; when a case is opened, a way in is opened, an answer is copied or a badge is earned; the words typed into the site search (lower case, cut to 40 letters, and never anything with an @ or a long number in it); a tap on an email button, “Ask about this” or a studio link; and the name of another site when you follow a link to it. A link from one of our Facebook posts may carry a short tag (such as
?p=studio) so we know which post it came from; it is counted once and then removed from the address. Its own terms are in GoatCounter’s privacy policy. To be left out of it, set your browser’s “Do Not Track”. - The Meta visit counter (only if you allow it). If you choose “Allow”, your browser loads a small script from Meta (the Meta Pixel) that tells Meta which pages of this site you looked at, and when. Meta may match that to a Facebook or Instagram account if you have one, under Meta’s privacy policy. We use it to see which parts of the hunt and the studio are visited, and later to show Project Scroll’s own advertisements on Facebook and Instagram to people who have been here. It records page views, when the Services section is read, and when the Messenger button is pressed. It never sees what you type: your notes, drafts and messages stay in your browser as before. If you choose “Keep it off”, or make no choice, nothing from Meta is loaded, and nothing is counted.
When you write to us
Email to research@projectscroll.com lands in a mailbox hosted for us by GoDaddy on Microsoft 365, under GoDaddy’s privacy policy; messages sent through Facebook travel under Facebook’s own terms. Either way, what you tell us about your family is used to answer your question and for nothing else, and is never sold or shared.