Privacy policy

Froqel is run by one person, Joshua C. Pulley, from Canada. This policy describes what actually happens when you visit the site, not what a larger company's boilerplate would say, because Froqel doesn't have the systems a larger company would have. There's no account system, no login, no shopping cart and no newsletter. The site publishes restaurant chain menu prices for reference. It doesn't take orders and it doesn't process payments.

That leaves two sources of personal information, and one that is described here because it is coming rather than because it is here.

What Froqel collects

Measurement, and only if you accept it. Froqel uses Google Analytics 4 to see which pages get read and how people arrive. It records an approximate location worked out from your IP address, your device and browser type, the pages you opened, whatever referred you, and how long you stayed. Google Analytics 4 does not retain the IP address itself. None of it is matched to a name, because the site never asks for one.

The important part is the condition. The tag is not fetched until you accept the measurement category in the banner. Decline, or ignore the banner, and no request goes to Google at all — not a reduced one, not an anonymous one. The cookie policy names the specific cookies and how long each lasts.

The contact form and the inbox. If you write through the contact page, the message carries whatever you put in it: your name, the address you want a reply at, and what you wrote. That form posts to Web3Forms, a form-delivery service that forwards the message to contact@froqel.com. Web3Forms is a processor acting on Froqel's instructions: it runs on Amazon Web Services, encrypts what it holds, and deletes stored submissions after 30 days. Writing directly to contact@froqel.com skips it entirely, and is the option to use if you would rather no third party touched the message.

Nothing sent through either route is added to a mailing list, because there isn't one, and none of it is used to send you anything you didn't ask for.

What Froqel never collects. No payment details. No government identification. No account, because there's nothing to log into. No cross-site profile of any individual reader.

Advertising, which is not running yet

Froqel intends to run Google AdSense display ads eventually, to cover hosting and the hours it takes to check prices against real menus. That has not started. There is no ad code on any page, no ad cookie is set, and no advertising vendor receives anything from this site today.

The honest version of this section is therefore short, and it will get longer on the day it stops being true. When advertising starts, the banner gains a separate advertising checkbox that is unchecked by default and independent of the measurement one; personalised ads run only for readers who tick it; and for visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Google requires a consent platform it has certified rather than a hand-built banner, so that is what will be in place before the first ad loads. Google's own account of how its ad systems handle information is at Google's Advertising Privacy and Terms.

Once ads are live, Google Ads Settings turns off personalised advertising from Google everywhere, and aboutads.info does the same for other participating vendors. Both work per browser and per device.

Consent, and how to withdraw it

Nothing non-essential loads before you choose. Every visitor sees the same banner and gets the same options, whether they're in Montreal, Manchester or anywhere else, because Froqel runs one version of the site rather than a stricter build for some regions and a looser one for the rest.

Measurement and advertising are separate decisions with separate checkboxes, nothing is pre-ticked, and continuing to browse is not treated as agreement. Withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: Cookie choices, at the bottom of every page, reopens the banner with your current answer showing, and unticking a category stops it immediately.

How long Froqel keeps things

The consent cookie lasts 180 days, then you're asked again. Analytics records are held for the retention window set in the Google Analytics property and are not kept indefinitely. Messages are kept in the inbox long enough to answer them and to have a record of the exchange, then deleted; Web3Forms drops its own copy after 30 days regardless.

Your rights in Canada

Canada's federal private sector law, PIPEDA, gives you the right to know what personal information Froqel holds about you, to get a copy of it, to have anything inaccurate corrected, and to withdraw consent where consent is what permits the use.

If you're in Quebec, Law 25 adds to that: the right to be told before your information is used to profile you, the right to have information about you deleted, and the right to receive it in a portable format. It also requires that a refusal be as easy as an acceptance, which is why the banner works the way it does.

To use any of these, write to contact@froqel.com or use the contact page. Joshua answers these directly, since there's no privacy team to route them through.

Your rights elsewhere

If you're in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the GDPR gives you the rights above plus the right to object to processing, to erasure, and to data portability. If you're a California resident, the CCPA and CPRA give you the right to know what's collected, to have it deleted or corrected, and to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information — Froqel does not sell personal information in the sense those laws define a sale, and has nothing to share with an advertising partner today because it has no advertising partner.

The request process is the same wherever you're writing from, and it's the same person reading it.

Children's privacy

Froqel isn't directed at children under 13 and doesn't knowingly collect information from anyone that age. If you believe a child has sent something through the contact form, write to contact@froqel.com and it will be deleted.

Third party links

Froqel links to the websites of the restaurant chains it writes about, because that's where you'd go to confirm hours or place an order, and to Wikimedia Commons for the source of every storefront photograph. Those sites run their own privacy practices, separate from Froqel's, and Froqel isn't responsible for how they handle your information once you leave this site.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the date at the top updates and the new version replaces the old one immediately. Froqel doesn't send a separate notice for wording changes. If a change affects what's collected or why — advertising starting, for instance — the revised text will say so plainly rather than folding it into a general update note, and the consent banner will ask again rather than holding you to an answer you gave about a different set of facts.

Questions about this policy

For anything not covered above, including a request to access, correct or delete your information, write to contact@froqel.com or use the contact page.