This policy sets out what data is processed when counting and when visiting these pages, on what basis, and for how long.
In short
The counter sets no cookies and by default reads nothing from your device. Only where the site operator switches it on does its script read three values — the screen resolution, the width of the browser window and the pixel ratio; see 3. The IP address is not stored in the statistics; it feeds into a salted daily hash whose salt is deleted after 2 days.
No advertising profiles are built, and no raw data is sold or passed to third parties. Because the counter number feeds into the hash, the same visitor cannot be recognised as the same person across two different sites.
The overview further down is generated from the system configuration, not maintained by hand. It therefore describes the actual state rather than the intention.
1. Controller
The controller within the meaning of Art. 4(7) GDPR for the processing on the pages of www.stats4u.net is:
LW IT Solutions Company Lukas Wójcik, al. Tadeusza Kościuszki 80/82, lok. 301, 90-437 Łódź, Poland, NIP: PL7252266190, REGON: 369859995. E-mail: stats4u@lukaswojcik.com. Further particulars are in the imprint.
No data protection officer has been appointed; there is no obligation to do so under Art. 37 GDPR. Please address enquiries to the above or use the enquiry form available on every page.
2. Two processes that must be kept apart
This policy concerns two different things, and responsibility for them is not the same.
2.1 The counter on someone else's site. Where a webmaster embeds the counter on their site, they are the controller for the data collected there. They decide whether and how counting takes place, and they must inform their visitors about it. Stats4U processes that data solely on their behalf and is a processor under Art. 28 GDPR. The details are in the data processing agreement.
2.2 Visiting www.stats4u.net itself. For everything that happens on these pages — calling up the home page, creating a counter, viewing a statistics page, the enquiry form — the operator named under 1 is itself the controller. That is covered under 5.
If you arrived here because you saw a counter image on someone else's site: sections 3 and 4 concern you. The operator of that site is your point of contact; they can instruct us to erase your data.
3. What the counter collects
What the counter collects
This overview is generated from the system configuration and describes the actual state.
| Item | Purpose | Stored | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| IP address | derive country and city; goes into the daily hash | not in the counting statistics, but in the operations log | 14 days in the server and operations log |
| Daily hash (salted) | count a visitor once per day; accept the report sent on leaving a page only from counted visitors; count a goal reached once per visitor and day | yes, 16 bytes | 2 days |
| Online row of a visit | “online now” display, last page and entry page, characteristics for goals | daily hash with country, city, page last opened, browser, operating system, device, language, referring domain and entry page | until the nightly clean-up, at the latest about 25 hours after the last request |
| User agent | browser, operating system, bot detection | no, only the result | – |
| Page URL | most visited pages | yes | 400 days |
| Referrer | where visitors come from | domain only | 400 days |
| Browser language | language breakdown | only the result | 400 days |
| Excluded addresses | leave the owner's own visits uncounted | only on request, in the clear | until withdrawn |
| Events | count what visitors did (click, form) | only name and count per day; names that look like personal data are rejected | 400 days |
| Goals | count how many visitors reached a goal defined by the operator (event or page), and where they came from | per goal and day the number of visitors and of triggers, and a count per characteristic (country, device, browser, operating system, language, referring domain, entry page) | 400 days |
| Polls | count votes; one vote per visitor, poll and day | per answer and day a count, also per country and device type; the daily hash without the answer | counts until the poll is deleted; daily hash 2 days |
| Address checksum (salted) | limit abuse: count requests per address and hour (events, time on page, device values, failed password entries and deletion attempts) | yes, with the times of the last hour, in a file | about 2 hours; deleted at the next clean-up |
| Page transitions | which page follows which (on by default, can be switched off) | only the pairs and their count per day | 400 days |
| Time on page | how long a page was visible | only one of six bands, counted per day | 400 days |
| Scroll depth | how far down the page was visible | only the quarter reached, counted per day | 400 days |
| Last page of a visit | where visitors stop | only the address and its count per day | 400 days |
| Entry page | which page a visit showed first, by source type | only the address and its count per day | 400 days |
| Time on page, per page | which page holds readers | only sum and count per address and day | 400 days |
| Load time | how long the counted page took to load | only one of five bands, counted per day | 400 days |
| Screen resolution | what resolution the screen has | only the value and its count per day | 400 days |
| Window size | how wide the browser window was | only one of seven bands, counted per day | 400 days |
| Device pixels | resolution times pixel ratio | only the value and its count per day | 400 days |
The daily hash is built from IP, user agent, counter number, date and a secret salt that changes every day and is deleted after 2 days. After that, not even a known IP allows anyone to work out which hash belonged to whom. Because the counter number is part of it, the same visitor on two different sites cannot be recognised as the same person.
Time on page, scroll depth and the last page are measured without any identifier. The counter reads nothing from your device for this: it measures its own running time and the window's scroll position, works out a band and a percentage from them, and sends only those two. The window height stays in the browser for these measurements. Since 16 September 2026, however, the server accepts the report the script sends when you leave the page only if the same browser was counted for this counter on the same day — otherwise programs that merely run the script would distort the figures. To check this, it forms the daily hash as it does when counting and looks it up in the online list, for a visit across midnight also the one from the day before. The result of this check is not stored, and the report is not linked to the hash. The last page of a visit needs no additional collection at all; it falls out of the nightly clean-up of the online list. The entry page likewise falls out along the way: the counting path writes a row anyway, and if it is new, that was the first view of the visit. The load time comes from the measurement the browser made of ITS OWN request to the counted page — not a characteristic of your device. Since 27 August 2026 three items can be added that the counter's script really does read from your device: the screen resolution, the width of the browser window and the pixel ratio. That is an access to your terminal equipment and is not to be confused with the measurements above. Since 11 September 2026 it happens only where the site operator has switched it on — for site owners who want to know which screens they are designing for. Here too only a count per day is stored: resolution and device pixels as a value, the window size only as one of seven bands, because an exact window size would be a means of recognition.
The counter sets no cookies and by default reads nothing from your device. Only where the site operator switches it on does its script read three values: the screen resolution, the width of the browser window and the pixel ratio. On stats4u.net itself a session cookie is set only when you create or change a counter.
E-mail address of the counter owner. Some counters from before 2026 have one on file; anyone entering one in the wizard does so voluntarily. It is used to send the management link to that exact address on request – no other address can be given – and, once confirmed, for a single notice if the counter falls silent and for the letters the owner switches on: the weekly summary, an e-mail on unusual days and a message on reaching a set threshold. Anyone can also subscribe to the weekly summary of a counter; only a confirmed address receives it, and each weekly summary can be unsubscribed with one click. Addresses are stored in plain text, never passed on and never used for advertising. Unconfirmed addresses are deleted after two days at the latest. There is no automatic deletion period for the owner's address; it can be removed at any time in the owner box of your own statistics page, otherwise on request through the support form.
Visits to stats4u.net itself. When a page there is reached from another site or with utm_source in its address, the server keeps the first such source of the day – only the domain or the utm_source value, and the page reached – together with a salted daily hash of IP address and user agent that matches no counter's hash. No cookie is set, and requests recognised as automated are not recorded. This record is deleted after 2 days. When a counter number is taken, where the visitor came from is stored with that number – the referring domain or utm_source value (or the first source of the day), the pages on stats4u.net, the time and when the code was first copied – without IP address or identifier, for as long as the counter exists; for a number with which nothing was ever counted, 400 days. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR – knowing which ways to the service lead to counters that are actually used.
The home page and the statistics pages serve Google AdSense advertising. The blog serves Google AdSense advertising. A consent layer asks for your agreement first.
The legal basis for counting is the site owner's legitimate interest in audience measurement (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
Whoever embeds the counter on their site is the controller for the data collected there; Stats4U processes it on their behalf.
Optional insights and owner tools
When enabled by the website owner, campaign labels from marked links are summarized with visitor counts and goals. Existing daily visitor hashes associate campaigns with goals for at most two days. Funnels keep only the current step during a visit, expire after thirty minutes of inactivity or at the day boundary, and are removed by the cleanup task within an hour; only daily step totals remain. Optional contact events contain action names, never phone numbers, email addresses or form values. Shop reports contain paid amounts, currency, refunds and a keyed hash of an order reference for duplicate detection, retained with aggregates for 400 days. No customer details are sent. Owner notes, revocable reading permissions and shop settings remain until removed or the counter is deleted. The personal counter overview uses an explicitly started browser session. Search Console connects only on the owner's request using Google's read-only scope. Authorization tokens are encrypted at rest; disconnecting deletes them and attempts revocation with Google. Search Console results are fetched from Google and are not stored persistently. The owner must describe enabled measurements in the website's privacy information and provide any required consent. These features do not create cross-site visitor profiles.
Optional page groups, event properties and performance measurement
The owner may configure page groups, dashboard cards and saved views. Group visitor and goal counting reuses the daily visitor hash; the extra group hashes are deleted after at most two days. Only daily totals remain for 400 days. Event properties accept only predefined category values, are counted separately and retained as daily totals for 400 days; no form field content is read. Optional Web Vitals measurement transmits the page address, metric, value and a short-lived random sample reference. The address is cleaned, queries and fragments are removed, metric values are immediately placed into bounded histogram buckets and aggregated by day, page and device. Sample references prevent duplicate reports and are deleted after at most two days; updated reports for the same sample replace the old bucket. Histograms remain for 400 days. Dashboard layouts and saved views are private to the owner and remain until removed or the counter is deleted. All additional measurement features are initially off.
Reports, embeds and API
Scheduled report definitions, separate access-key hashes and their scope are stored until removed or the counter is deleted. Keys expire and are revoked by an owner-key change. Schedules use the existing confirmed owner address; they store no new recipient address. Delivery status is stored to prevent duplicate reports and show failures. Private chart notes are never included in scheduled reports, embeds or the new API.
Since 27 August 2026 the counter measures nine further things: how long a page was visible, how far down it was visible, which page was the last of a visit, which was the first, how long the individual page held its readers, how fast it loaded, what screen the device has, how wide the window was, and how many real pixels are behind it.
The first six are stored without an identifier and collected without any access to your device. Whether a report on them comes from a counted visit is, however, checked by the server against the daily hash (see below the table). The last three are different: for those the counter's script queries your device. That is an access to your terminal equipment, and we put it here rather than in the small print — the details are below the table. Since 11 September 2026 this happens only on sites whose operator has switched it on (data-screen="1" in the embed code); on www.stats4u.net itself only after your consent.
What is stored is, in all nine cases, only a band, an address or a value with a count per day. There is no row that describes a single visit.
Events (only if the site operator sets them up). An event is a click or a call that the site operator gives a name, for example “contact” or “form-sent”; where the automatic link-click option is switched on, it is named after the target of a link (the path for the site’s own pages, the host for other sites). What is stored, per counter, day and name, is only a number — no identifier, no IP address, no order. From “contact: 14” it is impossible to tell who clicked. The name must not contain personal data. The service rejects names that contain an @, a long run of digits or a long code; it cannot recognise a plain personal name. Anyone who builds names from what a visitor typed is not using the function as intended and is themselves responsible for that as controller. The names appear on the counter’s statistics page and are public there unless the operator has set the counter to private. To protect against abuse, the server keeps, per address, a salted checksum and the times of the requests of the last hour, for events as well as for the reports on time on page and device values, for failed password entries (admin area and password-protected statistics) and for failed deletion attempts; that record is deleted after about two hours, at the next opportunity.
Goals (only if the operator defines them). A goal is an event or a page that the site operator defines as a success, for example “contact” or “/thanks”. Unlike an event, a goal counts each visitor only once per day. To do so, the server keeps, for a goal reached, the visitor’s daily hash — the same one with which it counts the visitor anyway — and deletes it together with the other daily hashes after 2 days. What is stored beyond the day, for 400 days, per goal and day, is only the number of visitors who reached it and how often it was triggered, plus a count per characteristic: country, device, browser, operating system, language, the domain of the referring page and the entry page of the visit. These characteristics come from the row that the server keeps during a visit for the “online now” display; it contains country, city, the page last opened, browser, operating system, device and language, and since 25 September 2026 also the domain of the referring page and the entry page. It is deleted at the nightly clean-up once its last request is one hour in the past — at the latest about 25 hours afterwards. An event only counts as a goal if the same browser was counted as a visitor for this counter on that day. After 2 days there is no longer any row that links a visitor to a goal.
Polls (only if an operator creates one). A poll consists of a question and two to six answers or a star rating, set by the person who creates it. It appears as an image on their page; votes are cast on www.stats4u.net under /poll/. The image is a counter image: every display is collected and counted as described above. Whoever votes sends the chosen answer to www.stats4u.net. Stored per poll, day and answer is only a count, plus a count per answer by country and device type. So that each visitor votes only once per poll and day, the server keeps a daily hash — formed like the counter's, but with the number of the poll — without the chosen answer, and deletes it after 2 days. At no point is there a row that links a person to their answer. The voting form carries a check value computed from the number, the date, the IP address and the browser identifier; it is not stored and prevents another site from making its visitors vote unnoticed. Question, answers and vote counts remain stored until the poll is deleted; whether the result is publicly visible is decided by its creator. When a poll is created, Google reCAPTCHA checks the transmission to protect against automated submissions; the script required for this is loaded only when the form is sent, not when the page is called up. Legal basis for this: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. In addition, our own form protection formconfirmed checks the creation of a poll and every vote (5.17).
4. Legal bases and objection
4.1 The legal basis for counting is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — the legitimate interest of the site operator in measuring the reach of their own site. The interest is in knowing whether and how the site is found; no overriding interests of visitors stand against it, because no identifier is set, the IP address does not enter the statistics and cross-site recognition is technically impossible.
4.2 The counter stores nothing on the device, and by default it reads nothing from it either — neither for the counting nor for the six measurements under 3 that need no access to the device. For these, Section 25 TDDDG and Art. 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive do not apply, and consent is not required. The screen resolution, the width of the browser window and the pixel ratio are different (see 3): the counter's script reads these three values from the device, but only where the site operator has switched this on. That is an access to terminal equipment within the meaning of those provisions. Whether it requires the visitors' consent on a particular site depends on the law that applies there; that assessment, and obtaining consent where it is needed, is for the site operator who switches it on.
4.3 The legal basis for providing the service to the counter owner and for answering enquiries is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of a use relationship); for preventing abuse and for operational security, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; for legally required retention, Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR; and for anything for which consent is obtained, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR.
4.4 Right to object. You may object at any time under Art. 21 GDPR to processing based on Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. Address the objection to the operator of the site on which you encountered the counter; they are the controller. You may also contact stats4u@lukaswojcik.com — we will pass the objection on and act on instruction.
4.5 Excluding one's own visits. The operator of a counter may exclude their own IP addresses and ranges from counting. Those entries are held in plain text, because a range cannot be compared as a checksum, and remain stored until the operator withdraws them.
5. When you visit www.stats4u.net itself
5.1 Web server access log. Every request is logged with the full IP address, time, address requested, response code, volume transferred, referrer and user agent. The log serves fault diagnosis and defence against attacks and is deleted after 14 days. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. This applies to every request, including the retrieval of a counter image.
5.2 Session cookie. When you create or change a counter on www.stats4u.net, a session cookie is set, and likewise when you enter the correct password on a password-protected statistics page. It contains a random identifier, serves solely to hold the steps of the wizard together or to keep those statistics unlocked, and expires when the browser is closed. The password form itself does not set one, and on the privacy policy and imprint pages, none is set, deliberately.
5.3 Advertising. On the statistics pages under /live, advertising from Google AdSense (Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland) is displayed. In doing so Google may process data about your device and, with the corresponding consent, store and read identifiers on your device. The home page carries no advertising.
5.4 Consent management. For visitors from the EEA, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Google's consent management (“Privacy & messaging”, fundingchoicesmessages.google.com) is loaded. It asks for consent and makes the result available under the IAB TCF standard. Where no consent is given, Google serves advertising without personalisation and without access to your device. You may withdraw your consent at any time using the control in the consent manager.
5.5 Session recording (MousePlayer). On the pages of www.stats4u.net — and only there — a session recording may run that captures mouse movements and clicks and stores something on the device for that purpose. It is loaded only after your consent. It does not run on the pages of customers who embed the counter.
5.6 Own counter. www.stats4u.net counts its own visitors with the same counter it offers, with the measurement of screen resolution, window width and pixel ratio switched on. This too is subject to your consent; the counter stores nothing on the device.
5.7 Enquiry form. If you use the form, we process what you write into it: the topic, your name, your e-mail address, a counter number where given, and your message. The submission is stored so that it can be dealt with, and is additionally sent as a notification to a messenger service (Telegram) through which the operator receives it. To protect against automated submissions, Google reCAPTCHA checks the transmission; the script required for this is loaded only when you open the form, not when the page is called up. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR. In addition, our own form protection formconfirmed checks the submission (5.17).
5.8 E-mail addresses of counter owners and subscribers. For counters dating from before 2026 an address is sometimes on file; one may be given voluntarily in the wizard or in the owner section of your statistics page. Such an address is used to send the administration link on request — to precisely that address; no other address can be entered. For anything else it is used only once it has been confirmed through a link sent to it, which is valid for 24 hours. A confirmed address receives a single notice if the counter falls silent and a check of its page confirms the problem (at most once per counter), and, if you switch them on in the owner section, the weekly summary of the counter (which can also be ordered together with the address in the wizard), an e-mail on unusual days and a message when the counter reaches a threshold you set. Independently of ownership, anyone may subscribe to the weekly summary of a single counter from its statistics page; here too only a confirmed address receives it. For each subscription the counter number, the address, the language and the time of confirmation are stored. The letters contain only the counter's statistics — no IP addresses and nothing about individual visitors. Every weekly summary carries a link that unsubscribes with one click; the e-mail on unusual days is switched off in the owner section, and a threshold is removed there or deleted automatically once it has been reached. The addresses are stored in plain text, are not passed on and are not used for advertising. There is no automatic erasure period for the owner's address; you can remove it yourself at any time in the owner section, and the letters to it as owner end with it. Legal basis: for the weekly summary, the subscription to it, the e-mail on unusual days and the threshold message, your consent under Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, which you can withdraw at any time with effect for the future by unsubscribing, switching them off or removing the threshold; for the administration link, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR; for the notice about a silent counter, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR.
5.9 Sending e-mail. All e-mail — the administration link, the confirmation links and the letters under 5.8 — is sent via an outgoing mail service (PrivateEmail, Namecheap, Inc.). There is no advertising by e-mail and no bulk mailing: a letter goes only to an address confirmed for it under 5.8, and the administration link only on request. To prevent abuse, the server keeps, per counter, per IP address and per e-mail address, a salted checksum and the times of the requests; these records and addresses that have not been confirmed are deleted after two days at the latest (see 8).
5.10 Automatically generated summary. At the top of a statistics page, two or three sentences about the counter's development may appear. The language model is given exclusively already aggregated figures and the most visited page addresses of that counter — no IP addresses, no visitor identifiers and nothing that could be assigned to an individual person. The processing takes place on the operator's own infrastructure.
5.11 Fonts and embedded files. Fonts, images and scripts on these pages are served from our own server. The exception is the scripts of the services under 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.12, 5.15 and 5.16; they come from the servers of the respective provider. These pages themselves do not load fonts from third-party servers; however, Google's consent management (5.4) loads fonts for its own window from Google servers (fonts.googleapis.com, fonts.gstatic.com), and Google receives the IP address in the process. The script of the form protection (5.17) comes from formconfirmed.com, a server of the same operator.
5.12 Protection against automated requests (Google reCAPTCHA). Requests from certain forms and switches on www.stats4u.net are checked by Google reCAPTCHA v3 (Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland). These are: the enquiry form (5.7), creating a poll, requesting the administration link, entering an e-mail address for a counter or for the weekly summary, recovering a counter through its page, checking whether a page carries the counter, joining the web ring, and switching the e-mail on unusual days on or off. The script is loaded only when such a form is opened, clicked into or sent, or such a switch is operated, not when a page is called up; pages without them do not load it at all. When it runs, it creates an entry in the browser's local storage (“_grecaptcha”), and the browser sends Google information about the device and its use, including the IP address. From this, Google assesses whether the request comes from a human and returns a score. www.stats4u.net itself does not send Google the IP address, but the token generated in the browser, and receives the score in return. If there is no valid result, if Google cannot be reached or if the score is below a threshold, the request is rejected. The enquiry form is the exception: a submission with too low a score is stored together with the score, marked as suspected spam and not forwarded to Telegram; if Google cannot be reached, it is accepted unchecked. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is protecting the forms, the server and outgoing mail from abuse. The check serves to keep out spam and automated submissions. It is therefore not controlled through consent management (5.4): it runs only when such a form or switch is actually used, and the access to the browser is then strictly necessary to protect that submission (Section 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG, Art. 5(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC). For the transfer to the USA see 7.
5.13 Where new counters come from. When a counter number is taken on www.stats4u.net — with the first step in the wizard, which includes copying the code — the following is stored with that number: the time; where the visitor came from, that is the domain of the referring site (never its path or search terms) or the value of utm_source in the address; the path of the wizard page and of the page before it on www.stats4u.net; and the time the code was first copied. A further counter created in the same session takes over this information; for a number requested through the WordPress plugin, only that fact is recorded. No IP address is stored with the number. To count how many different people create counters, the server keeps, on the day a number is taken, the visitor’s salted daily hash — formed from IP address, user agent, date and the daily salt, with a purpose marker of its own — together with a running number for that day, and stores only this running number with the counter number. The hash is deleted together with the other daily hashes (see 8); after that, the running number shows only that two counter numbers were taken by the same visitor on the same day, and no longer leads to anyone. Whether the counter is used later is read from its own figures. The purpose is to see which ways of finding the service lead to counters that are actually used.
5.14 First source of a visit. Many visitors reach the wizard only after several pages. So that the source is not lost, the server keeps, when a page of www.stats4u.net is called up from another site or with utm_source in the address, the visitor’s salted daily hash — formed from IP address, user agent, date and the daily salt, with a purpose marker of its own, so that it matches no counter’s hash — together with that domain or utm_source value and the path of the page reached. Only the first source of the day is kept, and requests recognised as automated are not recorded. If the same visitor takes a counter number that day, this source is stored with the number (5.13) and marked as such. No cookie is set, and nothing is stored on or read from the device; the server uses only what the browser sends with every request anyway. Legal basis for 5.13 and 5.14: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; the legitimate interest lies in knowing which ways of finding the service lead to counters that are actually used. An objection can be sent to stats4u@lukaswojcik.com.
5.15 Live chat (reactive.chat). On the pages of www.stats4u.net — and only there — a chat window may appear through which you can write to us. It is a product of the same operator and runs on the operator’s servers in Poland. It is loaded only after your consent; if you decline, it is not loaded at all. The chat window stores entries in your browser’s storage whose names begin with “rc_”: a random identifier of the conversation, the state of the window, messages not yet sent and — if you provide them — name, email address and telephone number from the form shown before the chat. It sets no cookies. When it connects, it transmits the page being viewed (address and title), the referring page, language, time zone, screen and window size, the type of device and the pages visited earlier during this visit; once the chat is opened, also the visible text of the page, so that a reply can refer to it. Your messages and uploaded files are stored, together with the browser identifier (user agent), language and country. Email addresses, card numbers, IBANs, telephone and tax numbers in messages are masked in the browser before sending. The IP address is used only briefly, in working memory, to protect against abuse. Replies are generated by a language model on computers of the operator’s own in Poland; no AI provider receives your messages. Under “Your data” in the chat window you can see at any time what is stored, withdraw your consent and delete everything. Legal basis: for loading and for storing on the device, your consent under Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR and § 25(1) TDDDG; for handling your enquiry, Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR.
5.16 Search with AI answers (Answely). Using the magnifying glass in the header, you can ask a question about www.stats4u.net. The answer comes from Answely, a separate product of the same operator that runs on its servers in Łódź, Poland; no external AI service is involved. The script for it is loaded only when you open the magnifying glass, not when a page is called up. When you send a question, your browser transmits the question (at most 300 characters), the language and the address of the current and the referring page, each without parameters and anchors; for a follow-up question, up to three previous rounds of that conversation are included. For technical reasons, the server also receives your IP address and browser identifier. Answely matches the question against the public pages of www.stats4u.net and has a language model formulate an answer from them; the answer is labelled as AI-generated and may be wrong — the linked pages are authoritative. The question and the answer are not stored and are not used to train AI models; they exist only in working memory while the answer is being produced. If you click a link in the answer, only the fact that a click took place is counted. Answely sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser on www.stats4u.net and creates no identifier that recognises you. To protect against abuse, a hash is formed from your IP address and a random value that changes daily; it exists for at most 2 minutes. In content-free counters (time, length of the question, result, duration) and in the access log, your IP address appears only truncated (IPv4 without the last octet, IPv6 to the first 48 bits) and without your question. The nightly backup is stored encrypted at Google Cloud Storage in Warsaw. Please do not enter confidential information in the search field. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is answering questions about the content of www.stats4u.net quickly and with sources. Because nothing is stored on your device, no consent is required.
5.17 Our own form protection (formconfirmed). The same forms and switches as under 5.12, and in addition voting in a poll, are also checked by formconfirmed, a product of the same operator that runs on its servers in Poland; no third parties are involved. Its script comes from formconfirmed.com and is loaded only when a field of such a form is first clicked or typed into; the voting page of a poll loads it when the page is called up. It fetches a signed task, which your browser solves in the background (a proof of work), and passes the result to www.stats4u.net with the request as a single-use token. In the process, your browser sends formconfirmed.com the address of the page, your IP address and the usual headers of a request (such as the browser identifier and preferred language), from which formconfirmed recognises whether the task was fetched by a browser or by a program; the token contains the points in time, whether a field invisible to humans was filled in, whether the browser reports itself as automated or shows signs of it, and some counts on how the form was used (number of keyboard, paste and pointer inputs and how evenly the typing was paced) – never which keys or what was entered. www.stats4u.net submits the token to formconfirmed for checking together with your IP address and the content of the invisible field; for the enquiry form also your name, your e-mail address and your message, when an e-mail address is entered for a counter or the weekly summary that address, and when a poll is created its question and answers; if reCAPTCHA (5.12) is switched on, also its score, which serves only to compare the two methods and does not affect the result. formconfirmed checks a name only for whether it looks randomly generated, and an e-mail address for whether it looks randomly generated, whether its domain belongs to a provider of disposable addresses and whether that domain accepts e-mail at all (a DNS query). A message is checked by a rule-based filter for collections of links, typical spam phrases and gibberish and for whether it is written mainly in a script that does not match the language of the page; if the AI check is switched on, it is also assessed for advertising, collections of links, phishing and gibberish by a language model of the operator on its own computers in the EU – the text is processed only in working memory and is neither stored nor used for training. Further indications are whether the IP address belongs to a data centre, to the Tor network or to a network known as a source of spam (based on locally stored lists; nothing is queried externally), whether the task was fetched from the same address range as the request, whether the same source was blocked on other websites protected by formconfirmed in the last hour, and how often it sends forms in quick succession. Campaign detection: to recognise waves of spam that hit many websites at once, formconfirmed derives fingerprints with a secret key from the message or from the question and answers of a poll (only from 40 characters and 6 words), from the e-mail address and from the domains of links it contains; the content cannot be recovered from them. For 30 days, formconfirmed compares them with the fingerprints of other websites protected by formconfirmed and with spam reported there; plain text and IP address are not part of this. The name, e-mail address and message themselves are neither stored nor logged. If we later classify an enquiry from the enquiry form as spam or complete it, we report this to formconfirmed (spam or not spam); the report is kept with the check result and may influence the checking of identical submissions on other websites. formconfirmed stores the IP address only in truncated form (IPv4 without the last byte, IPv6 only the first 48 bits) and as a hash with a key that changes daily, and deletes this hash after at most one hour; the check results (action, score, reasons, domain of the page, where applicable the reCAPTCHA score and our report) are kept without it for 30 days, as are the fingerprints of campaign detection. Used tokens are deleted after at most eleven minutes, checked e-mail domains with their result after at most 7 days. As with every request, the web server log of formconfirmed.com records the full IP address and the browser identifier for 14 days. The form protection sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser and creates no fingerprint of your device. If the result is “block”, the request is rejected. If it is “flag”, a stricter threshold applies to reCAPTCHA (5.12); for the enquiry form and for polls the submission is accepted and noted as suspicious. If the language model considers a message to be spam, the result is “flag” or “block”, depending on the setting; if it cannot assess the message clearly or does not answer in time, the result is “flag”. If the token is missing, or if formconfirmed cannot be reached or does not give a usable answer, the request is treated as with “flag”. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is the same protection as under 5.12 and, for campaign detection, also the joint defence against spam across many websites. In the browser, the form protection processes only what is necessary to send the form being used (Section 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG, Art. 5(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC); it is therefore not controlled through consent management (5.4). No data are transferred to a third country.
6. Recipients
The counter data processed on behalf of controllers does not leave the server in Łódź. It is neither sold nor passed to third parties nor written into anyone else's cloud.
Recipients exist only for the ancillary services named under 5:
- Google Ireland Limited — advertising on the statistics pages, consent management, protection of the forms against automated requests (5.3, 5.4, 5.7, 5.12),
- Telegram FZ-LLC — notification of incoming enquiries (5.7),
- Namecheap, Inc. / PrivateEmail — sending e-mail (5.8, 5.9),
- MousePlayer — session recording on www.stats4u.net, only with consent (5.5).
Beyond this we disclose data where we are legally obliged to do so — for instance to law enforcement authorities on a valid order.
7. Transfers to third countries
Processing takes place in Poland and therefore within the European Union.
A transfer to a third country occurs only with the recipients named under 6. For Google, the European Commission's adequacy decision on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework applies, supplemented by standard contractual clauses. For Namecheap, standard contractual clauses apply. For Telegram (United Arab Emirates) the transfer is based on Art. 49(1)(b) GDPR; it concerns exclusively the details you yourself write into the enquiry form. Anyone who does not use the form is not affected.
For third countries without an adequacy decision, access by state authorities cannot be ruled out with the same certainty as within the EU. That is why this is stated here, and why the scope is kept this small.
8. Retention periods
The periods are set out in the overview under 3. In summary:
- web server access log: 14 days,
- online row of a visit: until the nightly clean-up, at the latest about 25 hours after the last request,
- visitors' daily hashes, including those for goals reached: 2 days; the salt is deleted with them,
- first source of a visit to www.stats4u.net (5.14): 2 days, together with the other daily hashes,
- live chat (5.15): conversations 12 months after the last message, after which a nightly run deletes them; in the browser, the details from the form shown before the chat for up to one year, the conversation identifier for one day,
- search with AI answers (5.16): question and answer not at all; the hash used to protect against abuse at most 2 minutes, its random value 2 days; counters and access log with truncated IP address 7 days, in backups until these expire (weekly copies up to one year); the number of clicks on links per day 90 days,
- form protection (5.17): truncated IP address as a hash at most one hour, check results without the IP address and fingerprints of campaign detection 30 days, used tokens at most eleven minutes, checked e-mail domains at most 7 days, web server log of formconfirmed.com 14 days; names, e-mail addresses and messages themselves not at all,
- source of a counter number (5.13): as long as the counter exists — it is erased with it; for a number with which nothing was ever counted, 400 days,
- aggregated evaluations (pages, page transitions, referrers, languages, events, goals and their characteristics, time on page, scroll depth, entry page, last page of a visit, time per page, load time, screen resolution, window size, device pixels): 400 days,
- polls: question, answers and vote counts per day, country and device type until the poll is deleted; the voters' daily hash 2 days,
- excluded addresses: until withdrawn by the counter owner,
- counter owner's e-mail address and the settings for letters to it: until erased by them,
- subscriptions to the weekly summary: until unsubscribed,
- unconfirmed e-mail addresses and the records for preventing abuse of the e-mail forms: deleted at the nightly clean-up once they are 24 hours old, i.e. after two days at the latest,
- submissions from the enquiry form: until dealt with, and beyond that for as long as commercial or tax retention obligations exist,
- total counter reading: permanently — it is a figure with no personal reference.
A nightly run deletes what has expired. Erasure is not suspended on request.
9. Your rights
You have the following rights against the controller:
- Access (Art. 15 GDPR) — what data concerning you is processed,
- Rectification (Art. 16 GDPR) — correction of inaccurate data,
- Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR) — where no retention ground stands against it,
- Restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR),
- Data portability (Art. 20 GDPR) — for data based on consent or contract,
- Objection (Art. 21 GDPR) — against any processing based on legitimate interests,
- Withdrawal of consent (Art. 7(3) GDPR) — with effect for the future; processing carried out until then remains lawful.
9.1 What limits us here. The statistics contain no IP addresses; the visitor hashes are salted, and the salt is deleted after 2 days. After that, a record can no longer be assigned to any person — not even if you give us your IP address. Under Art. 11(1) GDPR we are not obliged to collect additional data solely in order to answer a request. As Art. 11(2) GDPR requires, we will tell you so and explain why, rather than invent an answer.
9.2 Where to send the request. If your concern relates to the counter on someone else's site, the operator of that site is your point of contact (2.1). You may still contact us; we will pass it on and act on their instruction. If it relates to www.stats4u.net itself, contact stats4u@lukaswojcik.com directly.
10. Complaint to a supervisory authority
Under Art. 77 GDPR you have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, without prejudice to other remedies.
The competent supervisory authority for the controller is:
Prezes Urzędu Ochrony Danych Osobowych (UODO), ul. Stawki 2, 00-193 Warsaw, Poland, uodo.gov.pl.
You may equally contact the supervisory authority of your place of residence or of your workplace.
11. No automated decision-making
There is no automated decision-making within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR and no profiling. No advertising profiles are built, no interests are inferred and no assessments of individual persons are made.
The detection of automated requests (“bots”) evaluates the user agent of a request, not a person, and has no legal effect for anyone.
The reCAPTCHA score (5.12) decides only on the individual request; beyond that, no one is assessed. A rejected request can be sent again, or the matter can be addressed to stats4u@lukaswojcik.com; a submission from the enquiry form is never rejected because of its score. The same applies to the result of formconfirmed (5.17); it can, however, also reject a submission from the enquiry form.
12. Is provision required?
There is neither a statutory nor a contractual obligation to provide data. Without processing the items named under 3, however, a request cannot be counted — that is the function itself, not a condition.
Providing an e-mail address is voluntary. Without one, only the administration link and the letters under 5.8 cannot be sent.
13. Security
All pages and the retrieval of the counter image run exclusively encrypted over HTTPS. The server is located on the operator's premises; the database accepts no connections from outside. Credentials are held outside the directory reachable over the network.
Visitor recognition works with a secret salt that changes daily. Because the counter number feeds into the hash, the same visitor produces two different hashes on two different sites — cross-site recognition is therefore technically impossible, not merely prohibited.
The full description of the measures under Art. 32 GDPR is in Annex 1 of the data processing agreement.
14. Children
The service is aimed at operators of websites, not at children. No data of children is knowingly collected. The counter does not distinguish by age, because to do so it would have to collect exactly the kind of data it does not collect.
15. Changes to this policy
This policy is kept up to date when the processing changes. The version published at www.stats4u.net/privacy governs; it carries a version number and a date.
The overview under 3 is generated from the system configuration on every request. If the technology changes, the overview changes with it — it cannot become outdated without the code changing too.
This policy is published in several languages. Only the English version is binding; the other language versions are translations. In the event of any discrepancy, the English version prevails.
16. Further documents
The following apply in addition:
- the terms of service — what the service does, what it does not do, and who is answerable for what,
- the data processing agreement — for everyone who embeds the counter on their own site,
- the Privacy text for your site — a ready-made paragraph for your own policy, tailored to your own counter, in every language of this website,
- the imprint.
Version
Version 1.27, dated 6 November 2026.