Privacy Policy
What this site collects, why, and how it's kept.
Short version: this site sets no tracking cookies, uses no third-party analytics, fonts, or advertising, and doesn't profile you. The only personal data I handle is what you choose to send me through the contact form. The details are below.
Who is responsible
This website, www.nicolasebastiani.it, is run by Nicola Sebastiani, a photographer based in Italy, as a personal portfolio. For any question about your data, or to exercise the rights described below, write to n.sebastiani@outlook.com.
What I collect, and why
Contact form. When you send a message, I receive the name, email address, and message you type in — plus, if you started from a specific photo, a reference to that photo. I use this only to read and reply to you. The legal basis is your consent and my legitimate interest in answering enquiries. Messages are delivered to my personal Microsoft Outlook mailbox.
Anti-spam. To stop the contact form being abused, your IP address is checked briefly against a short-term rate limit. It is stored only as a one-way hashed value (never in readable form) and is automatically discarded after about 15 minutes. The legal basis is my legitimate interest in keeping the site secure.
Visitor statistics. I keep a simple count of how many times pages and photos are viewed, so I know which work resonates. These are aggregate counts only — no IP address, no browser details, no cookie, and nothing that could identify you is stored.
Likes and dislikes. If you react to a photo, your own choice is remembered in your browser (via local storage) so the buttons reflect what you picked and you're not counted twice. That preference stays on your device and is never used to identify you; my server only keeps the total number of likes and dislikes per photo.
Cookies and tracking
This site uses no cookies for visitors and no tracking of any kind — no Google Analytics, no advertising pixels, no social media trackers, and no externally hosted fonts or scripts. Because of that, there's no cookie banner: there is nothing to consent to. The one piece of on-device storage (the like/dislike preference above) is strictly functional, first-party, and used only for the feature you interacted with.
The only page that reaches an outside service is the interactive photo map: its background map imagery is loaded from a third-party map service (see below). That still involves no cookies and no tracking — just the map tiles your browser needs to draw the map.
The private administration area of the site uses a single, strictly necessary session cookie for the owner's login. Ordinary visitors never receive it.
Who your data is shared with
I don't sell or share your data, and there are no advertising or analytics partners. The only third parties technically involved are my service providers:
- Aruba S.p.A. (Italy) hosts the website and processes contact-form messages in transit as part of delivering email.
- Microsoft hosts the Outlook mailbox where your message arrives.
- CARTO and OpenStreetMap provide the background map imagery on the photo map. If you open that page, your browser requests map tiles directly from them, so — like any site that shows an image hosted elsewhere — they receive your IP address and basic request information. They set no cookies through the map, and this only happens on the map page.
Both act as processors and are bound by their own privacy terms.
Separately, the private administration area I use to manage the site looks up photo locations through Google's and OpenStreetMap's geocoding services. Those lookups happen on the server, are triggered only by me, and never involve visitor data.
How long I keep it
Contact messages stay in my mailbox for as long as I need them to correspond with you, after which they're deleted. The hashed anti-spam records clear themselves within minutes. Visitor statistics are aggregate and contain no personal data, so they may be kept indefinitely.
Your rights
Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you can ask me to access, correct, or delete the personal data you've sent, to restrict or object to how it's used, or to receive a copy of it. Just email n.sebastiani@outlook.com and I'll take care of it. If you believe your data has been mishandled, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Italian data protection authority, the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali.
Changes to this policy
If the way the site handles data ever changes, I'll update this page and revise the date above. Come back to get in touch any time if something here isn't clear.