Privacy Policy

Updated October 15, 2026.

Visiting Hormuz Watch

Hormuz Watch provides a public dashboard, historical snapshots, and a conflict timeline. You can read them without creating an account or allowing Google ads. Fonts and site assets are served from this website. Following a source link takes you to another website, whose privacy practices apply there.

Your ad choice

We ask before loading Google AdSense. Until you choose "Allow ads," the site's ad loader does not request Google advertising scripts, create advertising slots, or set advertising cookies. Choosing "No thanks" leaves ads off.

We store your choice, its version, and the time you made it in your browser's localStorage under hormuzwatch.adConsent. The site does not send this record to an operator database. It has no automatic expiration and remains until you change it, clear site data, or your browser removes it. A future version of the notice can ask you again. If browser storage is unavailable, a choice applies to the current page only, and the site asks again on a later visit.

Use "Privacy choices" in the footer to change your answer. Withdrawing permission stops our loader from starting additional ads, and fully takes effect on your next page load. It does not delete cookies Google may already have placed. You can remove those through your browser's cookie settings.

When your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal through navigator.globalPrivacyControl, we treat it as "No thanks," keep Google ads off, and do not display the initial consent banner. This overrides a previously saved permission while the signal is active.

Google ads, when allowed

After you choose "Allow ads," the site loads Google AdSense using publisher ID ca-pub-4414686763437532. Google and its partners can receive your IP address, page information, browser and device information, and advertising interactions, and can use cookies or other identifiers to choose, deliver, measure, and protect ads. Ad delivery can contact Google's advertising, ad quality, and anti-abuse services. Google and its partners manage their storage and retention under their policies.

Read How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

Site usage and performance

Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights remain enabled regardless of your ad choice. Their scripts and collection requests use this site's /_vercel/insights and /_vercel/speed-insights paths. We have not enabled their optional cookie or user-identification features, and do not send custom analytics events or ad-report form contents to them.

Web Analytics records page views and related information, such as the page URL, referrer, time, approximate location, and browser and device characteristics. Vercel documents a request-derived visitor hash whose identification window is discarded after 24 hours. This is separate from retention of aggregate statistics. See Vercel Web Analytics privacy information.

Speed Insights reports page performance measurements, including loading speed and responsiveness, the page URL, network type, and technical browser and device information. It can include selectors identifying page elements involved in a performance measurement. See Vercel Speed Insights privacy information.

Vercel manages retention of usage and performance records under its service settings. The application does not maintain a separate database of these analytics records.

Browser alerts

"Enable Alerts" asks your browser for notification permission. Your browser retains that permission according to its settings, and you can revoke it there. While the dashboard is open, the page checks for updates and can display a notification when the assessed status changes.

The site does not register a service worker, create a push subscription, or send a push endpoint, subscription key, email address, or device token to the server for alerts. It stores no server-side subscription record and has no subscription retention period. Closing the page ends its checks; notifications already displayed may remain until you or the browser dismiss them.

Public data and APIs

The dashboard, timeline, health, and archive JSON APIs are publicly accessible. They provide news, source references, modeled figures, and saved dashboard data. The server fetches news and market sources using server requests; it does not forward your browser's ad choice, notification permission, or ad-report form to those sources. Archive snapshots preserve dashboard content, not visitor profiles. The application has no automatic archive deletion schedule.

Ad quality reports

If you submit the ad feedback form, the server receives the page URL, your description, an optional advertiser description, and an optional email address. It also stores a reference number, submission time, user-agent header, and referrer header. Reports are stored privately in Vercel Blob for owner review. Local development uses a local reports folder. Reports are not included in public APIs or archives, and the code sends no automatic email about them.

For rate limiting, the report endpoint keeps a connection IP address and submission timestamps in server memory. It considers submissions within the preceding hour; entries can remain in that process's memory until it ends. The saved report file does not include the IP address. There is no automatic deletion schedule for saved reports.

Hosting

Vercel hosts the site, handles requests, and provides storage. Serving pages and APIs exposes connection information, including IP addresses, requested URLs, request headers, and request timing, to Vercel. Vercel can process operational and security logs to deliver and protect the service. The application does not keep a separate visitor access-log database. Provider log retention and processing are governed by Vercel's service settings and Privacy Notice.

Changes

We will update this page when the site's practices change. A change to the ad consent version can require a new choice before ads load.