Your privacy is important to us at TraceThatIP. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your information when you use our IP geolocation and network tools. We are committed to being transparent about our data practices and giving you control over your personal information.
1. Information We Collect
When you use our service, we may collect the following types of information to provide and improve our tools:
- IP addresses — Your public IP address is processed in real time to display geolocation results. We also process any IP addresses you choose to look up via our IP Lookup tool.
- Browser and device metadata — Standard HTTP request headers including user agent, referrer, and language preferences. This data helps us optimise the experience across different devices and browsers.
- Usage analytics — Anonymised page view and interaction data collected via Google Analytics to help us understand which features are most useful and where we can improve.
- Contact form submissions — If you contact us, we collect your name, email address, and message content to respond to your enquiry.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect strictly for the following purposes:
- Providing and operating our geolocation service, including our What's My IP, IP Lookup, and IP Formatter tools
- Analysing anonymised usage patterns to optimise performance and user experience
- Maintaining security, preventing abuse, and enforcing rate limits to protect service availability
- Responding to support enquiries submitted through our contact form
- Complying with applicable legal obligations
3. Data Retention
We do not permanently store individual IP lookup queries or associate them with personal profiles. Geolocation results are cached temporarily on our servers (typically for one hour) to improve performance and reduce load on upstream providers. Contact form submissions are retained only for the duration needed to respond to your enquiry, after which they are archived or deleted. Analytics data is retained in anonymised, aggregated form.
4. Third-Party Services
Our service uses the following third-party services, each with their own privacy policies:
- Geolocation providers (IPinfo, ipapi) — We send the IP address being looked up to these providers to retrieve location data. These providers maintain their own data protection policies.
- Google Analytics — Used for anonymised website usage analytics. Google's privacy policy governs how they handle this data.
- Mailgun — Used to deliver contact form email notifications. Mailgun processes email data in accordance with their data processing agreement.
5. Cookies and Tracking
TraceThatIP uses minimal cookies required for security (CSRF protection) and analytics. We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party marketing trackers. Our CSRF cookies are HTTP-only, secure, and strictly necessary for the safe operation of our API endpoints.
6. Your Rights
Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal data:
- Access to information we hold about you
- Correction of inaccurate data
- Deletion of your data ("right to be forgotten")
- Restriction of or objection to processing
- Data portability — receiving your data in a structured, machine-readable format
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us with your request.
7. Updates to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes in our practices, technology, or legal requirements. We encourage you to review this policy regularly. Material changes will be noted with an updated effective date at the top of this page. For questions about these terms, see our Terms of Service.