Privacy & Cookies

About this translation. Consteia is based in the Netherlands and acts under Dutch law. This translation is an aid that explains the rules in your language. It does not refer to the legislation of the countries where this language is spoken. If the translation differs from the Dutch text, the Dutch text applies.

1. Our philosophy

Consteia is an invitation to experience time differently, as a dance with the cosmos. That is also how we approach your data: with respect, with openness, and with the conviction that what is good for you is good for us too.

We do not see data as a revenue model. We would rather grow slowly, through beauty, sincerity and worth. That is why you have full say here over what happens with your information, and why we tell you in detail what happens.

2. Our measure

We hold two measuring tapes against everything we build.

The first is the human being. Your data is an extension of who you are, and you remain sovereign over it. We carry it on loan, for as long as you want and for the purpose for which you gave it. International human rights are our ground in this, even where no law obliges us to.

The second is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We see the GDPR as an achievement: a country that embraces such a regulation recognises that a human being is more than a collection of data. We follow it with conviction, and where the law leaves room, we choose the side that belongs most to you.

Where those two meet, we do what we say and we say what we do.

3. Two ways to use Consteia

This statement describes two situations, and the difference between them is large.

Looking around without an account

You read, you calculate, you explore Chronae and the charts. Everything you fill in stays in your own browser. Nothing of it ends up on our server.

Working with an account

Since Consteia has a login, you can leave data with us so that you find it again on every device. Then we do keep it, on our own server, and chapter 6 of this statement applies in full.

That choice is and remains yours. Consteia works entirely without an account.

Consonae has documents of its own, because more and more sensitive data come together there. See the Consonae Privacy Statement and the Consonae Cookie & Session Statement.

4. What we do and what we never do

What we do

• We place a few necessary cookies, so that the site works and your language and theme choices are kept.
• We give you the choice to keep personal data solely in your own browser, encrypted.
• If you choose an account, we keep what you put in it on our own server, and below we write down exactly what that is.
• We convert place names into coordinates via an external map service, which sees only the place name and never your IP address.
• We count visits to our pages from our own server logs, with a truncated IP address and without any cookie.
• We are open about every byte we keep and about every service we engage.

What we never do

• Place tracking cookies to follow your behaviour.
• Use an external statistics service. What we count comes from our own server logs.
• Sell your data or share it with third parties for commercial purposes.
• Follow you across other websites.
• Allow advertising networks.
• Collect anything without writing it down here.

5. Without an account: what happens

Necessary cookies

These are needed to make the site work and to remember your choices. They keep a setting and nothing else.

• Language preference, so that your choice is kept.
• Theme, light or dark.
• Display preferences for Chronae and the charts, such as the sorting of your list and whether or not an animation is shown.
• Retention period: at most one year.

Storage in your own browser

If you fill in your birth data without an account, it stays solely in your browser, encrypted. Only your browser on this device can read it. We never see it.

The same applies to your reading settings in the library and to your answers to a questionnaire you are still filling in.

If you clear your browser's data, these things disappear. On another device you start again.

Visit figures without a cookie

We want to know how many people view which pages. We do that from our own server logs, without a cookie and without an external service.

Your IP address is first truncated so that the last part disappears, and only then converted into a short identifier that starts anew every day. A visit today therefore cannot be linked to a visit yesterday.

Attached to that identifier are the requested page, the referring domain, the browser family, the operating system, the type of device, the screen width and an approximately estimated location, looked up in a map file that sits on our own server. Nothing leaves our server for this count.

We honestly add that this estimate can also contain a place name and approximate coordinates. They are derived from a truncated address and point to an area, never to an address or a person.

[To be decided: do we shorten this count to country and continent only, in line with the four privacy agreements we made for Evolvae?]

Place name to coordinates

An astronomical calculation needs exact coordinates. If you type a place name, we look it up with an external map service, which is listed in the Consteia Processor Register.

That request runs through our own server. As a result, your IP address never reaches that service, and only the place name goes out, detached from who you are. We keep the answer, so that we do not look up the same place again every time.

6. With an account: what we keep on our server

6.1 Your account

Your email address, an irreversibly encrypted password, the name you give, and the moments at which your account was created and last used. If you turn on two-step verification, we keep the key for it and a series of one-time recovery codes.

Basis: performance of the agreement that arises as soon as you create an account.

6.2 Your profile

A short text about yourself, an image if you choose one, and your own date of birth, time of birth and place of birth with the corresponding coordinates and country.

Basis: your consent. You can leave every field empty and Consteia works just the same.

6.3 Your saved charts and calculations

If you choose to save a chart, it is stored on our server with the data needed to draw it again. That way you find it again on every device you log in on.

Basis: your consent, per chart, because you decide yourself whether you save something.

6.4 Charts that you share

If you share a chart via a link, we keep the data of that chart, a name you give it, a secret key in the link, how often it has been viewed and when last. You can let such a link expire or withdraw it immediately.

Pay close attention here, because this is where your responsibility begins. If you put someone else's birth data into a chart or a share link, that is the personal data of that other person. Do that only when that person knows and agrees. We cannot check that for you, and you are the one who can.

A shared link can be opened by anyone who has it. So treat it the way you treat a key.

Basis: your consent, and your responsibility for the data of others.

6.5 Your agreement to our terms

We record which edition of which document you agreed to, in which language, at which moment, by which route, and from which IP address. An agreement without origin is not proof, and that works to your disadvantage just as much as to ours. The text itself is kept in the version history, so that we can always show you exactly the document you said yes to at the time.

6.6 Security of your account

We record failed login attempts, with the address used and the IP address. If you trust a device, we keep a recognition token for it, the name you give it, the browser details, the last IP address used and the country. Important actions in your account go into a log, with time, IP address and browser.

For the country at a login attempt we consult an external service, which receives the IP address in doing so. This is the only place where a visitor's IP address leaves our server. We keep the answer for seven days in a cache of our own, so that the same address does not pass that service again every time. Which service that is, is stated in the Consteia Processor Register.

Basis: legitimate interest in protecting accounts and preventing misuse.

6.7 Noemae, the library

Noemae is accessible only when you are logged in, and what you get to see depends on what you have access to. The agreements on use are in the Noemae Terms of Use. Below is what we record about you in the process.

What you read. We keep track of your reading progress, so that you can continue where you left off. Your reading settings, such as font size and line spacing, stay in your own browser and do not reach us.

Your access. If you are invited to a project, we record who invited you, for which project, when, and whether you accepted the invitation. With that we determine what you get to see, and it is the only way for the creator to know who is reading along.

What you contribute. We keep comments and text suggestions with your name and the moment, because without those two a creator can do nothing with them. Those contributions are there for the creator of the project and for no one else.

What you write. If you are a creator, we keep your texts with their full version history, so that nothing is lost. A project can be stored encrypted; how that works and what it does and does not mean is stated in section 12.

Who can look into it. If an administrator wants to look into a project that is not theirs, they pass a gate that asks for a recorded ground, and the moment, the person and the project go into a log. This applies to every project of someone else.

Basis: performance of the agreement for your access and your work, and your choice for everything you add voluntarily.

6.8 Orders and payments

If you buy tokens for Consonae, the Consonae Privacy Statement states what we record in the process. In short: the amount, the bundle and a reference to the payment, and your payment details reach the payment service and not us.

[To be completed once the bookshop goes live: which data belong to an order of a physical product, and which retention obligation applies.]

Basis: performance of the agreement, and the statutory retention obligation for accounting records.

7. JavaScript: a tool with a conscience

Consteia runs on JavaScript, for the date conversions, the interactive view of Chronae and the smooth navigation. If you block JavaScript, the core of the information remains readable and the movement disappears.

Our Socratic position

We use means that we made for your convenience and service. We know that others use this same means for very different purposes.

The means does not make the intention. The person or the organisation behind it does.

People made their first tools to hunt, to gather and to protect themselves. Our tools have that same purpose: to serve, to protect, and to nourish with knowledge and insight. They are there to share something beautiful, and to help you further.

As a knife can share bread, we choose sharing. As fire can warm, we choose warmth. JavaScript is our tool, and our intention makes it ethical.

This lies deep in the philosophy of Consteia.

8. External services

Parties that do part of the work on our behalf, bound by a processing agreement and without any say of their own over your data. Who they are at this moment, what they do and which data they see in doing so, is stated in the Consteia Processor Register.

That is deliberately in a document of its own. If we ever change hosting or another service, that register changes and this statement keeps its number, because the agreement with you does not change because of it. At the bottom of the register it states when something was changed, so that you can follow it.

If a party receives a different task with your data, that is a change of the agreement. It will be stated here and put to you.

Where a service is located outside the European Economic Area, we name it in that register, with the safeguard on which that transfer rests.

Social media

We place not a single pixel or cookie of Facebook, Instagram, X or any other platform. If you share something, you do so with your own account, on your own terms, and those platforms hear nothing from us about your visit.

9. Your rights

• Access. You can ask what we have of you, and you receive it in readable form.
• Rectification. If something is not correct, we adjust it. Most of it you change yourself in your account.
• Erasure. You can close your account. What then remains is stated in chapter 11.
• Restriction. You can have processing stopped while a dispute about it is ongoing.
• Portability. You take your data with you in a file format that another system can read.
• Objection. You can object to everything that rests on legitimate interest. Your interest weighs heavily in that.
• Withdrawing consent. What rests on your consent you can withdraw at any moment. What happened before remains valid, and what comes after stops.

You request this through the contact form. It is well secured, and a public email address would mostly attract spam. We respond within a month, and usually a good deal sooner.

If you cannot reach agreement with us, you can lodge a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens), via autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl.

10. Age

The knowledge on Consteia is there for everyone. Wonder at the stars has no age limit, and we exclude no one from reading, calculating and exploring without an account.

Creating an account

For creating an account we apply sixteen years. That is the limit that Dutch law sets on the age at which you can independently give consent to the processing of your data. If you are younger, you can use Consteia entirely without an account, and everything you fill in stays in your own browser.

Consonae

Consonae is for people of eighteen years and older. That is separate from the rest of Consteia and is laid down in the Consonae Regulations.

For parents and carers

A child can use Consteia safely without an account, because then nothing ends up with us. If you explore it together, you see exactly where the data stays and how it is protected. We think it makes for a good conversation.

11. What happens when you close your account

Your profile, your saved charts, your share links and your preferences are deleted.

What remains, and why: your agreements, for as long as a claim can still arise from them, and the records of payments, seven years, because tax law requires that of us. Everything that points to you as a person we remove from them.

12. Security

• All traffic with Consteia runs over an encrypted connection.
• The keys and passwords of our systems sit outside the folder the website runs from. So they do not travel along with a copy of the website or with a copy of the database.
• A project in the library can be stored encrypted, with a random key of its own per project, which in turn is stored encrypted under that master key. A stolen database copy then yields nothing. We are able to decrypt, because otherwise we could not show you your own text, and administrator access to someone else's project passes a gate with a log.
• Your messages on Consonae are stored encrypted, with a key of its own per conversation.
• We keep passwords solely as irreversible encryption.
• Two-step verification is available, and we advise you to turn it on.
• Sessions expire after a day without activity, and for administrators after eight hours.
• Data you fill in without an account stays encrypted in your own browser.
• Suspicious login attempts are counted and slowed down.
• We retrieve only what we need, because what does not exist cannot leak either.

If, despite everything, a data breach with risk to you does occur, we report it to the Dutch Data Protection Authority within 72 hours and inform you as quickly as we can, in plain language, with what you yourself can best do.

13. Retention periods

• Necessary cookies: at most one year.
• Remember-me cookie: 90 days, rolling with every visit, and gone as soon as you log out.
• Data in your own browser: until you delete it.
• Account, profile and saved charts: as long as your account exists.
• Share links: until the date you choose, or until you withdraw it.
• Failed login attempts: [proposal: 90 days]
• Trusted devices: as long as you trust them, and at most 90 days after the last use.
• Log of account actions: [proposal: 12 months]
• Visit figures: [proposal: 24 months, after that only aggregated totals]
• Country for an IP address: seven days in the cache.
• Coordinates for a place name: unlimited, because they belong to the place and not to a person.
• Your reading progress in Noemae: as long as your account exists.
• Invitations to a project: as long as the project exists, so that it remains traceable who had access.
• The log of administrator access: [proposal: 24 months]
• Correspondence via the contact form: as long as needed for handling, after that deleted.

14. Changes to this statement

This statement receives a number and a date, and every edition is kept. If something essential changes in what we do with your data, we ask you again. If we repair a typo or make a sentence clearer without touching its meaning, we leave you in peace. No one should have to tick a box for a removed comma.

15. Controller of the data processing

The controller of the processing of your data is Jouzuah Baas (Jeroen), the initiative behind Consteia, with registered address [to be completed].

Reachable through the contact form on consteia.org. We usually answer messages within two working days, and questions about your data are answered personally.

If Consteia acquires a legal form of its own, this responsibility transfers with it and we let you know before it comes to that.

16. Where this comes from

What is stated above comes from how we look at people. What Consteia stands for and what you can hold us to is set out in the Consteia Charter. That document binds us and imposes nothing on you, and where it promises more than the law asks, that promise applies.

17. In closing

Whoever does good, meets good.

We build Consteia from the conviction that beauty, sincerity and respect for the visitor is the best way. Because it is right.

Technology is for us a way to share something beautiful. Your privacy is a reflection of that.

Questions, doubts or good ideas, we are glad to hear them. Truly.

With love and respect for your autonomy,

Jouzuah