What this site knows about you

The requests behind the map

Opening Freibahn is a handful of ordinary web requests, and every web request shows the receiving server your IP address. Six services get one.

• Vercel hosts the site and serves its files.
• verkehr.autobahn.de, run by Autobahn GmbH, answers for traffic reports every fifteen minutes while the map is open.
• api.open-meteo.com, run by Open-Meteo, answers for the weather along the mapped stretches every half hour. It is asked about fixed grid points over Germany, never about your position.
• geocoding-api.open-meteo.com, also run by Open-Meteo, turns a place name you type in the search field into coordinates, and is only contacted while you use the search.
• tiles.openfreemap.org, run by OpenFreeMap, delivers the background map for the area you are looking at.
• routing.openstreetmap.de, run by the FOSSGIS association, calculates the road between two points. It is only contacted when you plan a drive.

Apart from the visit counts described below, Freibahn has no database of its own. Each of the six services keeps whatever short-term technical logs it needs to run, under its own privacy policy. That list of six covers everything the site requests on its own: it ships a security policy that makes your browser refuse to connect to any other server. The links that hand a stretch or a planned drive over to another maps app leave the site, and from there that app's own policy applies.

How visits are counted

Freibahn counts page views, so there is some idea of whether anyone is out there using it. The counting is done by Vercel Web Analytics. It runs on the same server that already serves the site, so it adds nobody to the list of six above. It sets no cookies and gives you no identifier that follows you from one visit to the next. Each view is recorded on its own, with the page you opened, the site you arrived from, your browser, your operating system, your device type, and a country and region worked out from your IP address. The IP address itself is not stored.

To tell a returning reader from a new one within a single day, Vercel turns the incoming request into a hash and discards it after 24 hours. Nothing is kept that could put your visits back together across days, across devices or across other websites. The result is a set of counts, not a set of profiles. If you would rather not be counted, any content blocker that stops analytics scripts stops this one, and every part of the site keeps working without it.

The same setup also measures how fast the site loads. Vercel Speed Insights records the timings your browser reports for a page load, such as how long the first content took to appear and how much the layout shifted while it settled. Each measurement is kept with the page you opened, your connection speed, your browser, your operating system, your device type, and a country worked out the same way. It sets no cookies either, and a timing is tied to nobody, so one page load cannot be linked to the next. The same content blockers stop it, and the site keeps working without it.

Your location

Your position is used only after your browser asks you for permission, in three places: Near me, starting a planned drive from where you are, and centring the map on you. For Near me, the distance from you to each derestricted stretch is worked out on your device, and nothing about your position is sent anywhere for it. Centring only moves the map. Planning a drive is different. It needs no permission of its own, and it sends exactly two points to the routing service: the start and the destination. If you let the drive start from where you are, that start point is your position, and it goes to the routing service like any other point. Say no to the location prompt and everything else keeps working.

Searching for a place is answered from two sources. The list of places is part of the site and is matched on your device, so most of what you type is answered without asking anyone. A quarter of a second after you stop typing, what you typed is also sent to the geocoding service, which knows the small places the built-in list leaves out.

What stays in your browser

Freibahn saves a few things in your browser so the site works the same next time: the most recently fetched traffic reports and weather readings, so the map can paint right away instead of starting empty, plus your language choice, your pinned stretches and your recent trips. That data is about the roads and your settings, not about you, and clearing the site's data in your browser removes all of it. A share link carries the map view and the trip in the address itself, and opening one sets the site up the same way planning that trip yourself would.

Contact and your rights

Questions about the site or about data go to cassianhunter@proton.me. Data protection law (the GDPR) gives you the right to see, correct or delete data a site holds about you. Freibahn holds none, so there is usually nothing to look up. If you think any of the above is wrong or incomplete, write and it will be fixed.