Cookie Policy

1. What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that a website or its partners store on your device through your browser. They are widely used to make websites work, to remember your preferences, and to measure or personalise advertising. Similar technologies (such as local storage) are covered by this policy too.

2. Cookies this website sets itself

None. howtofindtheip.com is a fully static website: it has no backend database, no login system and no analytics of its own. On its own, it sets no cookies and builds no profile about you. All lookups you see are performed by your browser calling independent public APIs directly — see the Privacy Policy for the full list.

3. Advertising cookies (Google AdSense)

We publish advertising on this website through Google AdSense to keep the tools free. When ads are displayed, Google and its certified partners may set cookies or use similar technologies on your device, for example to:

• serve ads based on your prior visits to this or other websites;
• limit how many times you see the same ad;
• measure ad performance and detect invalid traffic;
• combat fraud and abuse.

These cookies may include identifiers such as IDE or __gads. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.

You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings. You can also opt out of third-party vendor cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info and, for European users, at youronlinechoices.com. Opting out does not mean you will stop seeing ads — only that they will be less relevant.

4. Consent for visitors in the EEA, UK and Switzerland

If you visit this site from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, applicable law (the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR) requires us to obtain your consent before storing non-essential cookies on your device, including advertising cookies. For this purpose we use Google's consent management tools (a Google-certified Consent Management Platform). You can change or withdraw your consent at any time — for example via the "Privacy options" link in the footer of ad pages, or by clearing your cookies (see below).

Visitors who do not consent to personalised advertising may be shown non-personalised ads, which use cookies only for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting and fraud detection.

5. Functional third-party requests (no cookies)

To work, this site loads a few resources from third parties. These are functional, not trackers, and none of them sets advertising cookies through this site:

• Google Fonts — web font delivery;
• Leaflet CDN — the mapping library;
• OpenStreetMap / Esri — map and satellite imagery;
• ipwho.is / ipapi.co / geojs.io / ipify / proxycheck.io / dns.google — the IP and DNS lookups performed by the tools;
• Nominatim / BigDataCloud — coordinate-to-address lookups on the GPS pages.

These requests necessarily expose your IP address to the provider — that is how the internet works — but no cookies are involved on our side. Details are in the Privacy Policy.

6. How to control and delete cookies

All modern browsers let you review, block or delete cookies. Typically you will find these options under Settings → Privacy and security → Cookies:

• Google Chrome — Settings → Privacy and security → Third-party cookies;
• Mozilla Firefox — Settings → Privacy & Security → Cookies and Site Data;
• Microsoft Edge — Settings → Cookies and site permissions;
• Safari — Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data.

Blocking all cookies may affect how some websites work. Deleting or blocking Google's advertising cookies does not remove this site's functionality — the tools work entirely without them. This site does not respond to "Do Not Track" signals, since there is no common standard; your Google ad settings and browser cookie settings are the effective controls.

7. Changes to this policy

We may update this Cookie Policy to reflect changes in the services we use (for example, if advertising partners change). Updates are posted on this page with a new "Last updated" date.

8. Contact

Questions about cookies? Reach us via the contact page or write to contact@howtofindtheip.com.