Privacy Policy

Introduction

At DNS Flattener (“we”, “our”, or “us”), we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy explains how we handle any information when you visit our website at dnsflat.com (the “Website”).

Information We Collect

We use the privacy-focused Umami and ChiliTrack analytics platforms side by side to collect usage analytics about how visitors interact with our Website. The systems store pageview and event records under pseudonymous session and visit identifiers, then report trends in aggregate. This helps us compare the systems while understanding how our Website can be improved.

Analytics Data

Through these analytics systems, we collect:

• Page views
• Visit duration
• Pages visited
• Referral sources
• Browser type
• Operating system
• Screen resolution
• Country of origin
• Tool action names, but never the domain values submitted to a tool

A domain you look up appears in the page address, because the tools put it there so a result can be linked to and reloaded. The analytics records exclude it: the address recorded for a page view or an event keeps only campaign (utm) parameters, which tell us which link or campaign brought you here, and drops the rest of the query string along with the fragment. So a looked-up domain is not sent to either analytics system, as a page address, as a referrer or as an event property.

When your browser sends an analytics request, the analytics service transiently processes the request IP address and user-agent to deliver the request and derive coarse country, browser, and operating system information. The raw IP address and user-agent are not retained in analytics records or attached to event properties.

Important: We do not:

• Use cookies
• Track users across websites
• Retain raw IP addresses or user-agent strings
• Add submitted domain values to analytics events
• Share or sell any data

DNS Query Data

When you use one of our DNS tools, we process the domain name you submit in order to perform the lookup you asked for.

Submitted domains are not copied into Umami or ChiliTrack event properties.

To reduce load on the DNS resolvers and public log servers we query, the result of a successful lookup is cached on our server in Upstash Redis. The cache entry is stored under a key made of the tool name and the domain you submitted, plus the record type or regions where the tool takes them, and it holds the lookup result itself. Each entry is written with an expiry and is deleted automatically when that expiry passes: between 5 minutes (DNS flattener) and 1 hour (DNSSEC validation, subdomain lookup), depending on the tool. Nothing renews the expiry, so an entry disappears unless the same domain is looked up again.

A cache entry holds nothing about the person who made the lookup. We do not attach an IP address, a cookie, a session identifier or any other visitor identifier to it, and there is no account. The application writes no record of its own that connects a lookup to a visitor; the fair-use counter described below is kept separately and is not joined to any lookup. Because the key is the domain itself, anyone using the same tool on the same domain within the window is served the same cached result.

To keep the tools available to everyone we enforce a fair-use limit, and that does require counting requests per visitor. To do it without keeping your address, we store a salted, non-reversible hash of your IP address alongside a request counter. The hash cannot be turned back into an address, it is not linked to the domains you looked up, and it is kept for at most one hour before it expires automatically. Nothing else is stored against it.

Separately from the application, the hosting infrastructure may keep standard, short-lived server logs, such as an IP address and the requested URL, for security and debugging. The lookup itself is requested in the body of the request rather than in its address, but a domain does appear in the page address, so opening or reloading a shared or bookmarked lookup link sends it to the server as part of the URL, where such a log can record it next to an IP address. Where a lookup fails, our application error logs may include the hostname that was looked up.

How We Use The Information

We use the usage analytics data to:

• Understand how visitors use our Website
• Identify technical issues
• Improve our service
• Make data-driven decisions about Website improvements

Data Storage and Security

Cached lookup results are held by Upstash, our Redis provider, for the expiry periods described above. Where Redis is not configured or is unreachable, lookups still work and simply run uncached.

The analytics event records are stored on infrastructure operated by A14A. For more information about the Umami software's data practices, you can visit their privacy policy.

Your Rights

We do not maintain named visitor profiles or retain raw request IP addresses in analytics records. Analytics events do use pseudonymous session and visit identifiers, but are not directly linked to a name or account. You can:

• Use browser features or extensions to block analytics scripts
• Contact us with any questions about our privacy practices

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new privacy policy on this page and updating the “Last updated” date at the top of this policy.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at: