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Who is responsible for your data
BuildSums is an independent project run by Fabio Festa, a natural person based in Italy, acting as data controller under Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR). "BuildSums" is the name of the website, not a separate company.
- Data controller
- Fabio Festa
- Country of establishment
- Italy
- Contact for privacy matters
- lemonoakmont@outlook.com
- General contact
- lemonoakmont@outlook.com
No Data Protection Officer has been appointed. Article 37 GDPR requires one only for public authorities, for controllers whose core activity is large-scale regular and systematic monitoring, or for large-scale processing of special categories of data. None of those apply to a site that publishes calculators, so the requirement does not arise. Privacy requests are handled directly by the controller at the address above.
The calculators do not send your measurements anywhere
This is the most important thing on this page, so it comes first. Every calculator on BuildSums is a piece of JavaScript that runs inside your browser. Room dimensions, window and door openings, coverage rates, waste percentages, tile sizes, pattern repeats — all of it is computed on your own device.
There is no form submission, no API call and no database behind these tools. Nothing you type into a calculator reaches our servers, and nothing is stored between visits. Close the tab and the numbers are gone. If you want to keep a result, write it down or take a screenshot; we deliberately have nothing to give you back.
What is actually processed
Three categories, and nothing else:
- Technical connection data
- Like any website, serving a page requires your browser to send an IP address, a user agent string and the URL requested. Our hosting provider, Vercel Inc., processes these to deliver the page and to protect the service from abuse and denial-of-service attacks. We do not build profiles from them and we do not keep our own copy.
- Your cookie choice
- A single first-party cookie records whether you accepted or refused advertising cookies, plus the moment you decided. It is described in full in the cookie policy.
- Advertising data, only if you agree
- If you consent, Google may set cookies and read identifiers on your device in order to select, deliver, cap and measure advertisements. This is described in the next section.
We do not operate accounts, newsletters, contact forms, comment sections or shopping carts. There is nothing on this site that asks you for a name, an email address, a phone number or a payment method.
Advertising and Google
BuildSums is free to use and is funded by advertising. Advertisements on this site are or will be served by Google AdSense, a service operated by Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC.
- Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve advertisements on this site.
- Google's use of advertising cookies — including the DoubleClick DART cookie — enables it and its partners to serve advertisements to you based on your visit to this site and to other sites on the internet.
- Third-party vendors and advertising networks may likewise use cookies and similar identifiers to serve and measure advertisements.
- Where consent is required, none of this happens until you grant it. If you refuse, or if you simply never answer the banner, Google receives instructions not to store or read advertising identifiers on your device, advertising identifiers in URLs are redacted, and any advertisement shown is non-personalised — selected from the page content and coarse context rather than from a profile of you.
You can opt out of personalised advertising across the whole of Google's network, independently of the choice you make here, through Google's own controls:
How Google uses cookies in advertising
For advertising, Google acts as an independent data controller for its own purposes. Its processing is governed by its own privacy policy, linked above; we have no access to and no control over the profiles it may hold.
Audience measurement
We use Vercel Web Analytics to see which pages are visited and which calculators are used. It was chosen precisely because it is cookieless: it sets no cookie, stores nothing on your device and does not track you from one website to another. Page views are aggregated and cannot be traced back to an individual.
Because it stores and reads nothing on your terminal equipment, it falls outside the consent requirement of Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. That is why the cookie banner does not offer an analytics toggle: there is no analytics cookie to consent to. If that ever changes — for example if we adopted Google Analytics — the banner and this page would be updated first.
Legal bases
- Advertising cookies and personalised advertising
- Your consent, Article 6(1)(a) GDPR, together with Article 122 of the Italian Privacy Code implementing Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. You may withdraw it at any moment, and withdrawal is as easy as giving it: the link at the foot of every page reopens the same panel.
- The consent cookie itself
- Strictly necessary. Storing your answer is what allows us to honour it; without it, we would have to ask again on every single page, which would be worse for you and less respectful of your choice.
- Serving the site, security and abuse prevention
- Our legitimate interest in operating a working, non-abused website, Article 6(1)(f) GDPR. Limited to what delivering a page technically requires.
- Replying to a message you send us
- Our legitimate interest in answering correspondence, Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, or the performance of pre-contractual steps at your request where relevant.
How long anything is kept
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Calculator inputs | Not stored at all; discarded when the tab closes |
| Consent cookie | 180 days, then the banner asks again |
| Server and security logs (Vercel) | Short-term, per the hosting provider's own retention policy |
| Aggregate page views (Vercel Web Analytics) | Aggregated statistics, not linked to an individual |
| Advertising cookies, if consented | Set and controlled by Google, per Google's own retention periods |
| Emails you send us | As long as needed to deal with the matter, then deleted |
Transfers outside the European Union
Our hosting provider and our advertising partner are American companies with European entities, and some processing may take place in the United States or in other third countries.
These transfers rely on the European Commission's adequacy decision of 10 July 2023 concerning the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the recipient is certified under it, and otherwise on the Standard Contractual Clauses adopted by the Commission, supplemented where necessary by additional safeguards. You may request further information about these safeguards at the privacy address above.
Your rights
Articles 15 to 22 GDPR give you the following rights. Because we hold almost nothing about you, most of these are quick to satisfy — and where the data sits with Google rather than with us, we will tell you so plainly and point you to the right place.
- Access
- Ask whether we process data about you, and obtain a copy of it.
- Rectification
- Have inaccurate data corrected without undue delay.
- Erasure
- Have data deleted where one of the grounds in Article 17 applies.
- Restriction
- Require that processing be limited while a dispute is resolved.
- Portability
- Receive data you provided in a structured, machine-readable format.
- Objection
- Object to processing based on legitimate interest, on grounds relating to your situation.
- Withdrawal of consent
- Withdraw advertising consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.
Write to lemonoakmont@outlook.com. We answer within one month, as Article 12(3) requires, and normally far sooner. There is no charge unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.
If you believe your data has been handled unlawfully you also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the Member State of your habitual residence. For Italy this is the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali.
Children
BuildSums is aimed at people planning building and decorating work and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly process the data of anyone under 16. If you believe a minor has provided personal data through this site, write to us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
This policy will change when the site does — for instance when a new advertising partner or measurement tool is added. The date at the top of this page always reflects the current version. Where a change concerns the purposes of processing or requires fresh consent, the cookie banner will reappear and ask you again rather than assuming your previous answer still stands.