Privacy
This page covers two separate things: the figures you type, and which pages get visited.
Do the numbers I enter leave my browser?
No. Every calculation runs in your browser, on values you type. There is no account, no email capture, no lead form, and no server here that receives a balance, a rate or an income. The site is a set of static files with no back end to send them to.
The one exception is a link you create yourself. “Share these results” puts the figures into the part of a web address after the # and copies it to your clipboard. Nothing is added until you click it. Browsers strip that part before sending the request, so the figures travel inside the link you paste, not through this site. Anyone with the link sees those numbers.
What is measured, and what is not
This site uses Google Analytics to count page views. It is configured so your figures cannot reach it.
| Collected | Not collected |
|---|---|
| Which pages are viewed, and in what order | Any figure you enter, such as a balance, rate, income or home value |
| Where you arrived from, including campaign tags | Anything after the # in the address bar |
| Approximate location, derived from IP | Your name, email or any contact detail |
| Device, browser and screen size | Anything typed into a calculator field |
| Which tool was opened and whether results were shown | Any amount attached to those events |
The right-hand column is enforced in code, not by policy: events are rejected before sending if any value parses as a number, and the page address handed to analytics is rebuilt without the fragment or any query except campaign tags.
Analytics can see that someone opened the refinance calculator, but not what they put in it. The address sent to Google is rebuilt from the origin, the path and the query before it is sent. It is never location.href, because on this site the part of href after the # is your mortgage balance.
Campaign parameters in the query are kept, because they are how anyone can tell whether writing a guide was worth the afternoon. No figure this site produces is ever written to the query.
Advertising
Ads from Google AdSense keep the site free. They never see the figures you enter.
Ads are non-personalised: Google picks them from the page you are reading, not from a profile of you, and this site does not ask for personalised ads. Your figures are never written into the page address while you type, and ads do not load on a page opened from a link that carries figures, so no balance, rate or income reaches AdSense.
Ads are kept away from the calculator inputs and are left out when you print. How Google uses information from sites that show its ads is set out in Google’s partner-sites policy.
What is stored on your device
Two things, both removable by you, neither sent anywhere.
- Calculator drafts. If you enter figures, they are saved in this browser’s local storage so they are still there when you come back. The “Clear my data” button on any calculator removes them.
- Your analytics preference, if you set one above.
Both live on this device only. There is no account to attach them to and no copy on a server, which also means they do not follow you to a different browser or phone.
Questions or corrections
One address, and it forwards to a person.
Write to feedback@reficompass.com. Corrections to the arithmetic are especially welcome: say which page you were on and what you expected. Please do not include your figures unless you want to; nothing about a correction requires them.
This page describes how the site works. It is not legal advice, and nothing on Refi Compass is financial, tax or legal advice.