Privacy policy

What happens with your data on rektal.net. Short version: very little.

Who is responsible

Paul Mauer
Franz-Nabl-Weg 6
8071 Hausmannstätten
Austria

Hosting

The website runs on a server rented from Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany) in the EU. To deliver the pages, the server necessarily processes your IP address. The web server does not keep access logs. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in running the website).

The lag test

The test sends small requests directly from your browser to Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the server region you select, and measures how long the answers take. AWS receives your IP address with these requests, like any website you visit. Depending on the region you pick, that data center can be outside the EU (for example in the USA or Asia). Amazon is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. We receive no data from AWS. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; running the test is the service you requested.

The Bufferbloat mode also downloads a test file from our own server. Nothing about that download is stored.

Your result is not stored by us as part of the test itself. It only exists in your browser and in the link you choose to share.

ISP leaderboard

If the leaderboard box under the test button is ticked (the default), your result is added to the ISP leaderboard. For this, our server looks up your IP address in an offline database (DB-IP) to determine your internet provider and country. The lookup happens on our server; your IP address is not sent anywhere and is not stored or logged.

Stored are only: internet provider name and network number (ASN), country, test server region, test mode, ping, jitter, packet loss and the time of the test. These records cannot be linked to you and are deleted after 90 days. To prevent abuse, your IP address is kept in the server's memory for up to one day for rate limiting; it is never written to disk.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in an ISP comparison based on real measurements). You can object at any time by unticking the box before running a test; your test results are then not sent to our server.

When you open the leaderboard page, the server looks up your provider in the same way to highlight it in the table. This lookup is not stored either.

Storage in your browser

The website sets no cookies. It saves your last chosen server region, test mode and leaderboard setting in your browser's local storage, so you don't have to pick them again. This data never leaves your device.

Visit statistics

We count visits with Umami, a statistics tool we run ourselves on our own server, so no statistics data goes to a third party. It uses no cookies and does not store anything in your browser.

For each page view, and for a few clicks (starting or finishing a test, the share buttons, links to products), it records: the page address without anything after a “?”, the website you came from, your browser, operating system, device type, screen size and language, and your approximate location (country or region). For a test it records only the mode and the verdict, for example “test finished, skill issue, quick”.

To do this, your IP address and browser identification are processed in the server’s memory. They are combined with a secret server key and the current month into a pseudonymous visitor ID, so that visits in the same month count as one visitor, and they are used to derive the approximate location. The IP address itself is not stored. The statistics stay on our server and are not shared.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in knowing which pages are used and how the site is found). If your browser sends the “Do Not Track” signal, the statistics script sends nothing. You can also object by blocking the script /lag.js in your browser.

No advertising trackers

No advertising trackers, no social media plugins, no cookies. Fonts are served from our own server.

Links to other services

The “on X” button opens X (Twitter) with a prepared post. No data is sent to X until you click it; after that, X's privacy policy applies. The same goes for affiliate links: when you follow one, the partner's website and privacy policy apply, and it may set its own cookies.

Your rights

You have the right to information, correction, deletion, restriction of processing, data portability and to object. Since we store no data that identifies you, we usually cannot assign stored leaderboard records to you. For questions, write to paul@mauer.ooo. You can file a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority (Datenschutzbehörde, dsb.gv.at).

Last updated: 11 October 2026