Privacy & choices

Updated November 8, 2026. PowderPeek is operated by Michael Boyle. Public mountain information requires no account. Location is optional.

Basic traffic measurement

PowderPeek records the public pages and mountain tabs viewed, time, broad device category (mobile or desktop) and a referral category such as Google, ChatGPT or direct. A random visit identifier is kept in session storage in the current browser tab; a new visit starts after 30 minutes of inactivity. It is not a cross-site identifier or a count of unique people.

Traffic records do not contain raw IP addresses, full browser user-agents, full referring URLs, search queries, precise location, email or saved lists. Query strings are normalized to known public page identifiers. Traffic records are visible only to the owner. Reports cover the last 90 days; older records are removed as new traffic is processed or the owner opens the dashboard. Known bots, Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals are excluded, although automated traffic cannot be identified perfectly. Ad blockers and privacy choices can cause undercounting.

Contact messages and owner sign-in

The Contact form stores the name you choose to provide, reply email, topic, message and submission time in the owner’s private inbox with a 90-day reporting window. Older messages are removed when a new message arrives or the owner opens the dashboard. A secret-keyed, daily-changing hash of the connection IP limits spam submissions; the raw IP is not retained by the form. This hash is not used for advertising or traffic profiling. Use Contact for correction or privacy requests.

Email sent to support@powderpeek.com is forwarded through Porkbun to the owner’s Gmail inbox. Those providers process the message, sender address and delivery information. Email is separate from the website form and its 90-day deletion process; messages may be kept while addressing a request or maintaining business records. Please avoid sending sensitive information that is not needed to resolve your question.

Administration uses the hosting platform’s ChatGPT sign-in and server-side owner checks. Public visitors do not need to sign in. The optional Google AdSense connection is for the owner only and does not access visitor Google accounts. It requests read-only access, checks the publisher identity, and saves the site review status, daily estimated earnings and AdSense page views for PowderPeek in the private database. Google connection credentials and authorization tokens are encrypted at rest. These records are used only for the owner’s reporting dashboard and are not published, sold or used to target advertising. Earnings records are retained for business reporting until the owner requests removal. The owner can revoke the connection in their Google Account’s third-party connections settings; revoking access stops future Google reads but does not delete previously saved reports.

Saved on your device

Your saved mountains and preferred snow unit are kept in your browser’s local storage. They stay on that browser and are not sent to our weather service. Clearing this site’s browser data removes them.

Nearby ski areas

The home page asks your browser for permission to use your device location. If you allow it, this page uses the coordinates to calculate distances to ski areas. PowderPeek does not save those coordinates or send them to its servers, weather services, or advertising providers. The page requests saved weather using resort identifiers only. Your browser or operating system may use its own location services to determine your position.

You can decline location access and choose a city or ski area instead. A session flag in your browser prevents repeatedly asking for permission during the same visit; it contains no coordinates. You can revoke location permission in your browser’s site settings.

Weather and external services

A scheduled collector requests public NOAA, NWS, WeatherAPI.com and MET Norway weather data and public resort snow reports. Website visits read saved results from a database rather than requesting new weather from those providers. The hosting provider processes ordinary connection information to serve and protect the site. The site is also subject to the hosting platform’s access controls and privacy practices. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which receives the connection information needed to deliver them.

Camera, resort, weather-source, and road-condition links open external websites, which have their own privacy practices.

Sharing and cameras

Share resort creates a public link to the selected mountain. Your saved list is not included. The Copy link button writes only that link to your clipboard; sharing through another app happens only when you choose it.

Embedded cameras connect to the resort’s camera provider only after you select Load camera. Brownrice, Roundshot, CamStreamer, YouTube, HD Relay, IPCamLive, the resort, or another named provider may receive connection information and use cookies or other storage under their own privacy policies. Close camera removes the player; it does not clear any provider cookies. The official camera link is always available if you prefer to visit the resort directly.

Advertising

The Google AdSense publisher record is configured for review. Ad serving remains disabled until account review, ad-unit setup and required consent messages are complete. If Google ads are enabled, Google and third-party vendors may use cookies to serve ads based on prior visits to this or other websites. Google’s advertising cookies allow Google and its partners to personalize ads where permitted and consented to.

Manage Google ad personalization in My Ad Center and read how Google uses information on partner sites. Other participating networks offer choices at YourAdChoices. Required regional consent and privacy messages must be configured before ad serving is enabled. Turning off PowderPeek visit measurement does not itself change Google advertising preferences.