Privacy Policy

Boring on purpose. Last updated 26 September 2026.

This site is built to be useful first and creepy never. StandaloneHQ keeps as little about you as it can get away with. It does one thing worth being upfront about: it shows adverts through Google AdSense to keep the planner free. The advertising is the part that hands data to a third party (Google), so it is spelled out in full below. Nothing non-essential runs until you tap Allow on the consent bar; tap No thanks and you get the planner and the guides with no ads and no advertising cookies.

What StandaloneHQ itself collects

• The ECU Pinout Planner runs entirely in your browser. The engine details you enter are never sent to us and are not saved between visits.
• StandaloneHQ runs no third-party analytics. There is no account, no login, and no profile.
• If aggregate stats are switched on, and only once you have tapped Allow, the planner sends coarse tallies to this site: which engine family and preset was chosen, what the derived I/O added up to, which ECUs ranked as workable, which one was opened or exported, and which add-on modules kept coming up. Each of those is a short list of whitelisted labels and counts, stored with a country code if the host supplies one and a timestamp. No IP address, no user agent, no cookie and no identifier of any kind goes with it, so there is nothing to tie a tally back to you. It exists to show which engines and ECUs the planner should cover better, and for nothing else.
• Your consent choice for advertising (allow or decline) is kept in your browser’s local storage under the key sahqConsent, so we do not ask again on every page. That is the only thing this site stores on your device.
• Server logs held by our hosting provider may record your IP address and the pages requested, for security and to keep the site running. They are not used to build a profile of you and are cleared on the host’s normal rotation.

What StandaloneHQ does not store

• No IP addresses, user agents, names, account IDs, or precise locations are stored by StandaloneHQ against your activity. Your IP is glanced at by the server only to fend off abuse of the contact form (as a salted hash that expires within a minute), then discarded.
• StandaloneHQ’s own code sets no cookies and uses no advertising IDs.
• Contact messages contain only what you type into the form — name, email, subject, message — and are emailed to us so we can reply. They are not stored in the website’s database.

Advertising (Google AdSense)

• StandaloneHQ shows adverts through Google AdSense. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.
• Google’s use of advertising cookies lets Google and its partners serve ads to you based on your visits here and elsewhere on the internet.
• If Google serves ads from other third-party vendors or networks on this site, those vendors may also set cookies. Where the consent message is shown, you can see and set your choices for those vendors there; you can also opt out of many of them at the links in the next section.
• Ads load only after you tap Allow on the consent bar. Tap No thanks and the AdSense script never runs and no advertising cookies are set. Adverts sit around the planner, never inside it.

Turning ads down or off

• You can switch off personalised advertising in Google’s Ads Settings at adssettings.google.com.
• You can opt out of many third-party vendors’ advertising cookies at aboutads.info/choices, and — in the UK and EU — at youronlinechoices.eu.
• Opting out does not make the ads vanish; it just stops them being tailored to you.

Consent, and visitors in the UK and EEA

• Nothing non-essential — no ads, no advertising cookies — happens until you tap Allow. Tap No thanks and StandaloneHQ runs the planner with no advertising cookies and no tracking.
• You can change your mind at any time: use Manage ad consent in the footer of any page to be asked again, or clear this site’s saved data in your browser.

For visitors in the UK, EEA and Switzerland, consent for advertising is gathered through Google’s certified consent message before any personalised ads are shown.

Who’s responsible, your rights, and complaints

• StandaloneHQ is operated by StandaloneHQ, which decides how the data described here is handled. Reach us at standalonehq@gmail.com or through the contact form.
• Lawful basis: your consent for advertising cookies; and, for messages you send us, handling them to reply to you (our legitimate interest in answering you).
• Under UK GDPR you can ask for a copy of any data held about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, object to processing, and withdraw consent whenever you like. Because StandaloneHQ keeps no data about you of its own, there may be nothing tied to you to hand back — but ask and we will tell you straight.
• Google processes advertising data as its own independent controller. What it does is covered by Google’s Privacy Policy and Google’s advertising page. Google may process this data outside the UK and EEA, including in the United States, under its own safeguards.
• If you are unhappy with how your data is handled, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

Cookies, in one table