Legal — Privacy, Terms & Affiliate Disclosure

Last updated: 10 October 2026

Affiliate Disclosure

ORIVON is reader-supported. Some links on this site are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you make a purchase — at no additional cost to you. This applies to links pointing to retailers and manufacturers across our buying guides, reviews and comparisons.

Our editorial verdicts are formed independently of any affiliate relationship. A product earns a recommendation because our research supports it, not because of the commission structure attached to it. We do not accept payment in exchange for a favorable review, and manufacturer-provided review units never influence a final score.

Voluntary contributions made through the Support ORIVON page are separate from affiliate links. They give no editorial advantage, do not change any review, ranking or recommendation, and ORIVON stays free to read.

Privacy Policy

This section explains which personal data ORIVON handles, why, which outside services handle it for us, and what you can do about it. We collect only what each feature needs, and we do not sell personal data. ORIVON is an independent publication operated by Santiago Miró from Argentina; to ask anything about your data, use the contact form and choose “Privacy or account request”. We do not publish a postal address or a general inbox, so the form is the way to reach us.

Reading the site

You do not need an account to read ORIVON. Our hosting provider, Hostinger, processes the technical records any web server needs to deliver and protect a site, such as your IP address, the page requested and the time. ORIVON does not run advertising networks or ad trackers. When you follow an affiliate link, the retailer’s site sets its own cookies under its own policy.

To work, pages load a few resources from other services: the Google Analytics tag on every page (see “Analytics and your choices”) and, for the Collective, the database library delivered by the jsDelivr content network. Like any server, they see your IP address when they deliver a file.

Newsletter (The ORIVON Brief)

If you subscribe to The ORIVON Brief, the form sends your email address directly to our email provider, Brevo. It is used solely to send you that newsletter. Subscriptions require confirming a verification email before you’re added to the list, and every email includes an unsubscribe link.

Contact form

When you write to us through the contact form, the name, email address, topic and message you type are handled by the form service Formspree and delivered to ORIVON. We use them to answer you and to handle your request.

ORIVON Sightline

Live sky calculations: if you choose “Use my location” or search for a place, that location is used to calculate altitude, azimuth, rise/set times and related figures directly in your browser. It is stored solely in your browser’s local storage and is never sent to ORIVON’s servers or to Google Analytics. Typing a place name sends that search text directly from your browser to Photon (photon.komoot.io), a location-search service built on OpenStreetMap data, to find matching places. If you use your device’s location, its coordinates are also sent to Photon so it can return a place name. If Sightline shows a weather forecast (available worldwide), your general location (latitude and longitude, rounded to city-block precision) is sent directly from your browser to MET Norway (api.met.no), a national meteorological service, to retrieve that forecast. ORIVON’s own servers do not see or store any of these requests. You can remove your saved location at any time with the “Forget location” control.

What is stored in your browser

ORIVON itself does not set cookies. It uses your browser’s storage for these things only:

Your analytics choice (orivon_consent_v1), so we do not ask you again.
“Decide later” for this visit (orivon_consent_snooze, kept only until you close the tab), so the banner does not reappear on every page you open.
Sightline settings (orivon_mc_location, orivon_mc_mode, orivon_mc_session_targets): your saved location, observing mode and the targets you added to a session. They never leave your browser.
Collective sign-in: the session that keeps you signed in, and the page to return to after you open your sign-in link (orivon_collective_return_to).
Sign-up marker (orv_new_account, kept only until you close the tab and removed by the next page you open): lets that page count that a sign-up was completed, if you accepted analytics. It holds no personal data.
Gallery navigation (orv_gallery_nav_photos, cleared when you close the tab): the order of photographs you were browsing, so the next/previous links work.
Page tours (orivon_tour_v1:…, one entry per tour, and orivon_tour_invite_session, kept only until you close the tab): whether you completed, skipped or postponed a page’s quick tour, so it is not offered again on every visit. It holds no personal data, stays in your browser, is never sent to ORIVON and is not used for advertising.

Google Analytics sets its own cookies only if you accept analytics, as described next. You can clear all of the above at any time in your browser settings.

Analytics and your choices

ORIVON uses Google Analytics to estimate how many people visit and which features are used, so we can improve the site. It runs with Google Consent Mode. Until you choose, and if you reject, Analytics storage is off: no Analytics cookies are set or read, and Google may still receive limited, cookie-free signals from the page, which it uses for aggregated or modeled statistics. Counts built this way are approximate. Rejecting analytics does not limit any part of the site.

If you accept, Analytics storage is turned on: Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser (named _ga and _ga_Q8F8PN4T6K) and receives full page-view measurement together with technical details such as your approximate region, browser and device, handled by Google under its own privacy policy. Only if you accept, we also record a small number of interactions as events, so we can tell which parts of the site are useful:

a newsletter sign-up was submitted;
an affiliate link was clicked (which retailer, which product and which article it was on);
a Support ORIVON link was clicked (Ko-fi, PayPal or the badge-claim page);
which Sightline feature was used (for example that a location was set and by which method, the observing mode, or an astronomical target you opened);
that someone started or completed signing in to the Collective, submitted a profile or a photograph for review, started a discussion or posted a reply;
that a page tour was offered, started, skipped or finished (which page it belongs to and the step number).

These events carry no email address, username, account identifier, text you wrote, photograph or discussion title, coordinates or place name. Page views are sent, whatever you choose, with the page address without anything after a “?” or “#”, the referring page reduced to its site address, and a generic title on pages that show one person’s profile, photograph or discussion. ORIVON does not use Google Analytics for advertising: advertising storage, advertising data sharing and ad personalization are always off. If you set your analytics choice to “off” after accepting, ORIVON turns Analytics storage off again at once, stops sending interaction events and removes the Google Analytics cookies it can reach from this site.

You can come back to this choice from any page using “Privacy choices” in the footer. Your choice is stored in your browser, so a different browser or device asks again.

Astrographers Collective: accounts and community data

The ORIVON Astrographers Collective is optional. Reading the Collective needs no account. Everything below applies only if you create one.

What we collect and where it is kept

Account. Your email address, used to sign you in with a one-time link (there is no password). The account, the database and the stored image files are hosted with Supabase in the United States; the sign-in and notification emails are sent through Resend. We also record when you accepted the Collective terms and when you last signed in.
Profile. What you choose to enter: display name, a handle, your country (chosen from a list) and, if you wish, a city, region or observatory, a short biography, specialties, equipment, links to your website or social profiles, and a profile picture. A profile is private until ORIVON approves it.
Photographs. The image you upload, kept in a private area until ORIVON approves it, and the details you enter with it: title, subject, description, alternative text, capture date, location, observing conditions, equipment, processing notes and your rights declarations. When a photograph is approved, ORIVON publishes a resized copy that is re-encoded, which discards the metadata embedded in the original file, such as GPS tags. Sharing exact coordinates is never required.
Activity. Likes, comments on photographs, discussions and replies you write, discussions you follow, and reports you send about content.
Notifications. In your dashboard, about activity such as a comment on your photograph. By email, about review decisions on your profile or photographs. ORIVON’s administrators receive an email when a profile or photograph is submitted for review.
Supporter recognition. If you contribute through Ko-fi or PayPal and ask for recognition, an administrator may add a badge or an acknowledgement by hand after checking your contribution and your permission. ORIVON stores only whether recognition is on and what you agreed to show. ORIVON never receives your card or PayPal details, and no contribution amount is shown on the site.
Moderation. Administrators can see submissions, original images and reports. Their moderation actions (what was done, to what, and the reason) are logged for accountability. These records are not shown to other members.

What is public

Public once approved: your profile (display name, handle, country and the optional place you entered, biography, specialties, equipment, links and picture), your published photographs with the details you entered (such as capture date, location and equipment), their like counts and any award or supporter badge, your comments, and your discussions and replies. Public content can be seen by anyone, with or without an account, and can be copied or shared by others. Pages that show one person’s profile or photograph ask search engines not to index them, but that is not a privacy control.
Not shown on the site: your email address, your original image files (kept in private storage), reports, the moderation log, and the list of discussions you follow. The site shows likes only as a count.

Changing or removing your data

You can edit your profile and your photograph details from your dashboard.
You can withdraw a photograph, which stops it being shown on ORIVON, and delete a draft you have not submitted. Withdrawing changes the photograph’s status; the stored files and record remain until ORIVON deletes them, which you can ask for.
You can delete your own comments, which removes them permanently, and your own discussions and replies, which disappear from the site. A deleted discussion or reply is hidden rather than physically erased, so a copy can remain in ORIVON’s database until we erase it.
Removing a like or unfollowing a discussion removes that record.
There is currently no button to delete a whole account. To have your account, profile, photographs, files and posts erased, send a “Privacy or account request” through the contact form. We handle these requests by hand. Records that exist to keep moderation fair, such as reports and the moderation log, may be kept. Copies may also remain in service providers’ backups until they are overwritten.

We have not set fixed retention periods for Collective data: it is kept while your account exists or until you or we remove it.

Astrographers Collective: content, licence and moderation

These points complement the Community Guidelines, which remain the plain-language rules for taking part.

Your work stays yours. You keep the copyright in what you submit. By submitting, you confirm that you created it or are authorised to share it, and you give ORIVON a non-exclusive licence to display and promote it with attribution, including in Collective previews and in posts that promote you or the Collective. ORIVON does not acquire ownership of your work.
You are responsible for what you post. Do not upload images you have no right to share, fully AI-generated images, or content that is abusive, hateful or spam. Disclose composites, as the guidelines ask.
Moderation. ORIVON reviews every profile and photograph before it becomes public and may ask for changes. Taking part does not guarantee approval, selection or promotion. ORIVON may hide, reject or remove content, and suspend an account, when the guidelines are broken. Members can report content they think breaks them.
Removal. You can withdraw your own photographs from your dashboard at any time. If you need something removed that you cannot remove yourself, or you believe content on ORIVON infringes your copyright, use the contact form and choose “Copyright or content removal”.

Services, international transfers and your rights

Who else handles your data

Hostinger — hosts the website.
Google Analytics — visit statistics: limited, cookie-free signals before you choose or if you reject; cookies and full measurement only if you accept.
Supabase — Collective accounts, database and image storage (United States).
Resend — sends sign-in links and Collective notification emails.
Brevo — The ORIVON Brief newsletter.
Formspree — delivers contact form messages.
Ko-fi and PayPal — process voluntary contributions on their own pages, under their own terms and privacy policies.
Photon (komoot) and MET Norway — place search and weather for Sightline, as described above.
jsDelivr — delivers a software library used by the Collective.

Several of these providers operate outside your country, including in the United States, so your data may be processed there.

Your requests

You can ask us, through the contact form (choose “Privacy or account request”), what data we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete your account and the content you published. We handle these requests by hand. You can withdraw analytics consent yourself at any time, above. We can act on the data ORIVON controls; data held by an outside service under its own control (for example your Google account) is managed with that service.

We update this page when the site changes, and show the date at the top.

Terms of Use

Content on ORIVON is provided for informational and educational purposes. While we research equipment thoroughly, specifications, pricing and availability of third-party products can change after publication — always verify current details with the retailer before purchasing.

All editorial content, photography and original illustrations on this site are the property of ORIVON unless otherwise credited. Photographs published in the Astrographers Collective belong to the astrographers who made them and are used as described above. Public-domain imagery from space agencies is used and credited according to each agency’s usage terms.

By using this site, you agree that ORIVON is not liable for purchasing decisions made based on our content. Our guides are intended to inform, not to replace your own judgment.

Privacy, terms and how ORIVON is funded