Privacy Policy

This policy covers the Searcho Radio website and web player. It describes what the site does with information when you use it, and what it deliberately does not do. Searcho Radio is operated by Searcho (“we”, “us”).

The short version

• There is no sign-up, no account and no password. We never ask for your name, email address or any other identifying detail.
• Your favourites, listening history and volume setting are stored in your browser and are never sent to us.
• If you allow location access, your coordinates are used inside your browser to point the globe at nearby stations. They are never transmitted to our servers or to anyone else.
• We set no cookies and run no analytics or advertising trackers.

What stays on your device

The player keeps a few things in your browser’s local storage. They never leave it, we cannot read them, and clearing your browsing data removes them permanently:

Favourites

Stations you have saved, so they are still there next time. Stored under searcho.radio.favorites.v1.

Recently played

The last two dozen stations you listened to for more than a few seconds. Stored under searcho.radio.recents.v1.

Player preferences

Your volume and mute setting. Stored under searcho.radio.prefs.v1.

Because this data lives only in one browser, it does not follow you to another device, and we have no way to restore it if you clear it.

Location

When the globe first loads it may ask your browser for your location, so it can start you somewhere near home rather than in the middle of the Atlantic. You can refuse, and everything else keeps working — the globe simply opens on the whole Earth.

If you allow it, the coordinates are passed to the globe inside the page and used to move the camera. They are not sent to our servers, not logged, not stored, and not shared. We could not tell you where any visitor has been, because we never receive it.

What reaches our servers

The station map, search results and the “around here” lists are fetched through our own server rather than directly from the underlying service. That means our server sees:

• your IP address and browser user-agent, as any web server does for any request;
• the station identifiers you open and the text you type into the search box, since those are what the request is for.

We use this only to serve the request. We do not build profiles from it, do not link requests together into a session or a person, and do not sell or share it. Ordinary server logs may retain request records for a short period for security and debugging.

Audio streams

Radio streams are played from the broadcaster, not from us. When you listen to a station, your browser normally connects directly to that broadcaster’s server, which will see your IP address and user-agent — exactly as if you had opened the station’s own website. Their privacy practices are their own and we have no control over them.

There is one exception. Some stations only publish an insecure http:// stream, which a secure page cannot play at all. For those, the audio is relayed through our server so it can reach you over a secure connection. In that case the broadcaster sees our server rather than you, and our server passes the audio through without recording it.

Third parties the page loads

The globe is drawn with the open-source CesiumJS library and satellite imagery, both served from third-party networks. Your browser requests those directly, so those providers receive your IP address and the tiles you request as a normal part of serving them:

• jsDelivr (cdn.jsdelivr.net) — delivers the CesiumJS library.
• Esri (server.arcgisonline.com) — delivers the satellite imagery on the globe.

We do not send them anything about you beyond the request itself, and neither is used for analytics or advertising.

Cookies and tracking

Searcho Radio sets no cookies. There is no analytics package, no advertising network, no social media pixel and no fingerprinting. There is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to.

Children

Searcho Radio is a general-audience service and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children, because we do not collect personal information at all.

Your rights

Depending on where you live you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete personal data held about you. In our case the honest answer is that we hold almost nothing: there is no account to export and no profile to delete. The data that exists is in your own browser, and you can remove all of it by clearing site data for this site, or by using the clear button in the recently-played panel.

If you believe we hold something about you and want it removed, write to us and we will look into it.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it. Material changes will be noted on the site rather than made quietly.

Contact

Questions about this policy: privacy@searcho.com.

See also our Terms & Conditions.