Privacy Policy

1. Introduction & General Principles

Scale Heritage Museum is an educational and cultural initiative operated by the Norwegian non-profit association Microgreen (Org.nr: 995 030 314). We are committed to protecting your privacy and processing personal data transparently in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR – Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and the Norwegian Personal Data Act (personopplysningsloven).

Our website is designed as a public digital exhibition and historical knowledge portal. You can browse our pages without registering an account, submitting forms, or creating a user profile. We do not sell, rent, or trade any visitor information. Personal data is processed only to the extent technically required to deliver the website, display embedded YouTube videos and Google Fonts, and compile aggregated visitor statistics via Google Analytics.

2. Server Log Files & Technical Website Operation

When you visit our website, your web browser automatically transmits standard technical data to our web hosting server so that the requested pages and media can be delivered securely to your device. This technical log data may temporarily include:

• Your device’s IP address (anonymized or truncated where supported by server configuration)
• Date, time, and time zone of the page request
• The specific page URL requested and HTTP status code
• Browser type, browser version, and operating system (User-Agent header)
• The referring URL (if you arrived via a link from another website)

Legal Basis: Article 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest). Our legitimate interest lies in ensuring the technical stability, network security, and trouble-free delivery of our website, as well as protecting our infrastructure against malicious requests or cyberattacks.

Hosting: Our website is hosted by Hostinger International Ltd., 61 Lordou Vironos Street, 6023 Larnaca, Cyprus, which processes the technical data described above on our behalf as a data processor within the EU.

3. Web Analytics (Google Analytics)

This website uses Google Analytics (GA4), a web analytics service provided by Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland) for users in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland, and by its parent company Google LLC (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA).

How Google Analytics works on our website:

• Purpose of Processing: We use Google Analytics to understand how visitors interact with Scale Heritage Museum—such as which pages and historical topics are viewed most frequently, approximate geographic region (country/city level), device and browser types, session duration, and referring websites. This helps us improve the structure, usability, and educational content of the museum website.
• IP Anonymization by Default: In Google Analytics 4, IP address anonymization is enabled automatically. For visitors within the EU/EEA, IP addresses are used briefly on EU-based servers solely to derive coarse location metadata and are immediately discarded before any analytics data is logged or stored. Full IP addresses are never written to disk by Google Analytics.
• Analytics Cookies: Google Analytics uses first-party cookies (such as _ga and _ga_<container-id>) stored in your browser to distinguish unique visitors and maintain session state across page views. These cookies typically have a standard retention period of up to 24 months unless you delete them earlier in your browser settings.
• Data Retention: Event-level and user-level analytics data stored in Google Analytics is automatically deleted after the configured retention period (2 or 14 months).

Legal Basis: Article 6(1)(a) GDPR (consent, where analytics cookies are accepted) and/or Article 6(1)(f) GDPR (our legitimate interest in analyzing aggregated website traffic to optimize our non-profit educational platform).

How to Opt Out of Google Analytics:

• You can prevent the storage of cookies at any time by adjusting your web browser settings to block cookies or delete existing cookies.
• You can also prevent Google Analytics from collecting and processing data across all websites by downloading and installing the official Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
• For more details on how Google processes data when you use partner sites, please visit How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services and the Google Privacy Policy.

4. Embedded YouTube Videos

Our website integrates video players, thumbnails, and curated playlists from our official YouTube channel (@ScaleRCGarage) to showcase functional scale models, Gauge 1 railways, RC engineering, and historical documentation. YouTube is operated by Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland) for users in the EEA, and Google LLC (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA).

How data is processed when viewing or playing YouTube content:

• When you visit a page containing embedded YouTube videos or video archive cards, your browser establishes a connection to Google/YouTube servers (such as www.youtube.com and i.ytimg.com) to load video thumbnails and the embedded player interface.
• Through this technical connection, YouTube receives your IP address, browser and device metadata, and the URL of the page you are visiting on our website.
• When you start playback of an embedded video, YouTube may store cookies, local storage entries, or device identifiers in your browser to enable video streaming, remember volume/playback preferences, measure bandwidth, and prevent abuse/fraud.
• If you are signed in to your personal YouTube or Google account while visiting our site, YouTube may associate your video viewing activity with your Google account. You can prevent this direct association by logging out of your YouTube/Google account before playing embedded videos.

Legal Basis: Article 6(1)(f) GDPR (our legitimate interest in presenting audiovisual historical and technical documentation from our official museum channel) and, where applicable, your active interaction when initiating video playback (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR).

Further Information: Please consult the Google Privacy Policy and the YouTube Terms of Service.

5. Google Fonts (Web Typography)

To ensure a consistent, legible, and museum-grade visual presentation across all devices and operating systems, this website uses Google Fonts (specifically the Playfair Display and Plus Jakarta Sans typefaces), a web font service provided by Google Ireland Limited / Google LLC.

How data is processed when loading Google Fonts:

• When you open a page on our website, your browser loads the required web fonts from Google’s servers (fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com), unless a copy of the font is already stored in your browser’s local cache.
• To deliver the font files to your screen, your browser necessarily transmits your IP address and technical HTTP request headers (including browser version and referrer URL) to Google’s font delivery servers.
• According to Google’s documentation, requests to the Google Fonts API are strictly separated from authenticated Google services: no cookies are sent by your browser to the Google Fonts API, and Google Fonts requests are not logged or combined with data from other Google services to build user profiles.

Legal Basis: Article 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in a uniform, accessible, and fast-loading typographic presentation of our website content).

Further Information: You can read more about Google Fonts data handling in the Google Fonts Privacy FAQ and the Google Privacy Policy.

6. External Google Topic Searches & Outbound Links

Throughout Scale Heritage Museum, interactive topic cards, historical model buttons, and search fields allow visitors to launch external historical searches on Google Search (https://www.google.com/search) or navigate to external third-party websites.

• No Personal Search Profiling: Scale Heritage Museum does not build personal profiles from the search terms you enter or the topic buttons you click on our website.
• Direct Redirection in a New Tab: When you click a topic search button or submit a query in our search fields, your browser opens the search query directly on Google in a new browser tab. Once you leave our website or open an external tab, the privacy policy and cookie settings of the respective external provider (such as Google) apply exclusively.

Articles: Our articles section can be read freely without registration. We do not offer comments, newsletters or user accounts, and we do not collect personal data through the articles.

7. Summary of Cookies & Local Storage

Our website uses the following categories of cookies and local storage technologies:

• Strictly Necessary Technical Cookies: WordPress may set temporary technical cookies strictly required for site administration and security when an authorized administrator logs in.
• Consent Cookie (SureCookie): Our cookie banner, provided by the SureCookie plugin, stores a small strictly necessary cookie that remembers your consent choices, so the banner is not shown on every page visit. It contains no personal profile and is not shared with third parties.
• Analytics Cookies (Google Analytics): As described in Section 3, Google Analytics sets _ga and _ga_* cookies (retention up to 2 years) to measure aggregated visitor traffic and page interactions.
• Third-Party Media Cookies & Local Storage (YouTube): As described in Section 4, loading or playing embedded YouTube videos may result in YouTube setting cookies or local storage items in your browser for playback functionality and preferences.

You can configure your web browser at any time to block cookies, notify you before cookies are stored, or delete existing cookies and local storage data.

Managing Your Consent: Google Analytics and embedded YouTube videos are only loaded after you have given consent in our cookie banner. You can change or withdraw your consent at any time via the Cookie Preferences link in the website footer. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before the withdrawal.

8. International Data Transfers (EEA to the United States)

When technical or analytics data is transmitted to Google servers in connection with Google Analytics, embedded YouTube videos, or Google Fonts, data may be processed on servers operated by Google LLC in the United States. Google LLC is certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework (DPF), for which the European Commission has adopted an adequacy decision pursuant to Article 45 GDPR, ensuring an adequate level of data protection for transfers from the EU/EEA.

9. Contacting Us via Email

If you contact us by email at post@scalercgarage.com, we will process your email address, name (if provided), and the contents of your message solely for the purpose of responding to your inquiry and any follow-up questions. The legal basis for this processing is Article 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in answering inquiries directed to our association) or Article 6(1)(b) GDPR where the inquiry relates to a partnership or organizational matter. Emails are deleted once your inquiry has been resolved and no statutory retention obligations apply.

10. Your Rights Under the GDPR

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Norwegian Personal Data Act, you have the following rights regarding any personal data relating to you:

• Right of Access (Art. 15 GDPR): Request confirmation of whether we process personal data about you and obtain a copy of such data.
• Right to Rectification (Art. 16 GDPR): Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
• Right to Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR): Request deletion of your personal data where there is no legal ground for continued processing.
• Right to Restriction of Processing (Art. 18 GDPR): Request that processing of your data be restricted under specific statutory conditions.
• Right to Object (Art. 21 GDPR): Object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• Right to Data Portability (Art. 20 GDPR): Receive data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.
• Right to Withdraw Consent (Art. 7(3) GDPR): Where processing is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at post@scalercgarage.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in Norway: Datatilsynet (The Norwegian Data Protection Authority, www.datatilsynet.no).

11. Disclaimer & External Content Notice

Some buttons and search tools on this website perform external searches using Google to help users find publicly available historical and technical information. Scale Heritage Museum and Microgreen do not host, control, or endorse third-party websites returned in external search results and accept no liability for the accuracy, legality, or content of external sources, which remain the sole responsibility of their respective publishers.

All historical content and scale model presentations—including representations of Second World War military vehicles and railway engineering—are presented strictly in a neutral, museum-grade historical, technical, and educational context.