Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 12, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes how Jan Winters / Moon Must Die collects, uses, and handles information when you visit moonmustdie.com.

Information We Collect

We collect only what is necessary to operate the Site:

• Email address — if you voluntarily submit it via the signup form. Email addresses are stored privately and used only to contact subscribers about new work.
• Contact form submissions — your name, email address, message, and (optionally) how you found us. These are emailed to us and also saved in a private file on our own server so we can keep a record of the conversation. They are never sold or shared with third parties.
• Visit information — when you view a page, press play on a film, or click through to one of our social links, we record your IP address, the page/film/link involved, the referring website, the time of the visit, and an approximate location (city, region, and country) derived from your IP address. This is stored privately on our own server.
• Browser & device characteristics — technical details your browser already shares with any site you visit: screen and window size, timezone, language, general hardware class (CPU/GPU capability, memory, network speed), whether you prefer dark mode or reduced motion, and similar settings. We use this only to understand our audience's devices in aggregate (for example, whether to keep supporting older phones) — never to build an advertising profile.
• Device fingerprint — a short technical signature computed from how your specific browser and graphics hardware render an offscreen image, combined with a few of the hardware details above. Unlike the anonymous ID described under "Cookies & Local Storage" below, this signature isn't stored on your device, so clearing your browser's site data does not reset it. We use it only as a soft, internal "this might be the same visitor on a different network" hint on our own visitor records — never to track you across other websites, build an advertising profile, or identify you personally, and it's never sold or shared.
• Engagement signals — our site's own script quietly measures how long you spend on a page, roughly how far you scroll, and how long the page took to load for you, so we can understand which films hold people's attention longest and whether the site is running well. This data is stored privately on our server and is never shared with anyone.
• Video playback — when you play one of our films, we record how much of it you actually watched: the point you reached, where you stopped, whether you paused or watched to the end, and how many seconds of playback that came to. This is measured through YouTube's official player API, which means the YouTube player script is loaded from Google on pages with an embedded film (see "Third-Party Services" below). We use it only to understand which of our films hold attention and where they lose people — it is stored privately on our own server and never sold or shared. If your browser blocks the YouTube script, the film still plays and we simply don't get these numbers.
• Campaign tracking — if you arrive via a link we've specifically tagged (for instance, in an Instagram bio), we note which one, so we can tell which channels actually bring people to the Site.
• Anti-spam signals — a small number of technical checks (for example, whether a visit shows signs of coming from an automated script rather than a person) are used solely to keep our contact form and analytics free of spam and bot traffic. These checks are never used to build a profile of an individual visitor.

Analytics & Visitor Insights

We run our own simple, privacy-respecting analytics directly on our server. We do not use Google Analytics or any third-party advertising or tracking networks, and we do not build advertising profiles or track you across other websites.

To estimate where our audience is located, the IP address of each visit is checked against a free geolocation service (ip-api.com) that returns an approximate city, region, and country. This is an estimate based on your IP address — it does not identify you personally or pinpoint your exact location.

The contact page may display a short list of the cities (city and country only) that recent visitors have come from, as a simple way of showing the Site's reach. This display never includes IP addresses, names, exact locations, or any information that could identify an individual visitor.

We also compute a simple engagement score for each visitor session — a number derived entirely from the first-party data described above (pages viewed, films played, time on site, and similar signals) — to help us understand which films connect most with our audience. This score is for our own use only, is never shared or sold, and has no effect on how the site behaves for you.

As a small personal studio, we occasionally make private notes on a visitor profile — for instance, to remember a thoughtful message or a conversation about a festival screening. These notes are stored in a private file on our server, are visible only to us, and are never shared with or sold to anyone.

How We Use Your Information

• Email addresses are used solely to notify you when new work is released. We do not sell, share, or rent your email address to any third party.
• Contact form submissions are used solely to respond to your message.
• Visit information is used only to understand our own traffic — how many people visit, which pages are popular, where they hear about us, and what regions of the world they come from. It is never sold or shared.
• Browser & device characteristics and engagement signals (time on page, scroll depth, page load time, films played, how much of each film was watched, outbound clicks) are used only to understand how people connect with our films and whether the Site is working well for them. They are never sold, shared, or used to target you with advertising.
• Campaign tracking is used only to see which of our own posted links are working. Anti-spam signals are used only to filter automated/bot traffic out of our contact form and analytics.

Third-Party Services

• YouTube (Google) — embedded video players may set cookies and collect data when you interact with them. On pages with an embedded film we also load YouTube's official player API script from Google, which lets our own analytics read how much of the film was played (see "Video playback" above); loading it means Google receives your IP address and the usual request details. Playing an embedded film also counts as a view on YouTube, exactly as if you had watched it there. See policies.google.com/privacy.
• Google Fonts — fonts loaded from Google's servers may log your IP address.

Cookies & Local Storage

This Site does not use tracking cookies. It does store a randomly generated, anonymous ID in your browser's local storage (a first-party mechanism, not a cookie) so we can recognize a returning visitor without an account or a cookie banner — including across a change in your IP address, such as switching from wifi to mobile data. This ID is not linked to your name or email unless you separately give us that information yourself, for example through the contact form — and you can clear it at any time in your browser's site data settings, which resets how our internal records group your future visits. (The device fingerprint described above is separate and is not cleared this way, since it isn't stored on your device.) Third-party embeds (YouTube) may set their own cookies, which you can disable in your browser settings.

Data Retention

Email addresses remain on our list until you unsubscribe. Every email we send includes an unsubscribe link. Contact form submissions are retained only as long as the correspondence is active. Visit information is kept on our server only as long as it is useful for understanding our traffic, and you may request its deletion at any time.

Your Rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information by using our contact form.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top reflects the most recent revision.

Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy can be sent via our contact form.