Nothing you type leaves this browser.

There is no sign-up and no lead form. The guide stores nothing in your browser unless you switch on Keep my numbers. Ads, if shown, are described under Ads. Today it loads one file from another company, the visit counter described next. No ad code is on any page.

On balancepointauto.com the calculator page loads one small script from Cloudflare Web Analytics. It runs on that page only. This page, About, How it works and the finance office pages are not counted. The counter reports a page view when the page loads. In browsers that support the Navigation API (such as Chrome and Edge) it also reports a page view each time you open another screen or go Back or Forward; other browsers report fewer. It also reports these steps:

• the visit began
• opened one of the screens: Getting ready, Looking at a car, Looking at the numbers, Your trade-in, Signing the paperwork (the finance office), or Already bought
• filled in a first offer that has a payment and a number of months; filled in a second one
• used the example running costs; chose to type your own running costs; chose to enter only the payment you want
• filled in a trade-in; ticked an add-on; opened the cancel facts; printed the sheet; switched on Keep my numbers

Each step is sent as a fixed word from a short list in the page’s code, such as “open-desk” or “addon-ticked”. The words say which screen was opened or which kind of action happened. A step never carries a number, a price, a state, a product name, whether you are over or under your limit, or which offer was better.

Cloudflare receives each page view and step as its own web request from your browser. So it receives what any web host receives: your IP address, your browser type and version, your operating system, the time, and the page address (with the fixed word for a step). The counter also sends page-load timings: how fast the page loaded and how much memory it used. It sends no names of page parts: the page switches that part of Cloudflare’s reporting off before the counter loads. From your IP address Cloudflare can tell roughly where you are. It receives the name of the site you came from, never the page.

The address it receives never has your numbers in it. Before the counter loads, this page cuts anything after a ? or # from the address bar, except a bare screen name such as #desk, and it does not put numbers back. If you open or paste a link with numbers later, this page reads them first, removes them from the address bar and hides that address from the counter’s code. That is what our page does. We cannot promise what Cloudflare’s own code or servers do.

The script sets no cookie. Cloudflare says its Web Analytics does not use cookies or local storage, and does not fingerprint people; read what Cloudflare says. Those statements are Cloudflare’s, not ours, and we cannot check them for you. We load the counter only if it matches the fingerprint of the version we reviewed; if Cloudflare changes the file, the counter does not run until we review the new one.

To avoid the counter, use a content blocker, or any browser setting that blocks scripts from other sites. The calculator works the same without it. The counter does not run when the page is opened from a file or from any address other than balancepointauto.com.

• Keep my numbers on this device is off unless you switch it on. When on, your numbers are saved in this browser’s local storage, only on this device. Switch it off to erase them. Turning it on is itself counted as one of the steps above, without the numbers. Without it, your numbers are gone when you reload the page.
• Copy a link with these numbers puts your numbers in the part of the link after the # sign, and copies that link to your clipboard. Anyone you give the link to can see the numbers in it. On this site the link is not put in your address bar. When you open such a link, the page reads the numbers into memory and removes them from the address bar. They are in this page only: if you reload, they are gone, unless you switch on Keep my numbers.

Like any website, the host may log an IP address and the time of a visit. Those logs never contain the numbers you type, because the numbers are never sent.

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