Privacy
Thaw has no accounts and no cookies, and doesn’t track you. It keeps simple totals of how often each sauna is viewed.
Your location
If you allow it, your browser shares your location with the map so it can show you and sort saunas by distance. It stays in your browser and isn’t sent to Thaw.
Searches
When you search a town or postcode, the search is sent to postcodes.io to find where it is.
Maps and photos
Map tiles come from OpenFreeMap, and sauna photos load from each sauna’s own website. Like any website, those services see your IP address when your browser asks them for a file. Photos are loaded without telling the sauna’s website which page you were on.
Suggestions and reports
What you send with Suggest a sauna or Something wrong, including your email address if you add one, is kept in Thaw’s private project tracker on GitHub. It’s used only to check and update listings, and to reply to you if you gave an email address.
What Thaw counts
Thaw counts how often each sauna is viewed, and how often its directions, booking, Instagram and website links are used, so it can tell saunas how many people it sends them. Only monthly totals per sauna are kept: no cookies, no IP addresses and nothing that could identify you.
Hosting
Thaw is hosted on Microsoft Azure, which may keep standard server logs, such as IP addresses and the pages requested, for security.
Updated 1 November 2026.