Trust & security
How long Webcounter.ca keeps each kind of data.
This table comes from the same retention settings used by the service and shown to account managers. The Privacy Notice contains the full policy.
| Data | Kept for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Raw analytics events Every pageview and custom event, one row per hit. |
400 days | Any site may choose a shorter window (30, 90, 180 days, whichever are below the default above). |
| Sessions and visitor summaries Stitched-together visits and first/last-seen per visitor. |
400 days | Follows the SAME site-level raw-event choice above automatically — there is no separate control for this. Like raw events, a change only takes effect for hits recorded after it is saved; it does not shorten a session or visitor row already on disk (see docs/ENVIRONMENTS.md). |
| Pre-aggregated history (rollups) Hourly/daily per-site totals used for charts beyond the raw retention window. |
Indefinitely | Kept indefinitely once written; independent of raw event retention (see scripts/rollup.py). |
| Scheduled report snapshots and CSV links Aggregate figures and download links from scheduled email reports. |
90 days | |
| Customer alert notification history Delivery history for threshold/collection-stopped alert rules. |
90 days | |
| Uptime probe summaries Routine HTTPS check results; response bodies are never stored. |
30 days | |
| Uptime incidents and delivery history Downtime incident records and their notification history. |
400 days | |
| Requested data exports (CSV) A downloadable copy of a site's raw events or sessions. |
7 days | |
| Account and site deletion recovery window How long a deletion can be undone by signing back in, or Restore. |
30 days | |
| Encrypted backups A purge can still be reflected in an existing nightly backup. |
14 days | Runs AFTER the recovery window and any purge, not instead of it. |
| Account and report email Verification, reset, and report mail held by the shared email service. |
7 days |
Why each one exists
- Raw analytics events supply the detail behind charts and reports. A site manager can choose a shorter window than the service default.
- Sessions and visitor summaries group individual events into visits and first/last-seen records.
- Rollups keep hourly and daily totals for long-range charts after raw events expire. A shorter raw-event window does not remove these totals.
- Scheduled report snapshots keep the figures in an emailed report stable when it is opened later.
- Alert notification history records which traffic alerts were sent and when.
- Uptime probe summaries and incidents support the public service status page and each site's uptime history. Probes do not store response bodies.
- Requested data exports remain available only long enough to download before automatic removal.
- The account and site recovery window allows a deletion to be cancelled before the scheduled purge.
- Encrypted backups contain the whole database for disaster recovery. Purged data may remain in a nightly backup until that backup expires.
- Account and report email remains in the transactional email service only while it is being delivered or retried.
See the security page for how this data is protected while it exists, and the Privacy Notice for the complete policy.