Rate SheetPrivacy policy
Rate Sheet privacy policy
What Rate Sheet sends, and to whom
When it refreshes, Rate Sheet makes HTTPS requests directly to the publishers of the rates it shows. There is no LowerMedia server in between.
-
markets.newyorkfed.org(Federal Reserve Bank of New York): the fed funds target range and the effective federal funds rate. New York Fed privacy policy -
home.treasury.gov(U.S. Department of the Treasury): the daily Treasury par yield curve. Treasury privacy policy -
www.freddiemac.com(Freddie Mac): the weekly mortgage survey file, while weekly mortgage averages are turned on in Settings › Data sources. Freddie Mac privacy policy -
api.stlouisfed.org(FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis): rate series, only after you add a FRED API key of your own. FRED legal notices
Like every HTTPS request, these carry your IP address. Rate Sheet also sends a
User-Agent header that names the app and its version and points to this website,
for example RateSheet/1.1.0 (+https://lowermedia.net/ratesheet). It sends
nothing else: no identifiers, no settings, no calculator inputs. What each publisher
does with its own server logs is governed by the policies linked above.
Rate Sheet opens pages in your browser only when you click a link in it: FRED's API key page from Settings, and the publishers' terms pages from Sources & notices.
Your FRED API key
A FRED key is optional. If you add one, Rate Sheet stores it in your login Keychain
(service net.lowermedia.ratesheet, account fred-api-key) and
nowhere else: never in preferences, in the cache or in logs. The key travels only to
api.stlouisfed.org, inside the requests FRED requires it for. Remove it in
Settings › Data sources, which deletes the Keychain item.
FRED asks that every user of an application use their own key. Rate Sheet ships without one and never shares yours.
What Rate Sheet stores on your Mac
| What | Where | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Rate cache | ~/Library/Application Support/net.lowermedia.ratesheet/cache.json | About 400 days of each rate series, which publisher served it and when it was last fetched, so the sheet fills instantly at launch. |
| Preferences | macOS user defaults for net.lowermedia.ratesheet | Your display choices (menu bar metric and format, change marker), which optional rows are on (effective rate, weekly mortgage averages), whether you closed the FRED key tip, and the calculator's loan amount and term. The NOI you type is not saved. |
| FRED API key | Your login Keychain, service net.lowermedia.ratesheet, account fred-api-key | Only if you add one. Never written to preferences, the cache or logs. |
| Launch at login | macOS login items | Only if you turn it on. A registration with macOS, holding no data. |
| Diagnostics | The macOS unified log, subsystem net.lowermedia.ratesheet | Short status messages about refreshes and errors, never response bodies and never the key. macOS keeps them on your Mac and discards them on its own schedule. |
To remove everything: take the key out in Settings › Data sources, quit Rate Sheet,
move the app to the Trash, and delete the Application Support folder above. The
preferences hold no personal data; defaults delete net.lowermedia.ratesheet
in Terminal clears them.
What Rate Sheet does not do
- No accounts or sign-in.
- No analytics, usage statistics or crash reports.
- No advertising, no tracking, no third-party analytics or advertising code.
- Nothing leaves your Mac except the requests described above, and LowerMedia receives none of it.
- No selling or sharing of personal data, because there is none.
Browser extensions
If LowerMedia publishes browser extension versions of Rate Sheet, this policy applies
to them too. An extension fetches from the same publishers listed above, and keeps a
FRED key you add in the browser's local extension storage on your device, never in
synced storage, sending it only to api.stlouisfed.org.
This website
lowermedia.net is a static site served by Cloudflare, which handles the requests and keeps its own logs. LowerMedia sets no cookies and runs no analytics here. The pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts, so your browser also requests those files from Google. The contact form on the home page is delivered by Web3Forms to our inbox; nothing on the Rate Sheet pages collects input.
Changes and contact
Changes to this policy are posted here with a new effective date. Questions go to info@lowermedia.net. LowerMedia LLC, Seattle, Washington, United States.