What this site collects, where it goes, and how to get it back or get rid of it.

Geography Atlas is part of the Interactive Atlas family, operated by an individual; contact details are on the contact page.

What We Collect

Account details, your profile, forum and messages, abuse reports, and error logs.

Your account. When you register we store your email address, a display name if you give one, whether the account is active and whether the email has been verified, your role on the site, and the dates you last signed in and the record was created or changed.

Your profile. If you fill in a member profile we store what you put on it: a short bio, a location you type in, and any topics or credentials you pick or enter. What appears publicly is up to you, with a show-or-hide control on every item.

Friends and blocks. We store who your friends are, friend requests sent and received, and any members you have blocked.

Forum, comments and messages. A thread, post or comment stores its text and the member who wrote it. Direct and group messages are stored so the people in the conversation can read them; they are not end-to-end encrypted and exist on the server in readable form, but we do not read them in the ordinary course of running the site.

Abuse reports. If you report a profile, message, username or comment, or someone reports yours, the report is stored: who reported what, and why, along with any resulting warning, strike or suspension.

Error logs. If a page fails, the server writes a log entry containing the error, the URL requested, your member id if signed in, your IP address, and your browser's user agent, so the fault can be fixed. This is the one place your IP address is routinely stored.

Cookies and Local Storage

Two functional cookies of our own, and no advertising.

This site sets no advertising cookies. The sign-in cookie keeps you signed in; the session cookie carries you to checkout-free tools without losing your place. A device cookie (.GEOGRAPHYDEVICE) is a random identifier for the browser you are using, not for you: it is how we notice a sign-in from a browser you have not used before, and it lasts two years. Your browser also keeps some display preferences, such as your light or dark theme choice, in local storage, which never leaves your device.

Who We Send Data To

Our email provider, for password resets and notifications, and our web host, which necessarily processes traffic to the site. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for advertising.

Your Public Profile

Public by default, with a switch for every part of it.

Member profiles are public by default. Anything a public profile shows is visible to anyone on the internet and can be read by search engines. Every item has its own show-or-hide control, and the whole profile can be made private at any time from your account.

Retention and Deletion

Deleting from the site marks a record as deleted. It does not erase it.

Nearly every table on this site uses a soft delete: deleting your account stamps a deletion date on the row and the site stops showing it. You can delete your account yourself from its Security page, and for 30 days afterward it can be restored by emailing us from the account's own address. If you want your data genuinely erased rather than hidden, ask, and we will remove the rows themselves where that does not require keeping other members' conversations intact.

Your Rights

Depending on where you live, data protection law may give you the right to see, correct, delete or export the data we hold about you. Exercise any of these by emailing us; we will answer within a month and will ask you to confirm you control the account before we act.

Children

This site is not intended for children. Accounts are for adults; the minimum age is set out in the Terms. If you believe a child has given us personal information, tell us and we will delete it.

Changes to This Policy

If this policy changes we will update the date at the top. If a change alters what happens to your data in a way that matters, we will say so on the site rather than quietly editing the text.

Questions about any of this: see the contact page. See also the Terms.