Privacy
Maps of History is built to know as little about you as it can while still working. This page is the complete list of what exists and where it lives.
What we don’t do
- No ad networks, no pixels, no fingerprinting, no third-party analytics or trackers of any kind.
- No selling or sharing of data with anyone, ever.
Your account
If you create an account we store one record in our own database (Cloudflare D1): your email address, your name if you give one, your membership standing, and — if you use a password — a salted cryptographic hash of it (never the password itself). Google sign-in shares only your name and email with us. Two first-party cookies make this work: a session cookie that keeps you signed in, and an anonymous random device identifier.
Usage, to make the maps better
We record first-party product events — pages viewed, which atlases are opened, chapters read, map quizzes finished, and membership-page visits — tied to the anonymous device identifier (and to your account when you’re signed in). This is the workshop’s own notebook: it exists to improve the atlases and is never shared with or enriched by any third party.
Tests that improve the site
Sometimes we show two versions of a page — for example two layouts of the pricing page — to learn which one helps readers more. The version you see is chosen from the same anonymous device identifier (set on your first page, kept for up to 400 days), so it stays the same on every visit. We record which version you saw and the events above; nothing else, and nothing goes to any third party. A small share of visitors always sees the site without recent changes, so we can measure what the changes did. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, you are never included. You can also leave all tests here:
Your progress and notes
Reading progress, map quiz scores, your day streak and your settings are kept in your own browser as localStorage records; clearing browser data removes them. When you are signed in, your progress and the notes you pin (Your notes) are also saved to your account so they follow you between devices.
Payments
Checkout happens on Stripe’s hosted payment pages. Your card details go to Stripe, never to us. Stripe tells us your email address and what you bought, so membership can activate instantly.
If you join the Dispatch (our email list) we store your email address in our own database, and with our email provider when we use one to send the letters. We use it for the Dispatch and nothing else: a short welcome series, then a letter when a new atlas opens. Unsubscribe links are in every email. If you write to us, we keep the correspondence like any inbox does.
Hosting
The site is served by Cloudflare Pages; Cloudflare sees the traffic any web host sees (IP addresses in transient logs). Our own event log stores no IP addresses.
Your rights
Email [email protected] to ask for a copy of what we hold about you (your account record, your events, your purchase record at Stripe, your mailing-list entry) or to have all of it deleted.