Skip to main content

Privacy

What the Atlas knows about you

Very little. Everything here can be read without an account, and the Atlas does not keep a record of what you read. This page says exactly what is collected, by whom, and how to turn it off.

The short version

  • Reading the Atlas needs no account, and the Atlas does not track what you read.
  • If you contribute, your account holds your name and email, and what you submit is kept with your name on it so every change to the record has an author.
  • The Atlas never sells your information.

Reading the Atlas

You do not need an account to read anything on the Atlas, and it does not build a profile of you. There is no analytics script and no tracking pixel.

If you switch between light and dark themes, that choice is saved in your browser’s local storage so the next page opens the same way. It never leaves your device.

The sign-in service, Clerk, loads on every page and sets a cookie that records whether you are signed in, so the header can offer the right button. It is not used to follow what you read.

Like every website, the servers that host the Atlas keep short-lived logs of requests — an IP address, the browser, the page asked for — to keep the site running and to stop abuse. Searches are used to answer them and are not saved to any profile, because readers do not have one.

Contributing

Accounts are run by Clerk, which stores your name, email address and, if you add one, a profile photo, and sets the cookies that keep you signed in. The Atlas never sees your password.

When you submit a correction or an addition, the Atlas keeps what you proposed, the source you cited, the name on your account and the moderator’s decision. That is deliberate: an archive where every change has an author and a reason is one people can trust. Your name may appear beside a contribution once it is published.

You can ask for your account to be deleted at any time — see below. Changes already merged into the record stay on it, because the history of a fact should not quietly disappear, but your name can be taken off them.

Students and children

The Atlas is written for everyone in the activity, high school students included. It is not directed to children under 13, and contributor accounts are for people 13 and older. If you believe a child under 13 has made an account, get in touch and it will be deleted.

Links to other sites

The Atlas links out to the sources it cites — UMEA, CompetitionSuite recaps, school sites — and to Instagram and Buy Me a Coffee. Once you follow one of those links, that site’s own privacy policy applies.

Questions and deletion requests

Send a message to @themarchingatlas on Instagram with anything about your data, including a request to delete your account. The About page says who runs the Atlas.

Last updated September 28, 2026.