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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 have it deleted.

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 account on it so every change to the record has an author. Your email address is never published.
  • Contributor accounts are for people 13 and older. The Atlas does not knowingly collect anything from younger children.
  • The Atlas never sells or shares your information, and uses no analytics or advertising trackers.

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. If you start creating an account, the answer to the age question is kept there too — only whether you can continue, never your birthday, and it expires within a day. Neither ever leaves your device.

The sign-in service, Clerk, loads on every page and sets a few cookies that record whether you are signed in, so the header can offer the right button. They are needed for signing in to work and are not used to follow what you read or for advertising — which is why the Atlas has no cookie banner.

Like every website, the service that hosts the Atlas keeps short-lived logs of requests — an IP address, the browser, the page asked for — to keep the site running and to stop abuse. To stop anyone flooding the search or the forms, the Atlas also counts recent requests per IP address in memory for a short while; those counts are never written to its database. 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. It also records that you passed the age question and which version of the Terms of Use you agreed to. The Atlas never sees your password.

When you submit a correction or an addition, the Atlas’s database keeps what you proposed, the source you cited, your account id and display name, and the moderator’s decision. That is deliberate: an archive where every change has an author and a reason is one people can trust. Moderators see your display name; the public record does not show who suggested a change. Your email address is never copied into the Atlas’s database.

Changes already merged into the record stay on it after your account is deleted, because the history of a fact should not quietly disappear — but your name comes off them.

Writing to support

The Contact support form keeps what you choose to send: the kind of problem, your message, the page it was about if you give one, and an email address only if you want a reply. If you are signed in, your account id is attached so we can find your submissions. It does not store your IP address, your browser details or your name. Requests are read by the people who run the Atlas, used only to answer them, and deleted on request.

Students and children

The Atlas is written for everyone in the activity, high school students included. Reading it collects nothing. It is not directed to children under 13: creating an account starts with a neutral age question, and nobody younger than 13 can finish it. Children under 13 should not use the support form either — a parent, guardian or band director can write in for them.

If we learn that we have collected anything from a child under 13 — an account, or an email address in a support request — we delete it. A parent who thinks this has happened can tell us through the support form by choosing “Privacy request”.

The Atlas publishes schools and programs, not students. It does not name individual students, and contributors agree not to submit a student’s name, contact details or a photo that singles one out. Ask and we will take any such thing down.

Who else handles it

The Atlas never sells or rents your information, never shares it for advertising, and does not build profiles. It relies on a few services to run, each of which handles data only to provide that service:

  • Clerk — accounts and sign-in;
  • Supabase — the database that holds the archive, contributions and support requests;
  • Vercel — hosting, which is where the request logs above are kept.

Your information is stored and processed in the United States. The site’s fonts are served by the Atlas itself, so reading a page sends nothing to Google.

Your choices and rights

Wherever you live, you can ask to see what the Atlas holds about you, to have it corrected, or to have it deleted, and you can close your account from the account menu at any time. Deleting an account removes it from Clerk; ask us as well and we remove your name from the Atlas’s own records. We answer within 30 days and will not treat you differently for asking.

If you are in Europe or the UK, the Atlas relies on what you asked it to do (running your account, answering your request) and its legitimate interest in keeping an accurate, abuse-free archive, and you may also complain to your local data protection authority.

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 anything about your data — including a request to delete it — through Contact support, choosing “Privacy request”, or message @themarchingatlas on Instagram. The Terms of Use cover the rest.

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date below moves and the change is announced on the site first.

Last updated September 30, 2026.