Privacy policy

Overview

Terra Scripta (terrascripta.com) is an educational website run by an individual in the Republic of Korea. You can read the whole site without creating an account, and reading it never requires your name, email address or other personal details. Only if you choose to post on the report and discussion board do you sign in with Google, as described below.

This policy explains what information is processed when you visit, which third-party services are involved, and the choices you have.

Information stored on your device

The map remembers the last year and position you viewed, and some display settings, in your browser's local storage so you can pick up where you left off. This stays on your device and is not sent to us. You can clear it at any time through your browser settings.

Hosting and server logs

The site is hosted by Vercel. Like most web hosts, Vercel processes technical data such as IP addresses, browser type and the pages requested in order to deliver the site, keep it secure and prevent abuse. Map shapes and images are served from Vercel's storage network. See Vercel's privacy policy.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand, in aggregate, how many people visit, which pages they read and which languages and devices they use. Google Analytics uses cookies and similar technologies and processes data such as your approximate location, device and browser, and the pages you view. We use these reports only to improve the site; we do not use them to identify individual visitors.

In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Google Analytics and Google's advertising tags start in a restricted mode using Google Consent Mode: analytics and advertising storage are set to "denied", so no analytics or advertising cookies are stored on your device. In this mode Google Analytics receives only limited signals without cookies or identifiers, such as that a page was viewed. Cookies are used only after you agree through Google's consent message, which appears on article pages that show ads.

You can learn how Google uses this information at How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services, and you can opt out of Google Analytics with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Advertising

We use Google AdSense to show advertising on article pages. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to this website or other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.

Ads, and Google's advertising script, are loaded only when you open an article or course page. The map, the board and information pages such as this one do not load it.

You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google's Ad Settings. You can also opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at www.aboutads.info or, in Europe, www.youronlinechoices.eu. If you opt out, you will still see ads, but they will not be based on your interests.

Visitors from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are asked for consent through Google's consent message before personalised advertising cookies are used, and can change their choice at any time. For more about how Google handles advertising data, see Google's advertising policies.

Embedded YouTube videos

Some articles include a related video from YouTube, a service of Google. The video is not loaded when you open the page: until you press the button to load it, your browser makes no request to YouTube, and the preview image comes from this site. When you choose to load a video, it plays in YouTube's privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com). YouTube then receives technical information such as your IP address, browser and the page you are on, and may store cookies or similar data on your device, including for measurement and advertising, under Google's own policies. You can always read the article without loading the video, or open it directly on YouTube instead.

See How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services and the Google privacy policy.

Report and discussion board

Reading the board requires no account. To post, comment or report on the board you sign in with Google. From Google we receive only a unique account identifier and your name; we store the identifier and the display name shown next to your posts. We do not store your email address, and we never post to your Google account.

Signing in sets a cookie that keeps you logged in for up to 30 days; signing out removes it. What you write on the board (posts, comments, the item and year you chose) is public and can be read by anyone. Posts that receive several reports may be hidden automatically, and the operator may hide content that breaks the rules. To have your posts or account removed, write to contact@terrascripta.com.

Links to other websites

Articles link to sources such as Wikipedia, museums and libraries. Those sites have their own privacy policies, and we are not responsible for how they handle information.

Children

Terra Scripta is intended for a general audience and includes simple introductions that younger readers can enjoy. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children, and the site does not ask anyone for personal details.

Your rights and contact

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct or delete personal data about you, or to object to its processing. Reading the site does not involve giving us your name or contact details, so most requests about analytics or advertising data are best handled through the Google tools linked above. For board accounts and posts, and for any other privacy question, write to contact@terrascripta.com.

We may update this policy when the site or the services it uses change. The date of the latest version is shown at the top of this page.