What this site knows about you.

The controller under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:

Erik Schellenberger
Waldackerstrasse 21a
63743 Aschaffenburg, Germany
Email: erik@understorymarkets.com
Phone: +49 173 1583800

A Walk Around the World is a private, non-commercial educational project. There is no data protection officer, because the law does not require one for a project of this size. You can write to the address above with any question about your data.

• This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics, trackers, advertising or social media plug-ins.
• There are no accounts, no forms and no newsletter. Nothing you type, pick or draw on the site is sent anywhere. All of it happens inside your browser.
• The only data that leaves your device is the technical data any web server needs to deliver a page (see 03), and, only if you say yes, the request for the photos at the stops (see 05).

The site is hosted by Infomaniak Network SA, Rue Eugène-Marziano 25, 1227 Les Acacias (Geneva), Switzerland. Infomaniak stores hosting data exclusively in its own data centres in Switzerland. Switzerland is recognised by the European Commission as a country with an adequate level of data protection (adequacy decision 2000/518/EC, confirmed in the Commission's review of 15 January 2024), so this is not a transfer to a third country that needs extra safeguards. A data processing agreement under Article 28 GDPR is in place with Infomaniak.

When you open a page, your browser automatically sends the following to the server, which keeps it in a log file: your IP address, the date and time, the page or file requested, the amount of data transferred, the page you came from (referrer), and your browser and operating system. The server needs this to deliver the page and to keep the site secure and stable. The legal basis is Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in running a secure website. According to Infomaniak's privacy policy, such log files are kept for up to twelve months. The logs are not combined with any other data and are not used to identify visitors.

The site sends a referrer policy of "strict-origin-when-cross-origin", so when you follow a link to another website, that site learns only that you came from this domain, not which page you were on.

The site stores two small things on your own device, in your browser's local storage. Neither is sent to us or to anyone else, and neither is a cookie.

• Your photo choice. Whether you have agreed to load the photos from other servers (see 05), so you are not asked at every stop.
• Recent lesson codes. If you create a lesson in the Classroom, the last four codes are kept so a teacher can find them again on the same device. The code describes which parts of the walk are in the lesson and nothing else. No student names or answers are stored anywhere.

Storing these is necessary to provide the function you asked for, so no consent banner is needed for it (section 25(2) of the German TDDDG). You can delete both at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser's settings.

Your home country is guessed from the time zone your device reports, inside your browser only. You can change it on the page, and the guess is never sent anywhere.

The photos at the stops are not stored on this site. They are loaded from the servers of the organisations and photo platforms that publish them: NASA (United States), Flickr (SmugMug Inc., United States), Unsplash (Unsplash Inc., Canada and United States), Pexels (Pexels GmbH, Germany, part of Canva), and for two photos GroundUp (South Africa). When a photo loads, your browser contacts that server directly, and the server sees your IP address, the time and the page it was requested from, exactly as it would if you visited that platform yourself. Some of these providers are outside the European Union; we have no influence on what they do with that technical data, and their own privacy policies apply.

That is why the photos do not load on their own. Until you click "Show the real photos", every stop shows example views drawn from NASA's Blue Marble image, which is part of this site. If you click, the real photos load for the rest of your visit and your choice is remembered on your device (see 04). The legal basis is your consent, Article 6(1)(a) GDPR, and you can withdraw it at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser, after which the examples are shown again.

Fonts are served from this site itself. No font is loaded from Google or any other outside server.

Every stop names its sources and one organisation working on the problem, with links to their websites. The Classroom offers a link to download lesson materials from this site. When you follow a link to another site, that site is responsible for your data from then on, and its own privacy policy applies. Links open in a new tab and carry no information about you beyond the referrer described in 03.

If you write to us, we keep your email and our reply for as long as it takes to deal with your request, and then for as long as we may need to show what was said, at most three years after the last message. The legal basis is Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in answering you, or Article 6(1)(b) if you are asking about working with the project. Email is handled through the mail service of the domain's provider; it is not shared with anyone else.

Under the GDPR you have the right to ask for access to the personal data we hold about you (Article 15), to have it corrected (Article 16) or deleted (Article 17), to restrict its processing (Article 18), to receive it in a portable form (Article 20), and to object to processing based on legitimate interest (Article 21). Where processing is based on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time with effect for the future. To use any of these rights, write to the address in 01.

In practice, the only personal data this site ever holds is the server log described in 03 and any email you send. We cannot identify you from the log alone.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. The authority responsible for this site is the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision (Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht), Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach, Germany, www.lda.bayern.de. You can also complain to the authority where you live.

This site is made to be used from about age twelve, including in classrooms. Because it collects no personal data from its visitors, no consent from a parent is needed to use it. Teachers who run a lesson do not enter any student data; the lesson code carries only the list of parts to show.

If the site ever changes in a way that touches your data, for example if real stories from the stops are added or a newsletter is started, this policy will be updated first and the date at the top will change. This version is from 7 October 2026.