Vercel
Hosts and delivers the website and processes ordinary network, security, and runtime information.
PRIVACY POLICY
Your questions should not become a profile of your beliefs.
The Inner Atlas is built for exploration. This policy explains the limited information the Library uses to work, what stays on your device, and the choices available to you.
Effective September 20, 2026
01
THE SHORT VERSION
We collect what the Library needs—not a spiritual dossier.
You may browse most of The Inner Atlas without an account. We do not sell personal information, run behavioral advertising, or use your activity to infer a religious identity. We do not ask you to tell us what you ultimately believe.
- Your unsynced shelf is stored in your browser.
- An optional account lets you carry that shelf across devices.
- Explore Together stores only the information needed for an invitation.
- Contact messages are used to receive and answer what you send.
- Measurement is limited to broad site and feature use, not spiritual profiling.
02
INFORMATION WE HANDLE
Different features require different kinds of information.
Browsing and searching
The Library uses the words and filters you enter to return results. We do not use them to build an advertising profile or assign you a religious identity. If a search is included in a page address, it may appear transiently in ordinary hosting or network request data.
My Shelf
For visitors without an account, saved resource identifiers and the dates they were saved remain in browser storage on that device. If you sign in, those resource identifiers and dates are also stored with your account so the shelf can synchronize across devices. A downloaded shelf backup contains only those identifiers and dates.
Accounts and sign-in
If you choose an account, we use your email address to create the account, send a secure sign-in link, maintain a session, and connect your synchronized features. The Inner Atlas does not use passwords. Authentication also creates necessary session cookies.
Explore Together
An invitation may include the sender's first name, the selected resource, the intended audience, an optional note, and a creation time. A participant may provide a first name and a status such as Joined, Exploring, or Ready to talk. If someone is signed in, the invitation or participation may be connected to that account. Device-held access keys let senders manage invitations and let participants update their status.
Invitation pages are available to anyone who has the link. Names, notes, and participation status may therefore be visible to people who receive or are forwarded that link. Do not include confidential or sensitive information in an invitation note.
Contact
When you use the contact form, we receive the reason you selected, your message, and an email address only if you choose to provide one. Please do not send sensitive spiritual, medical, legal, or crisis information through the form.
Security and technical data
Hosting and security systems may process ordinary request data such as IP address, browser or device information, requested pages, timestamps, and error logs. For contact-form abuse prevention, The Inner Atlas converts the originating IP address into a keyed, one-way hash and stores the hash with a request count and time window. The original address is not stored in that rate-limit table.
Privacy-minded measurement
We count broad feature activity to understand whether the Library is useful. When a resource is intentionally saved or removed, the browser may contribute its resource identifier, a bounded set of nearby saved-resource identifiers, and a broad shelf-size range. These contributions omit account cookies and page referrers and are immediately folded into cumulative counts; we do not retain an event history, raw shelf, or persistent visitor identifier.
We do not use analytics for advertising or send account emails, first names, invitation text, contact messages, full spiritual search text, or inferred beliefs to analytics. Aggregate pairings may later support features such as “Travelers also saved,” but are not used to construct an individual belief profile.
03
HOW WE USE INFORMATION
Information is used to provide, protect, and improve the Library.
- Return searches and display requested pages.
- Authenticate accounts and synchronize saved resources.
- Create, display, and manage Explore Together invitations.
- Deliver contact messages and respond when a reply address is provided.
- Prevent spam, misuse, and security incidents.
- Diagnose errors and understand broad patterns of site use.
- Meet legal obligations and protect users, the Library, and others.
We do not sell personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not use spiritual exploration data to decide eligibility for employment, housing, credit, insurance, health care, or another similarly consequential service.
05
RETENTION & CHOICES
You can explore without surrendering control of your shelf.
Browser-only shelf and invitation access data remain until you remove them or clear browser storage. Signed-in shelf information remains while the account or feature is in use. Explore Together records remain until the invitation is removed or they are no longer needed to provide the feature. Contact messages, technical logs, and security records are retained only as long as reasonably needed for correspondence, operations, security, legal obligations, and dispute resolution. Provider backups may persist for a limited additional period.
Your available controls
- Browse without creating an account.
- Remove individual resources or empty My Shelf.
- Download or restore a shelf backup.
- Delete browser-held data through your browser settings.
- Remove an Explore Together participant or invitation if you are its sender.
- Request access, correction, or deletion of account-linked information.
To make a privacy request, use the contact form or email contact@theinneratlas.org. We may need to verify that you control the relevant email address or account before acting. Depending on where you live, local law may provide additional rights, including appeal rights. We will honor applicable requests and do not discriminate against people for exercising privacy rights.
06
OTHER IMPORTANT DETAILS
Privacy includes limits, not promises of perfection.
Security
We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards, but no website, transmission, or storage system can be guaranteed secure. Keep invitation links and email sign-in links private.
Children
The Inner Atlas is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information, contact us so we can review and remove it.
United States operation
The Library is operated from the United States. Information may be processed in the United States and other places where service providers operate, subject to their safeguards and applicable law.
Changes to this policy
We may revise this policy as the Library changes. The effective date above will be updated when changes are material. Continued use after an update is subject to the revised policy.
Questions
Contact contact@theinneratlas.org or use the contact page.