Privacy and cookies

Last updated: 8 October 2026

The short version

We don't ask who you are. There is no account and no sign-in, and we don't follow you across other sites. This page lists what we keep, where it goes and for how long.

Your words

What you type in the search field is read by an AI model to turn it into filters. We keep no record of it.

What we keep: Only one thing: a place you name to measure distance from, with the map point we found for it. It is the place name only, not linked to you or to the rest of your words.
Why: We keep it so the next search for that place is instant.
How long: It is kept for 30 days.
In the address: Your words are not kept in the address. When the assistant hands a search over to the map, the address carries the words for a moment, until the page has read them and taken them out. Our web server's log sees that request (see Hosting logs).
In a shared link: A link you share carries the conditions you set, never your words. The one exception is that place: if it is not a KHDA area or a landmark we know, the address keeps its name and map point, so a copied link draws the same circle.

Your questions

This is what happens to what you ask the assistant.

What we keep: Your questions and the assistant's answers. With each conversation, the address your connection came from (its IP address).
Why: So the assistant can follow the conversation, and so we can read them to make the answers better. The IP address lets us tell real visitors from our own tests and stop misuse.
How long: Questions and answers are kept without an end date. The IP address is kept for 90 days. After that only its network is kept (for example 94.200.12.0), which no longer points to one connection.
Not used for: They are never published and never feed the statistics on this site.
Deleting it: You can ask us to show or delete what we hold from your connection at hello@dubaischoolatlas.com.

We don't ask for your name, email or phone. Please don't type names, health details or anything else you wouldn't want stored.

Who else handles your data

Our servers are rented from HOSTKEY in Germany. Everything this page says we keep is stored there.

The assistant: To write an answer, it sends your question and the report passages it needs through OpenRouter, a US service, to the companies whose AI models do the work. At the time of writing these are Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Cohere, and Perplexity when a question needs a web search. If one of them fails, OpenRouter may retry the same question with another provider on its list (at the time of writing MiniMax).
The search field: The words you type in the search field go the same way to one model.
Places: When you name a place to measure distance from, its name and nothing else may be sent to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim search service to find it on the map.
Email: Google (Google Workspace) handles our email.

So your question leaves the UAE when you use the assistant or the search field. The map, school profiles and statistics work without either.

Measurement

To see which pages and features are used, whether people come back and which of our own posts bring visitors, we count visits with Umami on our own rented server in Germany (see Who else handles your data).

For each page view

The page: its address and its title, so a school profile is counted under that school's name. Not the filters or anything else after the page's name.
The page you came from, as much of its address as your browser passes on. Search engines pass only their name.
Your browser and operating system, device type, screen size and language.
Your country, region and city, worked out from your connection's address, which is then dropped.

Telling visits apart

It joins your visits with a session code made from your connection's address and your browser's name, mixed with a value that changes every month. Within the month it tells a returning visitor from a new one. Once the month ends, nobody can be followed from it into the next month, or to other sites.

When a visit starts it notes how long it has been since the last one. It also notes, as bands, how many schools this browser has saved and opened lately. A band is none, one, two to four, or five or more. It is never the schools themselves.

Actions it counts

A search run, from words or from a link.
A school saved.
A comparison opened, and its written analysis asked for.
A link shared (copied, sent by WhatsApp or through your phone's share sheet) or opened.
A question sent, and how its answer ended: with sources, without, with an error, or turned away by the day's limit.
A calculator used.
A chart or table read: a bar or year chosen, the table opened or saved, or a budget block used. The block's name, never the value you chose.
A link to another site followed: KHDA's, a school's own, or another. Never which page.
Which of our own short links you arrived by (see Links).

What it never gets

Not kept: It sets no cookie, stores no IP address and sends nothing to an analytics company. The words you type, birth dates and the list of schools you save are never sent to it. The profiles you open are counted as page views, as said above.
Global Privacy Control: If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, nothing is counted.
How long: Visit records are deleted after 13 months.
Your requests: Visit records hold nothing that points to you or your browser, so a request about your data cannot pick them out.

Home and work

Home and work are KHDA areas you pick, used to estimate travel time. They are never put in the address and never travel in a shared link. The person you send a link to sets their own.

Links

Links we build for you carry only the state of the page: schools, filters, views and years. They never carry who you are.

Shared links: A link you share also says that it was shared (“via=share”), so we can count how often shared links are opened.
School costs links: A School costs result you share carries the year group, start year, curriculum, the “KHDA rating Good or better” switch, school type, sort order and the KHDA area nearest the place you chose, with a travel time if you set one. These are written into a short code that anyone with the link can read back. Your budget goes in only if you tick “Include my budget”, rounded to the nearest AED 5,000. The place as you typed it, and your child’s birth date, are never included.
Our own links: When we publish a link elsewhere (a forum answer, a newsletter, a partner's guide), it may carry a short tag naming that place instead, so we can see which of our own efforts bring visitors.
After loading: Either mark is taken out of your address bar once the page has loaded. It is never sent to the visit counter as part of the address and is never attached to your questions. Like every request, it does pass through our web server's log (see Hosting logs).
Links that leave this site: We add nothing to them. We only count that one was followed, and whether it was KHDA's, a school's own or another (see Measurement).

Cookies and storage

One cookie

What it is: The site sets one cookie, its own. It holds a random id.
How long: It lasts a year.
Why: We use it to count today's questions to the assistant and store it with your conversations, so questions from one browser can be told apart.
About you: It says nothing about who you are.

In your own browser

Everything else stays in your own browser, not on our servers:

The schools you compare and save.
The schools you opened in the last 90 days and the day you opened each. The Saved page lists them and can clear them.
The time your last visit began, so a return can be counted (see Measurement).
Your last search and filters.
A child's birth date, if you used “Work it out”.
What you entered in the cost planner.
A shape you drew on the map.
Your map layers, the width of the panels and whether the chat panel was open.

While the tab is open

Notices you closed.
The last comparison analysis.
Which conversation you were in.
A mark that this tab's visit has been counted once.

Clearing it

Clearing this site's data in your browser removes everything in both lists above.

Hosting logs

Our web server writes a line for each request.

What we keep: Each line holds the IP address, the page with its full address (including anything after the question mark, such as a shared-link mark), the page you came from, the time and your browser's name.
Why: To serve pages, find faults and stop abuse. We also read these lines to count visits from search engines and AI assistants.
How long: They are deleted after 14 days.

Your rights

You can ask us:

What we hold about you.
For a copy of it.
To correct it or to delete it.
To stop reading your questions to improve the answers.

Help us find it: Because we don't know who you are on the site, tell us roughly when you used the assistant and what you asked, so we can find it. If you still have the browser you used, say so: the site's cookie lets us find your questions exactly.
Where: hello@dubaischoolatlas.com.
Our reply: We reply within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied: You can complain to the UAE Data Office.

Email you send us

If you write to hello@dubaischoolatlas.com, for example through “Tell us what it should say” on a school's page (that message names the school and the page), this is what happens to it.

What we keep: Your message, your name if you give it, your email address and our reply.
How long: While the matter is open, then up to 24 months after our last reply.
Where: On Google's servers outside the UAE: our mailbox runs on Google Workspace, under Google's data-processing terms.
Deleting it: Ask at the same address and we delete the correspondence, unless it documents a published correction.
On LinkedIn: If you message or comment on our LinkedIn page instead, LinkedIn processes that under its own privacy policy; we see the message there and keep no copy of it elsewhere.
Corrections: Correspondence about a correction is kept with that correction's record for as long as it is published. A published correction never names the person who reported it.

Dubai School Atlas

Dubai School Atlas is published by Orpitek Global FZ-LLC, Ras Al Khaimah, UAE (Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone, RAKEZ, trade licence 47030198).

Questions about this page, or about data we hold: hello@dubaischoolatlas.com