Privacy policy

What we collect

This is a static website. We require no accounts, we ask you for nothing, and we run no advertising. We collect one thing: aggregate usage measurement through Google Analytics, described in full below. The citation resolver runs entirely in your browser and sends us nothing you paste into it, and the light/dark switch remembers your choice on your device without telling us — both are described below.

You can check this rather than believe it. Every page loads its stylesheets, fonts, flags and maps from this domain — no font service, no ad tags, no external images, no embedded video, no social widgets. Open the network panel and you should see requests to worldfactbooks.com and to Google, and nowhere else: googletagmanager.com serves the analytics tag, google-analytics.com is where it reports, and on the contact page alone docs.google.com loads the embedded form. If you see a host outside that list, tell us: that would be a bug on our side.

Stored on your device, not sent to us

If you use the light/dark switch in the header, your choice is saved in your browser's local storage under wfb-theme, holding one word: light or dark. It is what stops the site from forgetting your preference on the next page you open. It never leaves your browser — it is not a cookie, it is not sent with any request, and we cannot read it. Until you touch that switch nothing is stored at all and the site simply follows your device's own appearance setting.

Clearing site data removes it, and the site keeps working exactly as before — it goes back to following your device.

Server logs

Our hosting provider keeps standard access logs (IP address, user agent, requested URL) for security and capacity planning. These are retained per the host's policy and are not used to identify visitors.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 (property G-MK460SF2R5) to see which pages get read and which do not. That is the whole purpose: a reference site with no idea what anyone uses cannot decide what to improve.

It sets cookies in your browser — _ga and a _ga_MK460SF2R5 pair, typically for two years — which let Google's script recognise a returning browser and count it as one visitor rather than several. It records the page you are on, the page that sent you, approximate location derived from your IP address, and your device and browser type. Google states that it does not store the full IP address for GA4. We do not send it your name, your email, or anything you type into the search box or the citation resolver, and we have not enabled advertising features, remarketing or Google Signals.

What we see is a count, not a person: pages viewed, rough country, referrer. Google, as the processor, holds more than we do — see Google's privacy policy and how Google uses data from sites that use its services.

Opting out. Any tracker blocker stops it, and so does your browser's Do Not Track or global privacy control if you use one. Google also publishes an official opt-out add-on that works across every site. Nothing on this site is withheld from you if you block it — every page is a static file and works identically with the tag blocked.

The contact form

/contact/ embeds a Google Form, and that page alone therefore loads a frame from docs.google.com. Whatever you type into it goes to Google and then to us, and is subject to Google's privacy policy as well as this one. No other page on the site embeds anything.

We see only what you choose to write in it. If you would rather not use Google at all, the email address on that page reaches the same place and the form is not required for anything.