Cape Verde Atlas ("the site", "we", "us") is an independent, unofficial website about Cabo Verde. This policy explains, in plain language, what data is collected when you browse the site, why, and what is not collected.
We keep this simple on purpose: the site runs its own first-party analytics on its own server. There are no advertising networks, no third-party trackers, and no data sold to anyone.
Cookies: short answer, we do not use them on the public site
Browsing the public pages of this site (the islands, culture, food, travel, blog and every other page you can reach without logging in) sets no cookies at all, not for analytics, not for advertising, not for preferences.
The only cookie the site is capable of setting is a single, strictly necessary session cookie, and it is only ever created when someone signs in to the admin panel to manage the site. That cookie keeps an editor logged in and protects the admin forms from forgery; it carries no advertising or tracking purpose and is never set for ordinary visitors.
Because nothing non-essential is stored, the site does not show a cookie consent banner. Under the ePrivacy rules that require such banners, strictly necessary cookies used solely to operate a login are exempt from consent, and since the public never receives that cookie in the first place, there is nothing to ask consent for.
What we do collect: anonymous, aggregated visit data
To understand which pages are useful and which need work, our server logs each page view: the page visited, its title, the general referring website (only the domain, such as "google.com", never the full referring page or your search terms), and the approximate country and city you are visiting from.
We also record broad technical details: operating system family, browser family, and whether you are on a desktop, tablet or phone, plus how long a page stayed active in your browser tab. None of this identifies you personally.
Your IP address is used only for a brief moment, to work out an approximate location and to tell repeat visits apart from new ones, and is immediately converted into a one-way cryptographic hash unique to this site. We never store your IP address itself, and the hash cannot be reversed back into an IP address.
A short-lived visit identifier (derived from that hash, your browser type, and a rotating thirty-minute time window) lets us count "a visitor" instead of "a page view" for our own reporting. It is not a cookie, is never sent to your browser, and rotates on its own; it cannot be used to follow you across browsing sessions or across other websites.
Telling humans from bots
Automated crawlers and scanners visit every website on the internet constantly. We filter known bot traffic out of our analytics using standard technical signals, so our figures reflect real readers rather than search engine crawlers or scraping tools. This filtering uses only technical request details already described above; it does not involve any additional personal data.
Third-party services that may see your connection
The interactive map page loads map tiles directly from OpenStreetMap's servers. When you view that page, your browser connects to OpenStreetMap to fetch those map images, and OpenStreetMap may log that connection under its own privacy practices, which we do not control. See openstreetmap.org for their policy.
To resolve an approximate country and city from a visit, our server makes a brief, server-to-server request to a geolocation lookup provider (ip-api.com). Your browser never contacts this provider directly; our server does, and the result is cached so the same address is not looked up repeatedly.
All fonts, the map library, and the site's own scripts and styles are hosted on our own server. We do not load fonts, ads, or tracking scripts from Google, Facebook, or any other third party.
The admin panel and editorial tools
The admin panel is used only by the site's editor, not by visitors. It stores a username and a securely hashed password; the password itself is never stored or visible in readable form. When researching new articles, the editor may look up free keyword suggestions from Google and DuckDuckGo's public autocomplete tools; only generic topic words chosen by the editor are sent, never any visitor data.
How long we keep this data
Aggregated, anonymised visit records are currently kept indefinitely to allow long-term comparisons (for example, how a page performs this year against last year). Because IP addresses are never stored in reversible form, this data cannot be used to identify a specific person even over a long period. If our retention approach changes, this policy will be updated.
Your rights
Because visit data is anonymised at the point of collection, we generally have no way to connect a browsing record back to a specific individual. If you believe we hold data that identifies you, or you have any question about this policy, contact us using the details below and we will look into it.
Children's privacy
This site is a general-audience travel and culture publication and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.
Security
The site is built with standard protective measures: database queries use parameterised statements to prevent injection attacks, admin access is rate-limited against guessing attempts, all forms are protected against cross-site request forgery, and visitor IP addresses are hashed before they ever reach storage. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable, industry-standard precautions.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the update will be posted on this page with a new date at the top. Significant changes will be described clearly rather than buried in legal language.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or a request relating to your data, can be sent to abdulrehmanjavaid16@gmail.com.