Privacy policy.
What this website collects, what it does not, which services we rely on, and your rights. Last updated 20 September 2026.
Who is responsible
Stichting Meridian17 (KvK 96954582, the Netherlands), operating jointly with Meridian17 NPC (South Africa), is the controller for the personal data described here. Contact: info@meridian17.org. See the imprint.
Reading the website
You can read every page without an account and without accepting cookies. We do not use advertising trackers, social-media pixels or Google Analytics.
Visitor statistics. We count visits with GoatCounter, installed on our own server. It records the page visited, the referring site, the country, browser and screen size, and a short-lived, non-reversible hash used only to tell repeat page views apart within a day. It sets no cookies and stores no IP addresses or names. This is anonymous usage data (legitimate interest in knowing what is read).
Server logs. Our web server keeps short-lived technical logs to keep the site secure and working. IP addresses in those logs are masked and logs are deleted after 14 days.
Data tools. The Global Gateway Tracker and other tools load their data from our own subdomain (data.meridian17.org) and, for the world map, a public map file from the jsDelivr content network. No personal data is sent to either.
Newsletter and reports
If you subscribe, we store your email address, the name you give us, the lists you chose, the time of subscription and confirmation, and an unsubscribe token. We use this to send you the emails you asked for and nothing else. Subscription is double opt-in: nothing is sent until you confirm by email.
Emails are delivered by Resend (Resend, Inc., United States, under standard contractual clauses). The sign-up form is protected against automated abuse by Cloudflare Turnstile, which analyses the browser during sign-up and may set a short-lived technical cookie for that purpose only.
Legal basis: your consent. You can withdraw it at any time through the unsubscribe link in every email or the preferences page. Data of unsubscribed addresses is deleted or anonymised within 30 days.
Writing to us
If you email us, we keep the correspondence for as long as needed to handle your request and for our records, under our legitimate interest in running the organisation.
Where data is stored
Our server is operated by Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany (European Union). Backups are encrypted copies kept for a limited period.
Your rights
Under the GDPR and the South African POPIA you can ask what we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to its processing, and receive a copy. Write to info@meridian17.org; we reply within one month. You may also complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) or the South African Information Regulator.
Changes
We update this page when our practices change and note the date at the top.