Privacy Policy

This is a starting template, not legal advice. Before publishing, have it reviewed (ideally by a lawyer) and fill in your site's actual name, contact email, and any analytics or ad tools you actually use. Requirements vary by where your visitors live (e.g., GDPR in the EU/UK, CCPA in California, and specific rules for sites likely to be used by children under 13 under COPPA).

What this site is

MajorAtlas ("we," "us") is an informational website about college majors. This policy explains what information is collected when you visit and how it's used.

Information we collect

We do not require account creation, and we do not ask visitors to submit personal information (like names, emails, or addresses) to use this site. The quiz on this site runs entirely in your browser, no answers are saved, transmitted, or stored anywhere.

Like most websites, we automatically receive some technical information when you visit, such as your browser type, approximate location (derived from IP address, not stored), pages visited, and time spent on the site. We use Plausible Analytics to understand this in aggregate, it doesn't use cookies, doesn't collect personal data, and doesn't track you across other websites. We also use Google Analytics, which does use cookies to distinguish visitors and sessions; you can opt out of Google Analytics tracking across all websites using Google's Browser Add-on.

Advertising & cookies

This site displays advertising through Google AdSense. Google and its partners may use cookies (including the DoubleClick cookie) to serve ads based on your visits to this and other websites. You can learn more about how Google uses data at Google's Partner Sites policy, and you can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. If you're visiting from the European Economic Area, the UK, or Switzerland, ad personalization consent on this site is managed through Google's own certified consent platform (part of AdSense's Privacy & messaging settings), which shows its own consent message and only serves personalized ads to visitors who accept; personalized ads are off by default for this traffic until that consent is given. Visitors elsewhere see personalized ads by default (the standard opt-out model most ad-supported sites use outside those regions) and can decline them at any time through a simpler cookie banner (src/components/ConsentBanner.jsx). Region is determined automatically from your connection at the edge (middleware.js) and isn't based on anything you submit or that we store beyond a single day.

Children's privacy

This site is intended for high school and college-age students and their families, and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and since the site collects no personal information from any visitor by design, this applies equally regardless of age. The FTC's Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) was amended in 2025, with a compliance deadline of April 22, 2026, expanding the definition of personal information and adding a formal "mixed audience" category for sites like this one that serve a general, non-child-directed audience. If you know or suspect children under 13 use this site, or if your own version of this site adds any data collection later, configure AdSense's child-directed treatment settings and review the current COPPA rule and FTC guidance before enabling ads; this is a legal compliance matter worth confirming with counsel rather than relying on a general template.

Third-party links

This site may link to external websites (such as colleges or reference sources). We aren't responsible for the privacy practices of those third-party sites.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent via our contact page.