Privacy & Support

Very little is collected here, and two things never will be: nothing is sold, and nothing feeds advertising. There is no ad network and no tracking of you across the web. Every scan, atlas and tractogram is a file that ships with the page and is rendered on your own machine. The two optional services that do touch a network — an account, if you make one, and plain usage counts — are named below, and the date at the bottom changes whenever this list does.

The apps

The iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android apps carry the whole site inside them — the MNI152 template, the AAL-116 and Brodmann atlases, the HCP1065 tractogram and the viewer. The anatomy makes no network requests. You can put the device in aeroplane mode and every page still works, which is a test you can run yourself. The network is used only by the optional services described below, and only when you use them, with one exception in the iPhone, iPad and Mac app: as it opens, and when it comes back to the screen at most once an hour, it asks Apple’s App Store which version of the app is the newest, so that it can tell you when an update is out. That request goes to Apple, not to us; it carries the app’s App Store number and the country your device is set to, and nothing about you. The app keeps the date it last told you, so that it asks at most once a day.

The app stores no personal data. Two things are kept on the device and never leave it:

• Whether you chose the light or the dark theme.
• A snapshot, only if you ask for one. It is written into the app’s own documents folder and then handed to the system share sheet, so where it ends up is your choice. Nothing is sent anywhere.

On a Mac with Apple silicon the app is the iPad app, unchanged, running inside the sandbox macOS gives every app from its store. It asks for nothing beyond that sandbox: the only file it writes is a snapshot you ask for, into its own container, and the only connections it makes are the update check above and the optional services below, when you use them.

The website

The website is the same files, served from Cloudflare. One thing follows from being on the open web rather than in an app bundle, and it is worth stating plainly:

• Cloudflare sees requests. Serving a page means the host receives your IP address and the usual request headers. This is how the web works and applies to every site you visit; nothing is added to it here, and none of it is used to build any profile.

The pages themselves make no third-party requests today. The typefaces used to be the exception — they were fetched from Google Fonts, which meant Google saw an IP address on every page load — and as of 27 August 2026 they are served from this site alongside everything else.

Your browser also stores, locally: the light-or-dark choice, and a cache of the site’s files created by its service worker so that it works offline. Both live in your browser, are readable only by this site, and are cleared whenever you clear site data.

Optional services

Five services add to the list above:

• Questions asked through an AI assistant. The atlas answers questions inside the AI assistant of your choice, any that speaks the Model Context Protocol, through a small server at mcp.visualneuroscience.ai, described on its own page. That server answers from the same public data as these pages, holds no accounts of its own, stores nothing about you, and keeps no record of your questions beyond the short-lived operational logs of the platform it runs on. If you choose to connect your account to an assistant, you log in on this site and press Allow, and the assistant is given a key that lets it read your username, university and email and list, open and save your Region Atlas models, through the same Firebase service the app uses and under the same rules; the server keeps no copy of any of it. The key stops working when you disconnect the assistant, change your password or delete the account. What you type to the assistant itself is governed by that assistant’s own privacy policy, not this one.
• An account, if you make one. When a Log in button is present, sign-in is handled by Google’s Firebase service. It stores your email address, your name, the username you choose (which is shown in place of your name, and which no one else can take), your university if you give it, the files you choose to save (such as the named models of the Region Atlas), and your progress in the practice questions, so that the same account works on the web and in the apps. That data exists to serve your account back to you: it is deleted with the account, and it is never sold or used for advertising. Making an account also offers feature announcements by email, in a box that starts clear: tick it and your address goes to the newsletter below, leave it and nothing is sent. A run of wrong passwords is counted in your browser for a quarter of an hour, so that the sign-in box can ask for a tick before the next try; signing in clears the count.
• The newsletter, if you ask for it. A box on the website’s pages offers a short email when something new lands, and making an account, on the website or in the apps, offers the same. If you type your address in, or tick the box as you make an account, a small server of ours passes it straight to Mailchimp, the mailing-list service run by Intuit, which keeps the newsletter’s list on its servers in the United States and sends the emails. Mailchimp first writes to you to confirm, and you are on the list only once you do; every email carries a way to leave, and leaving takes you off the list. Nothing is sent unless you press the button or tick that box, the address is used for feature announcements and nothing else, and our server keeps no copy of its own. Closing the box is remembered in your browser for a fortnight; signing up is remembered so it does not ask again.
• A poster, if you buy one. The posters are sold through a print-on-demand shop run by a separate business, named on that page, which takes your payment, your delivery address and your order on its own site, under its own privacy policy, and prints and posts the poster. The Buy buttons here only open that shop; this site and the apps see none of what you enter there, and no part of your order is tied to an account here.
• Usage counts. The site and the apps count how they are used, through Google Analytics for Firebase, to decide what to build next: which pages and screens are opened, when someone signs in and by which method, the kind of device and browser or app version, and the country, read from the connection’s address and kept no finer than that. On the website this sets a first-party cookie carrying a random identifier, so that two visits by the same browser count as one visitor; in the apps the app’s own random install identifier does the same, and the advertising identifier is never read. Google processes these counts on our behalf. They are not joined to your account, not used for advertising, and measure use of this site, not you across the web. If you would rather not be counted on the website, blocking cookies for this site stops it.

Deleting your account

The account page shows everything your account holds, gives you a copy of it, and deletes it. Open it, or Log in on any page, and, logged in, press Delete account: the account, the files saved to it and its practice progress are removed at once, and nothing of them is kept. If you cannot log in, or would rather not do it yourself, write to fkarim@visualneuroscience.ai from the address on the account and it is deleted by hand within 30 days, with the same result. If you signed in with Apple, deleting the account also revokes the Sign in with Apple authorisation. The steps for every platform are on the account deletion page. Deleting the account does not remove you from the newsletter, which is a separate list: every newsletter email carries its own unsubscribe link.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you may ask what we hold about you, have it corrected, have it deleted, take a copy of it away, and object to how it is used. The account page does the first four itself, at once, and the address below does the rest; nothing about you is decided by automated means. The data controller is Fadil Karim, at that address. If you think something is wrong and we have not put it right, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

The site is an educational anatomy reference. It is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect personal information from them.

What this is not

Nothing here is a medical device, a diagnosis, or advice about treatment. The pages summarise published work and draw published atlases; each says where its data came from and where the evidence stops. Read them as a reference, not as a clinical tool.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date below changes with it. The Google Fonts disclosure that used to sit above is the kind of change to expect: something removed, with the date to show when.

Support & contact

Questions, corrections and bug reports are welcome — particularly corrections. The pages make factual claims about neuroanatomy and cite their sources, and if one of them is wrong I would rather know.

Write to fkarim@visualneuroscience.ai and a person reads it. Visual Neuroscience is made by Fadil Karim. The terms of use are a separate page, as short as this one.

Last updated 24 October 2026 · Visual Neuroscience · made by Fadil Karim