Terms of Service
Last updated 20 September 2026. Available in English only.
1. Agreement to these terms
These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of UNESCO Heritage Tracker (the “Service”), operated by the operator of this site (“we”, “us”). By visiting the Service, creating an account, or posting anything to it, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.
Our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy are part of these Terms.
2. Who may use the Service
You may browse the Service without an account. To create an account you must be at least 16 years old, or the minimum age at which you can consent to the processing of personal data where you live, whichever is higher. The Service is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.
3. Your account
- You are responsible for everything that happens under your account, and for keeping your password secure.
- Give us an email address you actually control — it is how we verify the account and how you recover it.
- One person, one account. Do not share an account or let someone else use yours.
- Tell us promptly if you think your account has been compromised.
- You can delete your account at any time from your profile page. See the Privacy Policy for exactly what that removes.
4. Acceptable use
Do not use the Service to:
- break the law, or encourage anyone else to;
- post content that infringes someone’s copyright, trademark, privacy, or other rights;
- harass, threaten, impersonate, or defame anyone;
- post sexual content involving minors, or content that promotes violence or hatred against a group;
- upload malware, or attempt to probe, scan, or breach the security of the Service;
- scrape, crawl, or bulk-download the Service in a way that degrades it for others, or circumvent rate limits and access controls;
- send spam, advertising, or unsolicited promotion through comments, profiles, or the contact form;
- misrepresent your identity or affiliation, including implying you speak for UNESCO or for us.
We may remove content or suspend accounts that breach this section. We are not obliged to monitor content, and choosing to moderate some content does not make us responsible for all of it.
5. Your content
“Your Content” means anything you post or submit: comments, display name, avatar, visit records, suggested links, and messages you send us. You keep ownership of Your Content.
By posting it, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, display, and distribute Your Content for the purpose of operating and promoting the Service, including showing it on public site pages, in feeds, and in social preview cards. This licence exists only so that we can run the Service; it ends when you delete the content, except for copies already distributed, cached, or held in backups, and except where retention is needed to comply with the law or resolve a dispute.
You confirm that you have the right to post Your Content, and that it does not breach section 4.
Comments are shown publicly alongside the heritage site they relate to. If you make your profile public, the visits you have logged and your display name and avatar are visible to anyone holding your share link. Both are your choice: your profile is private by default.
6. Accuracy — and why you must not rely on this site
The Service reproduces and reformats data about World Heritage Sites obtained from public sources. That data may be incomplete, out of date, or wrong. The World Heritage List changes at every session of the World Heritage Committee, and our copy of it is a periodic snapshot, not a live feed.
Nothing on the Service is travel, safety, legal, access, border, visa, health, or financial advice, and you must not rely on it as such.
Coordinates, boundaries, maps, opening information, danger-listing status, and inscription details are shown for general interest only. Many World Heritage Sites are in remote, protected, politically unstable, or physically hazardous places, and some require permits or are closed to visitors entirely. Before travelling anywhere, check official sources: the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the relevant national or site authority, and your government’s travel advice. Your decision to travel is yours alone and is made at your own risk.
7. AI-assisted content
Some editorial content on the Service — news posts in particular — is drafted or edited with the help of AI language models before being reviewed and published by a human. AI systems can state things confidently and be wrong. Treat editorial content as commentary, check anything that matters against the primary source, and tell us if you spot an error.
8. Third-party content and links
The Service links to and embeds material from third parties, including UNESCO, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, and sites suggested by users. We do not control that material and do not endorse it. Following an external link is at your own risk and subject to that third party’s own terms and privacy practices.
9. Intellectual property
The Service’s own code, layout, text, and design are ours, or used under licence. The heritage data, flags, map tiles, fonts, and open-source components we build on belong to their respective owners and are used under the licences listed on our Attribution & Licences page. The UNESCO name and the World Heritage emblem belong to UNESCO; we make no claim to them.
If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, see Copyright & Takedown.
10. Donations
The Service is free. You may choose to make a voluntary donation through a third-party platform to help cover hosting costs. Donations are gifts: they are not payment for the Service, they buy no feature, access level, or service-level commitment, and they are non-refundable by us. The donation platform’s own terms govern the transaction, and we never see your card details.
11. Availability and changes
This is a hobby project run on a best-effort basis. We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service, or the whole of it, at any time and without notice. We do not promise any level of uptime, and we do not promise to keep your data forever. Export anything you care about — your profile page has a one-click export.
12. Suspension and termination
You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if keeping it would expose us or other users to risk. Where it is practical and lawful to do so, we will tell you why.
13. Disclaimer of warranties
The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that any information on it is accurate, complete, or current.
14. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither we nor anyone involved in creating or operating the Service will be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or anticipated savings, arising out of or connected with your use of the Service — whether the claim is in contract, tort (including negligence), or otherwise, and even if we were advised such damages were possible.
In particular, and without limiting the above, we are not liable for any loss, injury, or harm arising from travel undertaken in reliance on information found on the Service, or from your dealings with any third party you found through it.
Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, our total aggregate liability to you for all claims is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, which for almost everyone is zero, and (b) USD 100.
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. If you are a consumer, you keep every right your local consumer-protection law gives you, and nothing here overrides it.
15. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim, demand, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) brought by a third party and arising out of Your Content, your use of the Service, or your breach of these Terms or of the law. This does not apply to the extent the claim arises from our own breach or negligence, and it does not apply where you are a consumer and local law says otherwise.
16. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. The “last updated” date at the top always reflects the current version. For material changes we will give notice on the Service before they take effect where we reasonably can. Continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept the updated Terms; if you do not, delete your account.
17. Severability and entire agreement
If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force and the unenforceable part is applied as closely as possible to its original intent. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. These Terms, together with the Privacy and Cookie Policies, are the entire agreement between us about the Service. You may not transfer your rights under them; we may transfer ours if the Service changes hands, on notice to you.
18. Contact
Questions about these Terms? Use the contact form.
Parts of these Terms are adapted from Basecamp’s open-source policies, used under CC BY 4.0.