Privacy policy

This page explains, in plain English, what personal information The UAE Blog collects, why, and what happens to it. The short version: we collect very little, we use it only to reply to you, and we never sell or share it.

Who we are

The UAE Blog (theuaeblog.com) is a personal, non-profit blog with practical guides to the United Arab Emirates. It is run by one person, referred to here as the site owner. For any privacy question, use the contact page.

Contact and “write for us” forms

When you send a message through the contact form or the “write for us” form:

• your name, email address and message are stored in the site’s WordPress database and emailed to the site owner
• we use them only to read and reply to your message
• we do not add you to any mailing list; this site has no newsletter
• we do not sell, rent or share your details with anyone

Spam protection

To stop automated spam, the forms briefly use your IP address to count how many messages have been sent from it. This rate-limit counter is kept for one hour and then deleted automatically. It is not used for anything else.

Comments

Comments are open on some posts. If you leave a comment, WordPress stores the comment itself, the name and email address you enter, your IP address and your browser’s user agent string. The IP address and browser string help with spam detection. Your name and comment are shown publicly once approved; your email address is never published.

WordPress may send an anonymised string created from your email address (called a hash) to the Gravatar service to check whether you have a profile picture there. If you do, it appears next to your approved comment. Gravatar’s privacy policy is at automattic.com/privacy.

Your theme choice, cookies and fonts

If you switch between light and dark mode, your choice is saved in your browser’s local storage so the site remembers it next time. This is not a cookie and it is never sent to us; you can clear it at any time by clearing your browser’s site data. The site’s fonts are hosted on the site itself, so loading a page does not send your details to a font service.

Free tools and the currency converter

Our free tools, such as the fare, toll and cost calculators, run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type into them is sent to us or stored on our server.

The currency converter needs up-to-date exchange rates, so your browser requests them from ExchangeRate-API (exchangerate-api.com) or from Frankfurter, a free exchange rate service. Like any website you visit, these services can see your IP address when the request is made. The amounts you enter are not sent to them.

Embedded content from other websites

Some older posts include embedded content, such as videos or maps. Embedded content behaves exactly as if you had visited the other website: that website may collect data about you, use cookies and track your interaction with the embedded content, especially if you are logged in to it.

Plugins

Some WordPress plugins installed on the site, for example for statistics or security, may set their own cookies; they are listed below by the site owner.

[Site owner: list any analytics, advertising or security plugins here, or delete this paragraph.]

How long we keep your data

• Contact and “write for us” messages: for as long as we need them to deal with your message, after which we delete them. You can ask us to delete yours sooner.
• Spam rate-limit counter: one hour.
• Comments and their details: kept as long as the comment is on the site, so that later comments from you can be recognised. You can ask us to remove a comment.
• Theme choice: stays in your browser until you clear it.

Your rights

You can ask to see the personal information we hold about you, to correct it or to have it deleted. Send your request through the contact page and we will reply as soon as we can. We may need to confirm that the request comes from you before acting on it.

UAE data protection law

The UAE protects personal data under Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the protection of personal data. We aim to handle your information in line with its principles: collect only what we need, use it only for the reason we collected it, keep it safe and delete it when it is no longer needed.

Last updated: October 2026