Privacy

Reading the encyclopedia

You can read all twenty-two chapters, the atlas, the stone tables and the A to Z index without giving us anything. There is no account, no login and no newsletter.

The site is served by Cloudflare, which necessarily processes your IP address and request headers to deliver the pages and to protect the site from attack. That processing is what makes the site reachable at all; it cannot be switched off without the site going dark. Cloudflare acts as our processor and is bound by its own data protection terms.

Advertising

Pages carry advertising supplied by Google AdSense. Google uses cookies and similar technology to serve ads, to measure them and, if you allow it, to personalise them using data it holds about you across other sites.

In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland you are asked before any of this happens, through a consent notice certified by Google. Nothing is stored and no personalised advertising is served unless you consent. You can reopen that notice and change your answer at any time from the link in the footer.

If you refuse, you still see advertising, but it is not personalised and no advertising cookie is stored.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand which chapters are read and how people arrive. It is configured with Google Consent Mode: across the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, analytics storage is denied by default and only enabled if you consent through the same notice. Where you have not consented, Google receives an anonymous signal carrying no identifier and no cookie.

Analytics data is retained for fourteen months and is not used to identify you. We do not send names, email addresses or any other personal detail into Analytics, and no page address on this site contains such a detail.

We may also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookie, stores nothing in your browser and does not follow you across sites. Because it collects no personal data, it is not placed behind the consent notice.

Sending a sourcing brief

The brief form is the only place this site asks for anything about you. It collects your name, email address, the country you are writing from, what you are looking for, your budget and timing, and whatever you add in the notes.

That is sent to us as an email and nothing more. It is relayed by Resend, our email provider, and delivered to info@erebaur.com. The relay itself keeps no copy: it holds the message only for as long as it takes to deliver it. There is no database behind this form and no profile is built from it.

We use what you send to answer you and, if we go on to work together, to carry out that work. We keep briefs that lead to an engagement for ten years, which is the retention period Swiss commercial law sets for business records. A brief that leads nowhere is deleted within twelve months.

The form is checked by Cloudflare Turnstile, which works out whether a person or a script is sending it. It sets no cookie. Cloudflare receives your IP address, your browser's user agent and a fingerprint of the connection, uses them only to tell a person from a bot, and states that it cannot identify you from them.

If we do business

Buying a stone is a separate matter from reading this site, and it involves more than a web form. Depending on the transaction we may have to ask for identification, proof of address and the source of the funds, because dealers in precious stones are subject to anti money laundering obligations in Switzerland and in most of the countries we buy from.

Those documents are held only for as long as the law requires and are never used for marketing, never sold and never shared with an advertiser. They are not collected through this website.

Where your data goes

Google and Cloudflare are American companies and Resend operates on American infrastructure, so some of this data is processed outside Switzerland and the European Economic Area. Each of them relies on the European Commission and Swiss adequacy decisions for the EU-US and Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework, or on standard contractual clauses where that does not apply.

We do not sell your data. We have never sold your data. There is no arrangement under which anyone pays us for it.

Your rights

Under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, and under the GDPR if you are in the EEA or the UK, you can ask what we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to how we use it and withdraw a consent you gave. Withdrawing consent does not undo what was lawful before you withdrew it.

Write to info@erebaur.com and we will answer within thirty days. We do not charge for this and we will not ask you to justify the request.

If you are unhappy with our answer you can complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, or to the supervisory authority where you live if that is in the EEA or the UK.

Children

This site is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. The encyclopedia is open to anyone who wants to read it, but the sourcing service is for adults.

Law and forum

This policy is governed by Swiss law, and in particular the Federal Act on Data Protection. The place of jurisdiction is Fribourg, Switzerland. If you are in the EEA or the UK, this does not take away the protection of the mandatory rules of the country you live in, nor your right to complain to your own supervisory authority.

Changes

This policy was last revised on 19 September 2026. When it changes materially we will say so here and change the date. We do not quietly rewrite it.