Privacy Policy

What we collect

Information you give us

If you submit the enquiry form, we receive the fields it asks for: your name, email address, optional phone or WhatsApp number, your location, what you are researching, and your preferred contact method. Nothing else, because nothing else is collected.

That information is used to pass your enquiry to a participating clinic so they can contact you. It is not sold, and it is not used for any purpose other than handling your enquiry and understanding which pages generate enquiries.

Information collected automatically

Nothing at all, unless you allow it. This site ships no advertising pixel and no social tracking, and no analytics runs before you answer the consent banner. That includes the enquiry form: submitting it records what you typed and the date, and deliberately not your IP address, your browser or device details, or where you came from. The enquiry log has no column for any of those, which is easier to hold to than a promise not to look at them.

Session recording, and only with your consent. We would like to run Microsoft Clarity, which records what visitors click, how far they scroll and how they move through a page, so that we can find the pages that confuse people. That is a different kind of collection from counting page views: it is a recording, and it sets its own cookies. So nothing about it happens until you press Allow on the banner. Until then no script is requested, no cookie is set and nothing is sent to Microsoft, and if you decline that stays true: there is no quieter version that runs anyway. You can change your mind at any time from Cookie settings in the footer.

A container, on the same decision. We also use Google Tag Manager, which collects nothing on its own: it loads the measurement tags we have configured inside it. It runs only after you press Allow, the same single decision that covers Clarity, and declining covers it too. Those tags are configured in Google's interface rather than in this site's code, which means they can be changed without anything here changing. We are stating that openly rather than listing today's tags as though the list were fixed: the container is pointed at from here, and a tag that would need a new disclosure under this policy is not enabled until this page has been updated to describe it.

Microsoft masks sensitive content by default, and states that the contents of form fields are masked in every masking mode, so an enquiry is not replayed as text. We would still rather you did not type medical details anywhere on this site, for the reason given at the top of this page.

Cookies and local storage

This site sets no cookie of its own: no advertising cookie, no tracking cookie, nothing that identifies you. The only cookies that can appear while you read are the ones set by the tags you have allowed, which today means Microsoft Clarity and the Google tags described above. None can appear before you press Allow. Decline, or ignore the banner entirely, and this site stores no cookie at all.

Because there is now something to consent to, there is a banner. Your answer to it is kept in your browser's localStorage rather than in a cookie: one of two words, and nothing else. It is not sent anywhere. To erase it, use Cookie settings in the footer to answer again, or clear this site's data in your browser, which returns you to being asked.

The interactive checklists use your browser's localStorage to remember which items you have ticked, so that you can come back to a checklist later. This data stays in your browser: it is never transmitted to us, and clearing your browser data removes it. The checklist tool says so on the page as well.

Third-party content

Some pages contain video embeds. These are lazy-loaded: no connection to YouTube is made until you press play, and the embed uses the youtube-nocookie.com domain to limit tracking before playback. Once you start a video, YouTube's own privacy policy applies to that interaction.

Our pages link to external sources: regulators, journals, professional bodies. Following those links takes you to sites governed by their own policies, which we do not control.

Who we share information with

• Participating clinics. The clinic relevant to your enquiry receives the details you submitted, so that it can contact you. That is the purpose of the form.
• Service providers. Any provider used to deliver or host this site processes data on our behalf. That is Cloudflare, which hosts the site and holds the enquiry log, and the email provider that carries enquiries to our inbox. Neither is given anything beyond the enquiry itself, and neither is permitted to use it for anything else.
• Microsoft. Only if you allow session recording, and only then: Microsoft Clarity receives the recording and sets the cookies described above. Decline and Microsoft receives nothing from this site at all.
• Google. Only if you allow it, and only for the tag container: Google receives the requests its tags make on our behalf. Decline and Google receives nothing from this site.
• Nobody else. We do not sell, rent or trade personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.

How long we keep it, and where

Two copies of your enquiry exist. One is the email, which arrives in our inbox and, once it has been answered, stays in the mailbox we work from. The other is a record in an enquiry log, kept separately from the mail system so that an enquiry is not lost to a spam filter, a forwarding rule or a mail provider having a bad day. That log holds what you typed, the date it arrived, and whether the email was delivered.

An enquiry record is deleted 12 months after it arrives. We keep it that long because enquiries are seasonal and people write back months later about the same decision; you can ask us to delete yours sooner and we will. Deleting the record does not reach into the clinic's own records if your enquiry was passed on, because those are the clinic's, held under its obligations as a licensed healthcare provider in the UAE.

The enquiry log is hosted by Cloudflare, which may process it outside the UAE. Nothing in it is used for advertising, profiling or analytics, and it is not joined to anything else.

Your rights

You can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. Email [email protected] and we will respond. If you are in the UAE, you also have rights under applicable federal and emirate-level data protection law; if you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have rights under the GDPR or UK GDPR respectively. We will apply the same standards to any request regardless of where you are writing from.

Children

This site is intended for adults considering refractive surgery. We do not knowingly collect information from children. Refractive surgery is generally considered only for adults, and enquiries relating to a minor should be made by a parent or guardian directly to a clinic.

Security and the limits of email

We take reasonable measures to protect information we hold. Email is not a secure channel, however, which is another reason not to send medical details or documents through it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially: if a tracker is added, if the one described above is switched off, or if a new form processor is used: the change will be reflected here and the review date at the top will be updated. Switching a recorder off counts. It is a smaller change to the site and a larger one to anyone who agreed to it, and this page should say so rather than quietly drop a paragraph and hope nobody kept a copy.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request relating to your information: [email protected].