1. Data Controller

The data controller for all personal information processed through this website is:

Nile Heritage Consulting S.A.E.
14 Talaat Harb Street, 3rd Floor
Downtown Cairo, 11511
Arab Republic of Egypt
Tax ID (ETA): 614-882-307  |  GAFI Commercial Registry: 483612
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +20 2 2393 8150

Nile Heritage Consulting S.A.E. is a joint stock company incorporated under Egyptian law. We are committed to handling personal information responsibly and in accordance with applicable Egyptian data protection legislation and internationally recognised principles of data privacy.

2. Data We Collect

We collect personal information in the following circumstances:

Contact Form Submissions: When you submit the contact form on contact.html, we collect your first name, family name, email address, and the content of your message. If you voluntarily provide a telephone number or indicate an interest in a specific plan, we collect those details as well.

Email Correspondence: If you email us directly at [email protected], we collect your email address, any name included in your signature, and the content of your message. Email correspondence is retained on our mail server hosted in the EU by a provider compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation.

Plan Subscriptions: If you subscribe to the Explorer or Scholar plan, we additionally collect payment confirmation records (we do not process or store card numbers directly) and the email address to which we send download links.

Server Logs: Our web hosting provider automatically records standard server access logs including IP addresses, browser user agent strings, referrer URLs, and timestamps. These logs are used solely for security monitoring and technical troubleshooting, are not cross-referenced with personal identities, and are deleted after 30 days.

We do not use cookies beyond the technically necessary session functionality of our contact form. We do not deploy analytics scripts, advertising trackers, social media plugins, or any third-party tracking technology on this website.

3. How We Use Your Data

Personal information submitted through this website is used exclusively for the following purposes:

  • Responding to your enquiry or message, including providing the information or assistance you requested.
  • Processing and fulfilling guide plan subscriptions, including sending download links and subscription confirmation.
  • Sending the quarterly excavation newsletter and bi-monthly content update emails to Scholar and Explorer subscribers respectively, where you have explicitly requested these communications.
  • Technical maintenance and security monitoring of the website's server environment.

We do not use your personal information for marketing purposes, and we will never send you unsolicited promotional communications. The only emails you will receive from us are direct responses to your contact form submission and, if you are a plan subscriber, the content materials and periodic update communications you explicitly requested when subscribing.

We do not use automated decision-making or profiling systems. All responses to enquiries are composed and sent by a member of our human staff.

4. Legal Basis for Processing

We process personal information on the following legal bases:

Contract performance: Processing necessary to fulfil a plan subscription, including delivering the materials you have paid for and responding to subscriber enquiries related to that subscription.

Legitimate interests: Responding to general contact form submissions constitutes a legitimate interest of Nile Heritage Consulting in fulfilling its function as a public information resource. Retaining server logs for security and technical monitoring purposes represents a legitimate interest in the safe operation of our systems.

Consent: Where we ask for your explicit consent to processing — specifically, the checkbox on the contact form confirming your acceptance of this Privacy Policy — processing is conditional on that consent. You may withdraw consent at any time by contacting us at [email protected], though withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out prior to withdrawal.

5. Data Retention

We retain personal information for no longer than necessary for the purposes for which it was collected:

  • Contact form enquiries: Email correspondence arising from contact form submissions is retained for 24 months from the date of the initial submission, after which it is permanently deleted from our mail server and any local backups.
  • Plan subscriber records: Subscription records including the subscriber email address and materials sent are retained for the duration of the subscription period plus 12 months, to allow for legitimate re-access requests and dispute resolution.
  • Server access logs: Automatically deleted after 30 days.
  • Payment confirmation records: Where applicable, retained for seven years in accordance with Egyptian commercial accounting requirements.

6. Third Parties

We share personal information with third parties only in the following strictly limited circumstances:

Hosting provider: Our website and email service are hosted on servers operated by our EU-based hosting provider. This provider processes data solely as a data processor acting on our instructions and operates under a data processing agreement meeting GDPR standards, which we consider the applicable international benchmark for adequacy.

Legal obligation: If required by applicable Egyptian law, a court order, or a legitimate request from an Egyptian government authority, we may be required to disclose personal information. We will resist any such request that appears disproportionate and will notify the data subject where legally permissible.

We do not sell, rent, lend, or otherwise transfer personal information to any commercial third party for any purpose. We do not use data brokers or lead generation services. We do not share subscriber or enquirer data with tour operators, hotels, or any other commercial entity.

7. International Data Transfers

Our email and web hosting infrastructure is located in the European Union, specifically in the Netherlands. Data transmitted between your browser and our servers is encrypted using TLS (HTTPS). When your contact form submission reaches our mail server in the EU, it is processed and stored there before being accessed by our staff in Cairo over an encrypted connection.

The transfer of data from the EU server to our Cairo team constitutes an international transfer from the EU/EEA to a third country (Egypt). We assess this transfer as proportionate and necessary given that the data controller is an Egyptian company whose staff are based in Cairo. We implement appropriate technical safeguards including encrypted connections and access controls limited to authorised team members.

8. Your Rights

In accordance with internationally recognised data protection principles, you have the following rights regarding personal information we hold about you:

  • Right of access: You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
  • Right to rectification: You may request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal information.
  • Right to erasure: You may request deletion of your personal information, subject to our obligations under applicable law.
  • Right to restriction: You may request that we restrict processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Right to portability: You may request a machine-readable copy of personal information you provided to us.
  • Right to object: You may object to processing based on legitimate interests at any time.
  • Right to withdraw consent: Where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw consent at any time without affecting prior processing.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond to all valid requests within 30 days. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.

9. Cookies

This website does not use tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or analytics cookies of any kind. We do not deploy any JavaScript-based analytics service (including Google Analytics, Matomo, Hotjar, or similar tools). We do not use social media sharing widgets that set third-party cookies.

Our contact form uses a session-level technical mechanism to maintain form state while you are filling it out. This does not persist after you close the browser tab and does not track you across sessions or across websites. No personal information is stored in your browser beyond the temporary session.

Your browser's standard caching mechanism may cache static assets (CSS and JavaScript files) from our hosting server. This is standard browser behaviour outside our control and does not involve any personally identifying information.

10. Children

This website is intended for adults and older teenagers researching heritage travel independently. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 16. If you believe a child under 16 has submitted personal information through our contact form without appropriate parental knowledge and consent, please contact us at [email protected] and we will promptly delete the relevant data.

11. Security

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against unauthorised access, accidental loss, alteration, or disclosure. These measures include TLS encryption for all data transmitted between your browser and our servers, encrypted connections for staff access to our mail server from Cairo, access controls limiting email account access to authorised team members, and regular security reviews of our hosting environment.

No method of internet transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach that is likely to result in risk to the rights and freedoms of affected individuals, we will notify affected persons as required by applicable law.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes in our practices, applicable law, or our service offering. The date of the most recent review is shown at the top of this page. We will not make retroactive changes that reduce the protections afforded to information already collected without providing specific notice to affected individuals.

For plan subscribers, material changes to this policy will be communicated by email. For all other visitors, we recommend checking this page periodically if you intend to submit personal information through our contact form.

13. Contact and Complaints

Questions, requests, or complaints regarding this Privacy Policy or our data handling practices should be directed to:

Nile Heritage Consulting S.A.E.
Attn: Privacy Enquiries
14 Talaat Harb Street, 3rd Floor
Downtown Cairo, 11511, Egypt
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +20 2 2393 8150

We take privacy concerns seriously and aim to respond to all privacy-related enquiries within 10 working days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you retain the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant national data protection authority in your country of residence.