# Corrections log

> Every correction made to this site, in the order it was made. Append-only.

- Language: English
- Page: https://smilehandbook.com/en/corrections/
- Français: https://smilehandbook.com/fr/corrections/
- العربية: https://smilehandbook.com/ar/corrections/
- All published pages: https://smilehandbook.com/llms-full.txt

Every published claim we have had to change after it went live is recorded here, along with the rules we follow when we change one. Every entry below is dated, and the log only grows: an entry is added, never rewritten and never removed. We say what they cover plainly rather than bury them, and the section below on what a log this short proves sets out how little weight a log this young can carry.

## What this log is for

Readers may act on the claims we publish about dental treatment abroad. Some of those claims will turn out wrong. The honest response when that happens is not a quiet edit and a shrug, because anyone who acted on the earlier version would never learn it had changed. This log exists so that any change of meaning in our published work leaves a permanent, visible trace.

This log is append-only. An entry, once written, is never deleted and never rewritten. If we later learn that a correction was itself mistaken, we do not edit the original entry; we add a new entry above it, superseding the old one, and both remain readable. Nothing on this page is removed, including entries that make us look careless.

## What counts as a correction

A correction is any change that alters the meaning of something we published. Fixing a typo, repairing a broken link, sharpening a sentence that carries the same claim, adjusting a layout: none of these is a correction, and none appears here.

These do appear here:
A number we published that turns out to be wrong, or that we can no longer support with the method we used to get it.
A claim whose strength we overstated, for example describing something as measured when it was only estimated.
A statement about how something works in practice that a reader could act on and that we now believe to be inaccurate.
A source we cited that we later find does not say what we said it said.
A conclusion we withdraw entirely because the evidence beneath it did not hold.

The test we apply is a simple one: where a reader of the earlier version and a reader of the current version would decide differently, the change is a correction.

## How a correction is marked

Two things come out of every correction. First, a dated note on the page itself, sitting where the affected claim sits, saying what the page said before and what it says now. We do not use a generic "this page has been updated" banner, because it tells a reader nothing about what changed.

Second, an entry in this log recording the date, the page, the claim as it was published, the claim as it now stands, and what prompted the change. Severity is stated in plain words instead of a colour or a rating: whether a number moved, whether a conclusion was withdrawn, whether a claim was weakened.

## What a log this short proves

The log is still short. That is not a measure of how well our published claims have held up; it is a measure of how few pages we have published so far. A site this young has not yet handed itself enough chances to be wrong in public. At this stage a log this short carries almost no information about our accuracy, and we would rather say so than let a short log be read as a record.

Read honestly, a log acquires meaning only with age. If this page is still this short once we have published substantially more, that will mean something. Today it does not. The entries below are not all of one kind, and each says which it is: some record a change of fact, and some record a conclusion or a number of ours that was wrong and has been withdrawn.

## What does not enter this log

This log takes published claims only. Work we correct before it goes live never shows up here, because nothing was ever in front of a reader to be misled by it.

The distinction is not hypothetical. While preparing our first analysis, we caught and fixed two errors in our own process before any of it was published. One: an audit of the way we assigned star ratings to collected reviews found the method faulty, and the counting was corrected before any figure was used. The other: a page animation was hiding content from readers under some conditions, and it was rebuilt before the page went out. Under our own definition neither counts as a correction, and neither will ever appear as an entry below. We describe them here only to make the boundary concrete: pre-publication fixes are ordinary editorial work, and a site that logged them would be inflating a record of diligence instead of keeping a record of error.

## Telling us we are wrong

Where you believe something we published is inaccurate, write to us and name the page, the sentence, and what you take the correct position to be. Evidence helps but is not a condition of being taken seriously; a clear description of what looks wrong gives us enough to check it ourselves.

We read every report. We will not always agree that a change is needed, and where we decline we will say why rather than leave a message unanswered. Where we do agree, the correction lands on the affected page and in this log, and we will tell you it has been made.

We also correct ourselves unprompted. When we revisit our own work and find an error, it enters this log on the same terms as a reader-reported one, and the entry does not record which of the two it was, because the reader is owed the correction either way.

## The log

Published 29 October 2026 — The status paragraphs of the privacy notice and the cookies page now say that the changes of 29 October 2026 on Google Analytics were reviewed and approved by our legal team on 29 October 2026; this approval does not cover the earlier changes listed there.
Published 29 October 2026 — The privacy notice and the cookies page, in the three languages, now describe Google Analytics 4, which this site runs only with your explicit consent, given with “Accept” in the cookie banner at the foot of each page; until you choose, and if you choose “Reject”, nothing is sent to Google. Until today the privacy notice said that there is no Google Analytics on this site and that a check refuses to compile the site if an analytics call appears in the source, and the cookies page said that this site sets no cookies and has no consent banner. The privacy notice now says who provides the service, what it records, which cookies it sets and for how long, how long the data is kept, why we ask for explicit consent, where your choice is kept, how to withdraw it and how to ask for your data, and what our automated build check looks for; the cookies page now names the two cookies and the local storage entry that keeps your choice. Each of these pages records the change in its own status paragraph, and the change has not been read by a lawyer. You can change your choice at any time with “Cookie settings” at the foot of every page.
Published 17 October 2026 — The privacy notice, in the three languages, now says that the hosting service that delivers this site, Vercel, processes your IP address and the technical details of each request to deliver pages and prevent abuse, and may keep them for a time in its access logs; we build no profile from those logs and have added no log collection of our own. Until today the notice said nothing about those logs. The notice's own status paragraph records the change, which has not been read by a lawyer.
Published 17 October 2026 — The privacy notice, the cookies page and the legal notice, in the three languages, now describe the chat assistant that pages on this site can show: an instant chat in a window on this site and a chat on WhatsApp, both leading to Melisa, SmileHandbook's AI assistant, which can book a free WhatsApp video call with one of our volunteer dentists. Until today the three privacy notices said that we do not ask for your phone number and that nowhere on this site could send it to us, and the three legal notices said that we take no appointments and that no dentist answers questions through this site; with the chat options switched on, those sentences would no longer hold. The privacy notice now has a section on what that service processes, who processes it for us, how long it is kept and how to delete it; the cookies page now names the two session storage entries the chat options use; and the legal notice now says that this site books no treatment or travel and that the one thing it can book is that video call. Each of these pages records the change in its own status paragraph, and the change has not been read by a lawyer. The options appear only when the service behind them is switched on.
Published 16 October 2026 — The legal notice, in the three languages, no longer carries the sentence on photographs in its passage on accuracy and corrections; the notice's own status paragraph records the removal, which has not been read by a lawyer.

## Records from before the smilehandbook.com launch

These earlier records retain their original wording and dates. References to publication within them do not establish when the linked pages first appeared at smilehandbook.com.

Published 26 September 2026 — Six published legal pages said things about photographs and telephone numbers that clinic profiles have now made incomplete. They now say what those profiles carry. Until today the legal notice, in the three languages, said that the photographs on this site are generated with an image model and show no real clinic, patient or treatment result, and the privacy notice, in the three languages, said that no telephone number is published here. Clinic profiles now carry a map image made from OpenStreetMap map tiles and the clinic's own telephone number where its listing gives one, and a profile can also carry a gallery of photographs that the clinic itself uploaded to its own Google Maps listing. The sentence on photographs in the legal notice has been narrowed to leave the photographs in those galleries out, and the three notices, one in each language, gained a section on third-party images and map data: the gallery photographs are reduced, and in some cases cropped, copies of the clinic's own uploads, the caption beneath each gallery names that source and the date we retrieved the photographs, the map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors and is available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL), and a rights holder who wants an image removed can use the contact routes in the publisher block at the foot of the page. The sentence on telephone numbers in the privacy notice now says that this site publishes no number of its own, that the numbers on clinic profiles are the clinics' own, and that calling one is your own act and passes nothing through this site. What has not changed: this site still collects nothing that identifies you, still sets no cookies and still loads nothing from a third party while a page is displayed, because the maps and photographs on clinic profiles are static images served from this site itself; the cookies pages were not touched. What prompted the change is those photographs, maps and numbers being added to clinic profiles, not the discovery of a mistake: the earlier sentences were accurate when they were written. A lawyer's review dated 1 September 2026 covers the six pages as they stood on that day but not this new wording, and each of the six now says so where it describes its own status. Severity, in plain words: no figure moved and no conclusion was withdrawn; two standing statements about what this site shows were brought into line with what it now shows.
Published 5 September 2026 — Six published legal pages said this site did not name who is responsible for it. They no longer say it. Until today our privacy notice and our legal notice, in the three languages, said that no controller name, no address and no contact route appeared here, because the operator's registration was not complete. A publisher block now sits at the foot of every published page in the three language editions, and on the language chooser at the root of this site and our page-not-found screen as well: the registered company name, the registered address and the tax registration of the operator. Those six pages send the reader to it and name that operator as the controller. One limit goes with it: the block prints only what we hold, so a detail we do not hold is left out rather than replaced by a row of dots or by a promise, and on the day of this entry it carries no trade register number and no e-mail address, which leaves a letter to the registered address as the only contact route we publish. The three legal notices, one in each language, gained one further sentence: AI language models are used as a drafting tool in preparing the text on this site, and no text is published until it has been read by a person who takes editorial responsibility for it and who is named on our editorial standards page. The three privacy notices did not gain that sentence. What prompted the change is those details becoming available, not the discovery of a mistake: the earlier wording was accurate when it was written. A lawyer's review dated 1 September 2026 covers those six pages as they stood on that day but not this new wording, and each of the six now says so where it describes its own status. Severity, in plain words: no number moved and no conclusion was withdrawn; a standing statement about what this site did not publish was replaced by what it now publishes.