Privacy policy

MazeTrails is a travel blog. You do not need an account, a newsletter subscription, or your contact details to read our guides. This page explains technical requests, optional checklist storage, and what happens if you choose to email us.

What we collect

Browsing and search. We have no account-registration or newsletter-subscription forms. If you use the site search, your search terms are sent as part of the requested URL and may appear in hosting records. Do not enter sensitive personal information in the search box.

Email correspondence. If you email us, your email address, any name you provide, your message, and attachments are processed to answer your request or investigate a correction. Mail is forwarded through Cloudflare Email Routing to a Gmail mailbox provided by Google. Our address is listed on our contact page. Do not send passport copies, payment details, or medical records. We do not use correspondence to subscribe you to marketing emails. We retain correspondence for up to 12 months after the request is closed, unless a legal obligation or an ongoing dispute requires longer retention.

Standard server records. Like every website, ours is served by a hosting provider that records each request to keep the site running and to block attacks: the IP address the request came from, the page requested, the date and time, and the browser's user-agent string. We use Cloudflare for hosting and delivery, and these records are held by Cloudflare under its own policies. We do not build visitor profiles from them, and we do not combine them with anything else.

Audience measurement, always on. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics, the measurement tool built into our hosting provider. Each page loads a small script from cloudflareinsights.com that reports the page viewed, the site or search engine that sent you, your country, your browser and device type, and how quickly the page loaded. It sets no cookies and writes nothing to your browser's storage. Cloudflare states that it does not fingerprint visitors and does not follow them from site to site. We read the results as totals — visits per page, per country, per day — and cannot identify you from them.

Google tags, only if you accept. We use Google Tag Manager to load two Google tools: Google Analytics 4, which measures how guides are found and read, and a Google advertising tag, which records whether a visit came from an ad. Both start in a refused state through Google Consent Mode: before you answer the banner, they load but are not allowed to store anything or to identify you, and no cookie is created. If you accept, the tools you allowed set cookies belonging to Google — _ga, _ga_5Z75B449WX and _gcl_au, each described in the cookie policy — and Google processes the corresponding data as an independent controller under its own terms. What Google collects then includes your IP address, the pages you view, and technical details about your device. You can decline everything, or change your mind at any time through Cookie settings at the bottom of every page. No ad network is displayed on the site today.

No ads displayed today. No ad network sells or shows advertising space on this site. The only advertising-related code is the Google tag described above, which measures whether a visit came from one of our own ads, and only once you have accepted it.

Cookies and local storage

Our own site application sets no cookies. The only cookies that can appear are Google's, after you accept them, and they are listed one by one in the cookie policy. If you tick or untick an article checklist, it saves that checklist's checked states in your browser's local storage so they can be restored on your next visit. These values are not sent to MazeTrails or shared between devices. They have no automatic expiry; you can remove them by clearing this site's data in your browser. See the cookie and browser-storage policy.

When you follow a link to a partner

Some guides link to booking sites such as GetYourGuide, Viator or Booking.com through an address starting with /go/. The redirect does not set an application cookie or record a separate affiliate-click profile. Like other page requests, it passes through our hosting provider and may appear in technical records. Once you land on the partner's site, that company's own privacy policy and cookies apply. How these links work is set out in our affiliate disclosure.

Selling or sharing personal information

We do not sell personal information, and we receive no money for passing data to anyone.

Sharing for advertising is narrower than that, and we want to be precise. If you accept advertising in the banner, Google's advertising tag sends Google data about your visit — which California law may treat as sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising. Three things are always true about it: it never happens before you accept; you can turn it off at any time through Cookie settings at the bottom of every page; and if your browser sends a "Global Privacy Control" signal, we refuse that sharing for you, whatever the banner was told. Analytics and the cookie-free measurement are unaffected by that signal.

Children

This site is written for adults planning travel. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Your choices and rights

Depending on the laws applicable to you and the publisher, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete personal data, or object to certain uses. Requests may concern correspondence as well as technical records. Contact details are listed on our contact page. Checklist values remain on your device and can be cleared in your browser; we cannot retrieve or erase them remotely.

You can also control the basics in your own browser: block or delete cookies and local storage, and send a "Global Privacy Control" signal. We honor it: when your browser sends it, the advertising tag stays refused even if the banner was accepted, and no cookie is set for advertising.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the date at the top of the page changes with it. The date shown above is the last update.

Questions

Write to us through the contact page.