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Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 8, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what personal data YowJourney processes when you use yowjourney.com (the "Service"), why we process it, who receives it, how long it is kept and what rights you have.

1. Data Controller

YowJourney
Email: yowjourney.com@gmail.com

2. Legal Basis for Data Processing

Where the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies, we process personal data on the following legal bases:

  • Contract performance (Article 6(1)(b)): to provide the Service under our Terms of Service
  • Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): to host and protect the Service and to answer your emails; to measure the Service's audience with Google Analytics in order to improve the Service; to show partner offers from GetYourGuide, which fund the Service
  • Legal obligations (Article 6(1)(c)): to comply with legislation

You can object at any time to audience measurement and to the display of partner offers (Article 21) by clicking "Reject" in the cookie banner or via . Processing for these purposes then stops, as described in section 8.6.

3. Data We Collect

The Service has no user accounts and no registration.

3.1 Data you give us:

  • Emails you send us: your email address and the content of your message
  • Favorites, visited places (with optional notes and rating) and your trip: stored only in your browser's local storage under the key yow:guest and never sent to us as a list. While Google Analytics runs (until you click "Reject"), adding or removing a favorite or a visited mark is recorded as an analytics event with the place's ID and whether you added a note or a rating, but never the note or the rating itself. To show the cards of your saved places, the site sends only the IDs of those places to our server, which uses them only to load the cards

3.2 Automatically collected data:

  • Technical data: IP address, browser and device type, the requested page and the referring site. Our hosting provider receives this data with every request (server logs), and each service listed in section 5.1 receives it when your browser loads content from that service
  • Analytics data: Google Analytics works by default from your first page view until you click "Reject" in the cookie banner. It collects the pages you view, the referring site, clicks on some links and buttons (for example, links to partners, the language switch, and the favorite and visited buttons, with the place's ID), device and browser type, and your approximate location (country and city) derived from your IP address
  • Data received by GetYourGuide: on pages with the "Things to do" block, the GetYourGuide widget loads by default until you click "Reject". When it loads, GetYourGuide receives your IP address, browser information, the address of our page and our partner ID, records which offers were shown and sets its cookies (see our Cookies Policy)

4. Purposes of Data Processing

We use your data for:

  • Service provision: showing pages, maps, images and weather; keeping your favorites, visited places and trip in your browser
  • Communications: answering your emails
  • Service improvement: fixing errors and improving the Service
  • Audience measurement: measuring the Service's audience with Google Analytics in order to improve the Service
  • Partner offers: showing tours from GetYourGuide and partner links; commissions on bookings made through these links fund the Service
  • Security: protecting the Service from abuse and automated traffic
  • Legal compliance: fulfilling legal obligations

5. Data Sharing with Third Parties

The following parties receive personal data when you use the Service:

5.1 Service providers:

  • Vercel (hosting): delivers the site and protects it from automated traffic; receives the technical data of every request (server logs)
  • Vercel Speed Insights (performance monitoring): collects anonymous page-load performance metrics (Core Web Vitals) together with the page address; sets no cookies
  • Google Analytics 4 (Google; audience measurement): works by default until you click "Reject" in the cookie banner. Receives the pages you view, the referring site, clicks on some links and buttons (for example, links to partners, the language switch, and the favorite and visited buttons, with the place's ID), device and browser type, and your approximate location (country/city) derived from your IP address; sets the _ga and _ga_<ID> cookies on yowjourney.com. Google states that Google Analytics 4 does not log or store IP addresses. We do not use Google Analytics advertising features: advertising storage and ad personalization signals are switched off. How Google uses data from sites that use its services: policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
  • Sanity (content management): delivers images from cdn.sanity.io; receives your IP address and browser information when your browser loads an image
  • OpenFreeMap (map tiles; map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, © OpenMapTiles): receives your IP address, browser information and the map area being viewed when a map loads
  • Open-Meteo (weather): on place pages, your browser requests the current weather from api.open-meteo.com using the coordinates of the place, not your location; Open-Meteo receives your IP address and browser information
  • GetYourGuide (tours widget and partner links): pages about countries, regions, islands, cities and some places, as well as travel articles, show a "Things to do" block with a GetYourGuide widget (loaded from widget.getyourguide.com) and a link to all tours on GetYourGuide. Some travel articles also link individual GetYourGuide tours and tickets in their text. The widget works by default until you click "Reject" in the cookie banner. When it loads, GetYourGuide receives your IP address, browser information, the address of our page and our partner ID, records which offers were shown and sets its cookies. The widget and these links are partner (affiliate) links, labelled "Paid links" on the page: they contain our partner ID and a campaign label made of the page type, the page's address slug and the language. If you book after following them, GetYourGuide pays us a commission; to calculate it, GetYourGuide reports to us the clicks and bookings made through our links. Bookings are made on getyourguide.com, with GetYourGuide, under GetYourGuide's terms and privacy policy; we are not a party to the booking

5.2 Legal requirements:

  • Law enforcement agencies upon official requests

6. International Data Transfers

The providers listed in section 5.1, including Google and GetYourGuide, process data on their own servers, which may be located outside your country, including in the United States. These transfers take place under the providers' own terms and safeguards.

7. Data Retention Periods

  • Emails: as long as needed to handle your request
  • Server logs: kept by our hosting provider for a limited period set by the provider
  • Google Analytics data: kept in Google Analytics for the period set in its settings, no longer than 14 months
  • Data received by GetYourGuide: kept by GetYourGuide under its own privacy policy
  • Other providers listed in section 5.1: any request data they keep is kept for a period set by each provider
  • Cookies and data in your browser: yow:guest until you remove the items or clear this site's data; NEXT_LOCALE until the end of your browser session; yow_consent (your choice in the cookie banner) 12 months; the lifetimes of the Google Analytics and GetYourGuide cookies are listed in our Cookies Policy
  • Legal obligations: as required by legislation

8. Your Rights

Depending on the law that applies to you, you may have the following rights (article numbers refer to the GDPR):

8.1 Right of access (Article 15)

Request a copy of your personal data

8.2 Right to rectification (Article 16)

Correct inaccurate or incomplete data

8.3 Right to erasure (Article 17)

Delete your data under certain conditions

8.4 Right to restrict processing (Article 18)

Limit processing under certain circumstances

8.5 Right to data portability (Article 20)

Receive data in a structured format

8.6 Right to object (Article 21)

Object to data processing, including audience measurement with Google Analytics and the display of partner offers from GetYourGuide. Both work by default from your first page view until you click "Reject" in the cookie banner, which is shown on your first visit. You can change your choice at any time via the link at the bottom of every page except the full-screen map. After you click "Reject":

  • Google Analytics is no longer loaded; if it is already running on the open page, it is stopped and its _ga and _ga_<ID> cookies on yowjourney.com are deleted
  • the GetYourGuide widget is not shown; links to GetYourGuide (under the block and in article texts) stay
  • cookies that GetYourGuide has already set on getyourguide.com cannot be deleted by us; you can delete them in your browser settings

Your choice ("OK" or "Reject") is stored in the yow_consent cookie for 12 months.

Favorites, visited places (including notes and ratings) and your trip are stored only in your browser, so we cannot export or delete them; Google Analytics receives only the events described in section 3.2 (the place's ID, never your notes or rating). You can delete them at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser (see our Cookies Policy).

To exercise your rights, contact us at the email address given in section 1.

9. Security Measures

We apply the following measures:

  • HTTPS only: all connections to the site are encrypted (HSTS)
  • Access control: only the site owner has access to the hosting and content management accounts
  • Data minimization: there are no user accounts, and your saved places stay in your browser

10. Children and Minors

Our service is not intended for persons under 16 years old. We do not intentionally collect children's data.

11. Complaints

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority:

  • In the EU: the authority of your usual residence country
  • In Ukraine: the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights

12. Policy Changes

We may update this Policy. The new version is published on this page, and the "Last updated" date at the top is changed.