This website contains travel and related content for entertainment purposes. We do not guarantee the correctness of any opinions, statements or recommendations made on this website. As this website does not require a subscription to view the content, this website may contain advertising, affiliate marketing (paid links) and sponsored content in order to financially support the operation. More details on privacy controls below.
Analytics
If you consent, we may use an analytics service (e.g. Google Analytics) in order to measure how our website is working so we can improve and optimize our website structure, content and identify technical issues that might impact your viewing experience. The analytics software may (with your consent) store cookies in your browser in order to identify if you are a new or repeat visitor, as well as better understanding how you experience the website compared to other users.
Display Advertising
This website may be paid to display visual advertisements to you. The process of delivering these advertisements may include many “third party” companies and services (“vendors”) in order to connect an available advertising slot on this website with a buyer/advertiser.
These third party vendors may read/set cookies or initiate other types of tracking in order to determine which advertisements they might want to show you as well as to record that you have been shown a certain advertisement for analytics purposes (and to avoid showing you the same advertisement too frequently).
Through our consent management tool, you have control over what these vendors are allowed (or not allowed) to do as well as controlling which vendors you are willing to work with.
If you do consent to personalized advertising, you have further information and controls available to you. Personalized ads will have an “i” icon or “about this ad” that enables you to understand who showed you that advertisement and why.
To understand more about how Google may track and profile you while showing advertisement on this website, see this link.
Affiliate Advertising (Paid Links)
Some content on this website may contain affiliate links. This is most common when reviewing products or services and then providing links/buttons to connect you to places for more information or to make a purchase.
When you click an affiliate link, it contains a referral code which allows the website that we link to to know that the click came from us. This gives them the ability to better understand where their traffic comes from and often means that we receive a fee or commission if that click leads to a purchase.
All pages containing affiliate links will have a disclaimer at the top so you are aware. If you find our content helpful (e.g. product review), we appreciate it if you use our links when making purchases in order to help support what we do.
Sponsored Content
It is possible that some content may be provided by a sponsor. Often this is a biased commercial message written up as a whitepaper/explainer article in order to recommend their product or service.
In cases where sponsored content/articles appear on our website, there will be a disclaimer at the top.
Email List(s)
If you subscribe to one of our mailing lists, your name, email and preferences will only be stored for the purpose that you opted into (namely sending you the emails you requested).
You can opt-out at any time from our website or via a link at the bottom of every email that we send.
At the time you opt-out, we will also delete your personal data (name/email) from our system.
Data Collection, Sharing and Usage
In general, beyond the analytics, advertising and mailing list use cases, we do not collect, sell or share your data…because this website does not allow for account creation or user generated content. i.e. we do not have a database with cookies or emails.
Advertising partners may collect interest/profile data (for instance the fact that you visited this website or saw one of their ads) which might be used in future decision making when deciding what ads to show you in the future (“profiling”).
You can express your preferences for what happens on this website using our consent management tool.
Controlling Your Privacy Across the Web
In order to express broader preferences for your browser across many websites, you can use industry-provided tools in order to do a bulk opt-out of personalized advertising. This depends on having special “optout” cookies set in your browser, so if you clear your cookies regularly this type of opt-out is not particularly durable and will have to be repeatedly over time.
Many polite advertising vendors will respect the DoNotTrack browser setting which is (was) supported by most major web browsers. This is more durable than a cookie based opt-out for the vendors that support it. Unfortunately this option has fallen out of favor because all the browser companies are also advertising companies.
In-app personalized advertising on mobile devices tends to work with a unique mobile advertising ID (like a user id) instead of cookies, so you have to take different steps to disable personalized advertising: Apple iOS, Google Android.
Email as a user ID. Many websites, apps and advertising vendors that are trying to preserve personalized advertising revenue have started using your email address (and or phone number) as a unique user ID that is more persistent (we don’t change our email addresses very often). This is why you see the surge of free content sites that require logins now. Unfortunately there isn’t much you can do to prevent this type of tracking other than opting out after providing your email address. And as your email address is not easy to change, even if you clear all cookies and disable mobile advertising IDs….as soon as you login with your email address again, they can re-associate that old advertising profile on their servers with you in a fresh cookie.
Install an ad blocker. While you can install ad blockers, these are often advertising companies that are playing gatekeeper for “friendly ads” (ie the ones that pay the gatekeeper fee). There is also no guarantee they are focused on blocking tracking/profiling versus just preventing you from seeing ads.
Use a privacy friendly browser. A good option is to use a less popular browser and search engine (perhaps Duck Duck Go) which focused on tracker blocking and privacy-first experience.
Legal
Please contact us with any questions or concerns regarding this website, privacy, or advertising.