Privacy Policy

Last updated: 30 September 2026.

This policy explains what Budapest Tourism Guide (www.budapesttourism.org) collects when you read it, why, and what you can do about it. It describes what the site actually does today, not a general template — if something changes, this page changes with it.

What you can do without giving us anything

Reading the guides. There is no account to create, no login, no newsletter sign-up and no paywall. You never have to identify yourself to use any part of this site.

Information collected automatically

Server logs

The web host records standard request logs — IP address, date and time, page requested, referring page, browser and operating system. These exist for security and troubleshooting, are not used to build a profile of you, and are not combined with anything else.

Google Analytics

The site runs Google Analytics 4, connected through the Site Kit plugin. It records which pages are read, roughly where in the world readers are, and how they arrived. IP addresses are truncated by Google before storage, and the data is used for one purpose: working out which Budapest topics are underserved so they can be written about. It is aggregate reporting, not individual tracking.

If you would rather not be counted at all, Google publishes a browser opt-out add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. The site works identically with it installed.

Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights

Both are connected through Site Kit. Neither places cookies on your device; they report on how the site performs in search results and how quickly pages load.

Information you give us deliberately

The only way to send us anything is the form on the contact page. It asks for a name, an email address, a subject line and a message, and those are delivered to us by email. They are used to answer you and for nothing else — no marketing list, no sharing, no sale. Message threads are deleted once the exchange is finished and there is no reason to keep them, and at the latest within twelve months.

Comments

Comments are closed across the site and no comment form is displayed on any page. Nothing is collected this way.

Cookies in plain terms

Browsing an article as an ordinary reader sets no cookie from us beyond the two that record your response to the cookie notice and the country it applies to, so that the notice is not shown again on every page. Once advertising is allowed, the booking partner’s script sets one cookie on this site, am_user_session, described below, and booking sites set their own, on their own domains, after you click one of the booking links. WordPress sets a session cookie only if someone logs in to the administration area, which applies to the site’s publisher and nobody else. Analytics are set by Google under the terms above. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings without losing access to any content here.

A cookie notice is shown on your first visit, produced by Aegis Consent, the consent tool this site runs. It explains what is set and stores your answer in a cookie of its own, cookie_consent_d43b51, so you are not asked again on every page. Which of them may run before you answer differs by country; the next section sets that out. Your browser’s own cookie controls still work as well, though for the booking partner they are not the more complete of the two: blocking cookies there does not stop its script loading and reporting, and the setting on this page does. Either way, blocking costs you nothing — every guide works without any of it.

Your choices, and what runs before you make them

What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Travelpayouts — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.

In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice. Analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. In Canada, and in the countries where notice is enough — among them Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India and Mexico — everything described on this page starts when you arrive; the notice tells you so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.

Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_d43b51 that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. It lasts about a year. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: what you switch off stops running, and if that includes analytics, the Google Analytics cookies are cleared. The one cookie Travelpayouts keeps on this site, am_user_session, is no longer renewed once its script stops and lapses within half an hour; anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Budapest Tourism Guide is held back from readers who say no.

If you are reading this in the United States

Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Budapest Tourism Guide treats it as covered.

So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. Using it stops the advertising category, which is where Travelpayouts and any ad partner sit. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; the session cookie it kept on this site lapses within half an hour, and anything it set on its own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.

The record kept of your choice

Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.

That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.

Images and embedded content

Photographs are hosted on this site’s own server rather than pulled in from elsewhere, and are compressed on upload by the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin, which processes files and not readers. Pages are cached by WP Super Cache to make them load faster; the cache stores copies of pages, not information about you. Where a guide embeds something external — a map or a video — that provider can see your request as though you had visited it directly, and its own privacy policy applies.

Affiliate links and booking partners

Some links on this site earn a commission. Budapest Tourism Guide works with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network that connects the site to hotel, flight, transfer and activity booking companies. We do not paste tagged links into the guides: Travelpayouts runs a script that turns ordinary links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking ones as the page loads, and it can add booking boxes and suggestions of its own. If you book after following one of those links, the booking company pays us a commission out of its own margin, and your price is the same either way. Every guide says so at the top, and the affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.

What that means for your data needs spelling out, because it is more than a cookie notice usually describes. When the script runs it receives your IP address and browser details, as any service your browser connects to does, and it reports to Travelpayouts how the page is used: the page’s address and the one you arrived from, which links you click, how many keys are pressed and in which part of the page (not what is typed), and whether an ad blocker or a private window is in use. Those reports are tied together by a random session identifier kept in a cookie on this site called am_user_session, which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading, and, if Google Analytics is allowed as well, by the identifier Google Analytics keeps for your browser. The script also fetches typefaces for its booking boxes from Google Fonts, which gives Google your IP address, and keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage so that those boxes match the design.

If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers of their own, on their own domains, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited here. We never see your name, your travel dates or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, sometimes, the fact that a booking happened. Once you are on a booking site you are under its privacy policy, not this one, and Travelpayouts handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.

The script sits in the Advertising group of this site’s cookie settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. Refusing it costs you nothing: the links still work, at the same price.

Links out

The guides link to bath operators, BKK, museums, festival organisers and occasionally to research papers, so that you can verify a claim at its source. Those sites are not under our control and this policy does not extend to them.

Your rights

Under the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation you may ask for a copy of any personal data held about you, ask for it to be corrected or erased, object to its processing, or complain to your national data protection authority. In practice the only personal data this site holds is the contents of contact messages, so a request usually amounts to asking us to delete an email thread — which we will do on request and without argument.

The legal bases relied on are legitimate interests for security logging, and your consent for analytics and for the booking partner described above, which is why, where the UK or EU GDPR applies, neither runs until you have agreed, and why you can withdraw that agreement at any time from the Cookie settings link.

Children

This site is written for adults planning travel, including families travelling with children. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16.

Changes to this policy

Material changes are made by rewriting the relevant section and moving the date at the top of the page, not by appending a note.