Privacy Policy

Last updated: 9 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.

Who is responsible

The site is published independently by Joseph Miskella. For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights below, use the contact page.

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 one that records your response to the cookie notice, so that the notice is not shown again on every page. Affiliate booking partners set their own cookies, but only after you click one of the booking links described below. 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 the GDPR Cookie Compliance plugin. It explains what is set and stores your response in a cookie of its own (moove_gdpr_popup) so you are not asked again on every page. Your browser’s own cookie settings remain the most complete control, and blocking cookies here costs you nothing: every guide on the site works without them.

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 of the links on this site are affiliate links. Where a guide points at somewhere to stay, that link is usually one of them. Accommodation links are handled by Stay22, a booking-link service that adds a referral tag when you click through to a hotel or booking site. If you go on to book, the booking site pays us a small commission. The price you pay is the same either way, and nothing on this site is behind a paywall or conditional on using those links.

What that means for your data: when you click one of these links, the partner receives the fact that the click came from this site, along with the standard technical details any website receives, and sets its own cookie or identifier so that a booking made afterwards can be attributed and the commission paid. Budapest Tourism Guide never sees your booking, your travel dates, your name or your payment details — what comes back to us is a count of clicks and, occasionally, the fact that a booking happened.

Once you follow one of those links you are on the booking partner’s own site, under their privacy policy, and this one stops applying. Stay22 itself does not set a cookie. It identifies your device from characteristics of your browser and stores an identifier in your browser’s local storage, so a booking can be credited to us. It is listed as a marketing service in the cookie settings on this site, which means you can refuse it there, and refusing does not limit what you can read here. Blocking third-party cookies additionally stops the booking site’s own attribution. The links work either way, and the price is unchanged.

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 aggregate analytics.

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.