Privacy Policy

Last updated: 10 October 2026

This policy explains what Athens Tourism Guide (www.athenstourism.org) does with information about the people who visit it. It describes the site as it is configured today. When the site changes, this page is updated and the date above changes with it.

The short version: you can read every guide on this site without giving us anything. We hold personal data only when you choose to send us a message.

Who is responsible for your data

Athens Tourism Guide is an independently published website. The publisher is the data controller for the purposes of the UK GDPR and the EU General Data Protection Regulation. All privacy correspondence goes through the contact page, which is the site’s only contact route.

What we collect, and why

When you just read the site

Nothing is asked of you. The site does not require an account, does not run a newsletter, and does not accept reader comments — commenting is switched off across the whole site, so no commenter names, email addresses or IP addresses are stored.

Two things still happen automatically:

• Server logs. The web host records standard request data — IP address, timestamp, the page requested, referring page and browser user-agent. This is ordinary hosting infrastructure, kept for security and troubleshooting, and it is not used to build a profile of you.
• Page caching. The site uses WP Super Cache to serve pages quickly. Caching may set a technical cookie to decide whether you should be given a cached or a freshly generated page. It carries no identifying information and is not used for tracking.

When you send us a message

The contact form collects your name, your email address and whatever you write in the message. It is delivered to the publisher by email. We use it to answer you, and to act on the correction or question you have raised — nothing else. It is never sold, rented, added to a mailing list, or passed to a third party for marketing.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in responding to people who get in touch. Correspondence is kept only as long as it is useful — typically no more than twelve months after the exchange ends, and less if it was a one-line correction.

Analytics

The site uses Google Analytics 4, connected through the Google Site Kit plugin, to understand which guides people read and how they arrive. It tells us that a given Athens guide was read a certain number of times and roughly where readers came from. It does not tell us who you are, and we do not attempt to identify individual visitors.

Google Analytics sets cookies and processes data including your IP address (truncated by Google before storage), device and browser type, approximate location, pages viewed and time on page. Google acts as our processor for this, and may transfer data outside the EEA and UK under its standard contractual clauses. Google’s own account of what it does with the data is at policies.google.com/privacy, and you can opt out entirely with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

The site is also verified with Google Search Console, which reports aggregate search performance. Search Console data is anonymous and sets no cookies on this site.

Cookies used on this site

• Strictly necessary — page-caching cookies set by WP Super Cache, and, if you log in as an administrator, WordPress session cookies. These cannot be switched off without breaking the site.
• Analytics — Google Analytics 4 cookies, used to count and understand visits.
• Affiliate tracking — cookies and similar identifiers set when you follow one of the booking links described below, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited to this site.

Every browser lets you view, block and delete cookies; the method differs by browser and is documented in its help pages.

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_bc07f7 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: the scripts stop running, and the analytics cookies this site can reach 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. Its other item of storage, a note of the page’s colours (YeaMoAvnmSamSLml), and anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains are cleared in your browser rather than from this page.

Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Athens 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, Athens 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 what Travelpayouts and any ad partner sit in. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; anything it set earlier 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.

Affiliate links and booking partners

Some of the hotel, flight and transfer links in the guides are affiliate links, served through the Travelpayouts network. When you follow one, Travelpayouts and the booking company you land on set a cookie or a similar identifier so that a booking you make afterwards can be credited to this site. It records the booking, not what you read here. We are not given your name, your contact details or your payment details; what comes back to us is that a booking was credited and what commission it earned.

Once it is allowed to run, the script 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 and, to check for an ad blocker, may contact Google’s advertising servers; both give Google your IP address.

Following one of those links takes you onto the booking company’s own site, which has its own privacy policy and its own cookies, over which we have no control. What is set here is listed in the cookie policy, and the commercial arrangement is explained on the affiliate disclosure page.

Images and embedded content

Photographs used in the guides are licensed stock images and are hosted on this site’s own server rather than loaded from a third party. Where a guide links out to an official source — a museum, the Ministry of Culture, a transport operator — following that link takes you to a site with its own privacy policy, over which we have no control.

Your rights

If you are in the UK, the EEA or Switzerland you have the right to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or erased, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to receive it in a portable format. In practice the only personal data we are likely to hold is a message you sent us, so a request will usually be answered quickly.

Make any of these requests through the contact page. We respond within one month. If you are unhappy with the outcome you may complain to your national data protection authority.

If you are in California, you have the right to know what personal information is collected and to ask for its deletion, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. We do not sell personal information as that term is defined in the CCPA.

Children

This site publishes travel guides for adults planning a trip, including a section on visiting Athens with children, which is written for the parents doing the planning. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us information through the contact form, tell us and it will be deleted.

Security and hosting

The site is served over HTTPS. It runs on WordPress with shared commercial hosting; the host processes server logs on our behalf as described above.

Changes to this policy

When the way the site handles data changes this page is rewritten to match and the date at the top is updated. There is no mailing list to notify, so the date is how you tell.