Standing notice

Privacy

The short version: one advertising pixel, off by default, disclosed in full below, and switched on only if you click Accept — keep no accounts, and have nothing else to sell about you. The longer version is below, because the detail matters.

No accounts · No mailing list · One ad pixel, off until you accept it

What PostcardRoute itself collects

These are static pages, and almost nothing on them talks back — but two small things do, and we would rather tell you plainly than let the rest of this page overclaim. First: the search box on the homepage. If you search for a city we have not covered and it comes up empty, the page automatically checks whether what you typed is a real, mappable place and, if so, quietly saves it for a future guide — an unlabelled row holding the text you typed and a timestamp, nothing else. Second: the "Send feedback" box, also on the homepage, which sends whatever you write there — plus an email address, if you choose to leave one — to the same inbox-equivalent, kept only so we can read it and, if you left an address, reply. Neither one creates an account, sets a cookie, or leaves anything in your browser. Still true: no accounts, no newsletter sign-up, no comment system — and, outside of the one opt-in advertising pixel described below, no analytics product or tag manager either, not Google Analytics, not a generic tag manager.

Advertising and the Meta Pixel

PostcardRoute can run the Meta (Facebook) Pixel, for ad measurement and to build retargeting audiences for our own Facebook and Instagram ads — but it does not load on your first visit, or ever, unless you say yes. The first time you land on the site you get a banner with two equally-sized buttons, Accept and Decline; nothing from Meta loads until you click Accept, not even the initial script that would fetch the pixel itself. Decline it, or close the banner without choosing, and it stays off. Unlike everything else on this page, this genuinely is a tracking script when it is on, and we are not going to describe it as anything softer: once accepted, it sets a third-party cookie in your browser and sends Meta a record of your visit — which pages, roughly when, and some device and browser details Meta collects on its own account. We do not control what Meta does with that data beyond using it for our own campaigns; see Meta's own explanation of what the Pixel collects for the full technical detail. Your choice is remembered so you are not asked again on every page, and you can change your mind at any time — every page has a "Cookie preferences" link in the footer that reopens the same banner, whether you want to switch it on or take back a yes you already gave.

Maps

City guides and the trip planner show a real, interactive map, built with Leaflet (a mapping library we host ourselves, not loaded from a third party) drawing tiles from OpenStreetMap's own tile servers. That is different from the tracking scripts described above and we are not going to pretend otherwise: loading a map tile is a request to OpenStreetMap's infrastructure, and like any request to any server on the internet, it necessarily carries your IP address to whoever answers it — the same way any image on any website does. We do not add any tracking on top of that, we do not read anything back from it, and OpenStreetMap is a non-commercial mapping project, not an ad network. If you would rather not load a single external tile, most browsers let you block image loading per-site; the rest of the page works fine without it.

The trip planner

The "Plan this trip" tool builds your day-by-day itinerary entirely on your own device — the days you choose, the budget, the attractions you tick, and the route it works out never leave your browser. We do not see any of it, log it, or store it anywhere on our end. To make a plan still be there if you come back to the page, it is saved in your browser's own localStorage — a small file your browser keeps for that site, not a cookie, not sent to us or anyone else on every request. Clearing your browser's site data removes it.

What our host records

PostcardRoute is served by a commercial hosting and CDN provider. Like every web host, it processes standard server request data — IP address, timestamp, the URL requested, browser user-agent — in order to deliver the page and to protect the site from attack and abuse. That processing is the host's, done on our behalf for security and delivery, and we do not build reader profiles from it or combine it with anything else.

Affiliate links

PostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.

The mechanics, since they are the one place a third party is involved: an affiliate link (Booking.com's programme runs through CJ Affiliate) carries an identifier that tells Booking.com the visit came from PostcardRoute. If you click it, you leave this site, and from that point Booking.com's own privacy policy and cookies apply, not ours. We receive only aggregate, anonymous reporting — how many bookings originated here and what commission is due. We never see who you are, what you searched for, what you booked, or what you paid. If you would rather not be counted at all, go to Booking.com directly; the price you pay is identical either way.

Email you send us

If you write to hello@postcardroute.com, we hold your message and address for as long as it takes to deal with it and for a reasonable period afterwards in case the thread continues. We do not add you to a mailing list, do not use your address for anything else, and do not pass it to anyone. Ask us to delete the correspondence and we will.

Embedded and external content

Pages may link out to transport operators, museums, tourist boards and similar. Those sites set their own cookies and run their own tracking; once you follow a link, their policies govern, and we have no control over and take no responsibility for what they do.

Your rights

Because we hold essentially nothing about you, there is usually nothing to access, correct or erase — but if you have emailed us and want that correspondence removed, or want to know what we hold, write to the address above and we will deal with it. Depending on where you live you may also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

Children

PostcardRoute is written for adults planning travel and is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.

Changes to this notice

If we ever add anything that changes the picture — a new tracking script, a newsletter, anything that touches reader data — this page gets updated before it ships, and the revision date below changes with it, exactly as it was when we added the Meta Pixel and, later, put it behind the consent banner described above. There is no version of this site where we start tracking you without saying so here first, or without asking first.

Last revised 2026-08-28 · PostcardRoute No. 01