Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Paris Tourism Guide (paristourism.org) does with information about the people who read it. It describes how the site actually works today, not how a template says a website usually works, and we update it when the site changes. Last updated 30 September 2026.

Who is responsible

Paris Tourism Guide is an independent travel publication covering Paris and the Île-de-France. We are the data controller for the information described below. You can reach us through our contact page, which is the route for privacy requests as well as editorial ones.

What we collect

Very little, and none of it is sold. Specifically:

• Messages you send us. Our contact form collects the name, email address and message you type into it, so that we can read your message and reply. That is the whole purpose; we do not add you to a mailing list.
• Server logs. Our host records standard request data — IP address, browser and device type, the page requested and the time — which is used to keep the site running and to investigate abuse.
• Aggregate usage data. Analytics tells us which guides are read and roughly where readers are in the world, at country and city level. We use it to decide what to write and what to update.

The site does not accept reader comments, does not run a newsletter, and has no accounts or logins for readers, so none of the data those features would involve is collected at all.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to measure traffic in aggregate. It sets cookies and processes data including a truncated IP address, the pages you visit and how you arrived. We do not use it to identify individual readers, and we have not enabled any cross-site advertising features within it. Google’s handling of this data is covered by Google’s privacy policy, and you can opt out entirely with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Affiliate links

This site is funded by travel-booking affiliate links, which never determine what we recommend. We do not run display advertising, and no display-advertising network serves ads here.

Some links on this site earn a commission. Paris 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.

A consent notice is shown on your first visit. It covers the analytics described above and the Travelpayouts script, and records your answer in cookie_consent_669ac2 so that you are not asked again on every page. Which of them may run before you answer differs by country, as set out under “Your choices, and what runs before you make them” below. Your browser’s own cookie settings work alongside it, but they are not the more complete control here: blocking cookies does not stop the booking partner’s script loading and reporting, and the setting on this page does. Blocking costs you no content either way.

Cookies

Cookies set on this site fall into three groups: strictly necessary cookies, needed to serve and cache the pages, which are set on every visit; optional analytics cookies; and the booking partner’s session cookie, am_user_session, which its script sets once advertising is allowed and which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading. Separately, if you follow a booking link, Travelpayouts and the booking site you land on set cookies of their own, on their own domains, to credit the booking; blocking third-party cookies in your browser stops that part. The links still work at the same price either way. You can change your consent choices at any time, or block and delete cookies directly in your browser settings. Blocking them will not stop you reading anything here — nothing on this site is gated.

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_669ac2 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 Paris 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, Paris 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.

How long we keep things

Contact form messages are kept while a conversation is useful and then deleted, and in any case no longer than two years. Server logs rotate on our host’s schedule, typically within a few weeks. Analytics data is retained by Google for 14 months in an aggregated form.

Your rights

If you are in the EEA or the UK, you have the right to ask what personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to receive a copy of it. We rely on your consent for analytics where consent is required, and on our legitimate interest in running and securing the site for server logs. Ask us through the contact page and we will respond within a month. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to your national data protection authority.

Readers in California may request disclosure or deletion of personal information under the CCPA. We do not sell personal information for money. Because the booking partner described above receives information about your visit, the site treats that as potential “sale” or “sharing” under that law and offers a Do not sell or share control, described under “If you are reading this in the United States”.

Children

This site is written for adults planning travel. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us information through the contact form, tell us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We revise this page when the site changes — when a booking partner is added or removed, when the consent banner changes, or when we add or remove a tool. The date at the top is the version in force. Questions go to our contact page.