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01Who we are

Europe By Rail is an independent travel publication based in Vienna, Austria, focused on European train travel. This privacy policy explains how we handle data on our website at europebyrail.eu.

For any privacy-related questions, you can always reach us at privacy@europebyrail.eu — a real human reads every email and responds within 7 days.

02What we collect

Honestly? As little as possible. We're a content website, not an advertising business — we have no incentive to collect data we don't actually need.

03Why we collect it

Three reasons, in order of how much data each one involves:

• To improve the site — knowing that "Warsaw → Rome" is one of our most-read guides helps us decide what to write next. We only need aggregated, anonymous numbers for this, never individual behaviour.
• To send things you signed up for — if you join the newsletter, we obviously need your email to send it to you. If you write to us, we need to be able to reply.
• To make affiliate partnerships work — when you click "Book →" on Omio or Trainline, those platforms set their own cookies to track the booking back to us. This is how we get paid without you paying extra. More on this in section 5.

04Cookies & tracking

We use the smallest possible number of cookies. Specifically:

• One functional cookie from us — to remember if you've dismissed the cookie banner, so we don't keep bugging you on every page.
• Anonymous analytics via Plausible Analytics, a privacy-focused analytics tool that runs without cookies and doesn't track individuals across sessions. Data is aggregated and never tied to a person.

When you click an affiliate link to Omio, Trainline, or another partner, that partner may set its own cookies on your browser. These are outside our control and governed by their own privacy policies — links in section 6.

05Affiliate partners

Europe By Rail earns money through affiliate commissions when readers book train tickets via our partners. You pay the same price either way — the commission comes from the platform's margin, not your wallet.

Currently, our active or planned affiliate partners are:

• Omio (Omio GmbH, Berlin, Germany)
• Trainline (Trainline.com Limited, London, UK)
• Rail Europe (Rail Europe SAS, Paris, France)
• Eurail / Interrail (Eurail Group GIE, Utrecht, Netherlands)

When you click an affiliate link, the partner's tracking system records that you came from our site. This is the only way they know to pay us if you make a booking. They typically use a cookie that lasts 30 days. Their privacy policies apply from the moment you arrive on their site.

06Third-party services we use

A short, honest list:

• Plausible Analytics — anonymous, cookieless website analytics. EU-hosted. Their privacy policy
• Buttondown — our newsletter provider. They store the email addresses of newsletter subscribers and send the monthly dispatch on our behalf. Their privacy policy
• Google Fonts — we load two web fonts (Fraunces and Manrope) from Google's CDN. Google may receive your IP address as part of this technical request. Google's policy
• Hosting provider — our website is hosted on standard European hosting infrastructure. Standard server logs (IP address, timestamp, requested page, user agent) are retained for up to 14 days for security/debugging purposes, then automatically deleted.

We do not use Facebook pixels, Google Tag Manager, advertising networks, or any retargeting tools.

07Newsletter

Our monthly newsletter is opt-in: you only get it if you explicitly subscribe via the form. We store your email address (and nothing else) with Buttondown.

Every newsletter contains a one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom. Click it and you're out of the list permanently — no questions, no "are you sure?" pop-ups. Your email is then deleted from our active list within 24 hours.

08Your rights under GDPR

If you're in the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland — and frankly, even if you're not, because we apply these rights to everyone — you have the right to:

• Access — ask us for a copy of any data we hold about you
• Rectification — ask us to correct any incorrect data
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Restriction — ask us to temporarily stop processing your data
• Portability — get your data in a machine-readable format
• Objection — refuse certain types of processing (e.g. marketing)
• Withdraw consent — for anything you previously agreed to

To exercise any of these, email privacy@europebyrail.eu. We'll respond within 7 days — usually much faster. No bureaucracy, no forms.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority if you think we're handling your data badly. For the EU, you can find your country's authority via the European Data Protection Board.

09How long we keep data

• Analytics data: aggregated indefinitely, but never tied to individuals — there's nothing personal to delete
• Newsletter subscribers: until you unsubscribe, then deleted within 24 hours
• Contact form messages: kept for up to 2 years to handle follow-up questions, then deleted
• Server logs: 14 days, then automatically purged

10Changes to this policy

We may update this policy occasionally — usually because we've added a new tool or partner, or because a law has changed. When we do, we'll update the "last updated" date at the top of this page.

For any material change that affects your rights (e.g. starting to use a new analytics tool, or working with a new affiliate partner), we'll also email newsletter subscribers and post a note on the homepage for at least 30 days.