Privacy
What we count, and what we refuse to
This site measures its own audience, on its own server, without cookies and without sending anything to anyone else. This page says exactly what is recorded, and what is not.
On this page 9
We want to know which pages get read and which ones never do, how far people read them, and how they found the site, so that the guide gets better where it matters. We want to know it without handing anybody's reading habits to an advertising company. So the measurement is written into this site rather than bought, and the data stays on the server that serves the pages.
This page is a factual description of what the code does. It is not a legal statement, and it makes no claim about compliance with any particular law.
Who is behind this site
viachiangmai is published by a private individual based in Belgium. The same person decides what is measured on this site and is the only one who can read the results. Questions about privacy or about the measurement described on this page can be sent to the address below.
What is recorded when you open a page
When a page opens, your browser sends one short message to this site's own server. When you leave the page, or switch to another tab, it sends a second one that completes the first. Each page you read becomes one line in a database, holding the following and nothing else:
- The address of the page on this site, such as /temples/ or /fr/ou-se-loger/. If you asked for an address that does not exist, that address is recorded too, so that broken links can be found and fixed.
- The language version of the page, English or French.
- How long the page was actually on your screen. The count stops while the tab is in the background.
- How far down the page you scrolled, as a percentage of its height.
- Where the visit came from: the domain name of the site that sent you (google.com, reddit.com), never the full address of the page you came from. A page opened from another page of this site is recorded as internal navigation.
- If the link you followed carried campaign tags (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign), their values. Other parameters in the address are ignored.
- The type of device (mobile, tablet or computer), the browser family and the operating system, as names such as « Safari » or « Android ». They are worked out from the browser's identification string, which is not itself stored.
- A country, worked out from the time zone set on your device (Europe/Brussels gives Belgium, Asia/Bangkok gives Thailand). Your IP address is not used to locate you.
- The date and time, and the page's position in your visit (first page, second page, and so on).
How a visit is counted without a cookie
Nothing is stored on your device: no cookie, no localStorage, no sessionStorage, no fingerprint computed in your browser. Each page view carries a random number drawn when the page opens, which disappears with the page.
To know that two pages belong to the same visit, the server computes a code from your IP address, your browser's identification string, your language settings and a random value. That random value is drawn again every day and the old one is deleted, so the code changes every day and yesterday's code cannot be recalculated by anyone, us included. Your IP address is used for this calculation, in memory, and is never written to the database.
Two pages with the same code less than thirty minutes apart count as one visit. The same reader coming back on three different days counts as three visitors: we cannot tell, and that is deliberate.
What is never recorded
- No IP address, full or shortened.
- No cookie or other storage on your device.
- No tracking across other websites, and no identifier that lasts beyond the day.
- No full referring address, no search terms.
- No form contents, keystrokes, mouse movements or clicks. Clicks on links to GetYourGuide are not measured by this site at all.
- No precise location: no region, no city.
- No session recording and no reading of the page's content.
How not to be counted
If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, the measuring script does nothing at all: no message leaves your browser. Blocking JavaScript on this site has the same effect, and every page remains fully readable without it.
Browsers that declare themselves as robots and automated browsers are not counted either.
Where the data lives, and how long
In a single database file on the hosting account that serves this site, stored outside the public web folder so that no web address can reach it. It is read through one password-protected page that only the publisher can open.
No analytics provider, advertising network or other third party receives this data. It is not sold, not shared, and not sent anywhere for processing.
Each line is deleted thirteen months after it was recorded, so that a season can be compared with the same season a year earlier. Nothing is kept beyond that.
What our hosting provider does is separate
Like every website, this one is served by a web server, and reaching it requires a network connection. Hosting and network infrastructure may process ordinary technical information, such as connection and server logs, independently of the measurement described on this page, under the provider's own arrangements.
The measurement described here does not read those logs, and nothing in its database is derived from them.
Your requests
You can write to the address below about access, deletion, objection or any other data-protection request that may apply to you.
One limit is worth stating plainly rather than discovering later. The lines in the database are not attached to a name, an email address or an IP address, and the daily code that links pages of a visit cannot be recalculated after the day has passed. In most cases, therefore, there is no way for us to find which lines are yours. If you write on the day of your visit, telling us which pages you read and at roughly what time, we can try.
If you are not satisfied with how a request is handled, you can lodge a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority (Autorité de protection des données / Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit), or with the supervisory authority of the country where you live.
What this page does not cover
It describes our own measurement, and nothing else. Parts of this site involve someone else's servers, and we can describe what they are but cannot make promises on their behalf.
Typography is loaded from Google Fonts, so your browser requests font files from fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com when a page opens. Every page loads GetYourGuide's Integration Analyzer from widget.getyourguide.com. It is used to monitor the status and click/conversion performance of GetYourGuide links and widgets and to provide integration reports. GetYourGuide states that the Integration Analyzer does not set third-party cookies. GetYourGuide's own privacy terms apply to its processing. Clicking through to book takes you to GetYourGuide, where GetYourGuide's own terms and measurement practices apply. Booking and payment never happen on this site.
The map's tiles are served from this site's own hosting, and the mapping library is stored here rather than fetched from elsewhere. What you do on the map is not measured.