Privacy & Cookies

Privacy Notice and Cookie Policy

Privacy Notice and Cookie Policy

Introduction

We at European Rail Guide (“we”, “us” or “our”) understand and respect your concerns about your data privacy, and the safety of your personal data is of paramount importance to us. Our Privacy Notice aims to be as transparent as possible, and describes and governs the collection and use of your personal data that we collect via www.europeanrailguide.com. We describe the information we gather, the lawful basis for this and how you can contact us concerning our privacy policies.

Please take the time to read our policy carefully and contact us with any questions or concerns you have about our privacy practices.

Who we are?

European Rail Guide is the Data Controller in respect of the data we gather from you. Susanna Oldfield is our representative who is responsible for privacy-related matters, and can be contacted via email on [email protected].

What information do we collect?

For users to interact with European Rail Guide or to sign up to an European Rail Guide User account, we may collect personal information as follows:

• Contact information: Name, email address and username provided when users register for an European Rail Guide user account, or when we receive an email from a user
• Other identity data: Marketing preferences or other information you provide to us
• Technical data which may can include but is not limited to your IP address, browser type, operating system, geographic location, page views, and/or length of visit*
• Financial information. We do collect or store any financial details.

*We use cookies on our website to help improve the experience we give to you. We ask for your consent to use these cookies when you first use the website, and provide further details about the types of cookies we use and their purpose in our Cookie Policy.

How do we use personal information?

We will process data for the following purposes:

• personalisation of content, business information or user experience
• account set up and administration
• delivering marketing and events communication
• internal research and development purposes
• providing our services to you
• legal obligations (e.g. prevention of fraud)

What legal basis do we have for processing your personal data?

We rely on the following legal basis for collecting and processing personal data:

• consent: where users provide us with their personal data for specific purposes e.g. in relation to marketing communications or their website user account.
• contract: to fulfil any contractual obligations with users in respect of website business listings or other website advertising
• legitimate interests: where business owners/representatives provide us with details about their business to publish on European Rail Guide, we may use personal data to contact them to ensure we display accurate information about that business, and run their business listing efficiently.
  
  When you visit European Rail Guide, we may process data concerning your use of the website in an anonymised format. This may include IP address, browser type, operating system, length of visit and pages viewed. This data is processed by our third-party sub-processor, Google Analytics, and you can view details of their privacy policy here.
• legal obligation: where we are obliged to process personal data for legal or regulatory purposes

Where we rely on your consent to process personal information, you can withdraw that consent at any time by contacting [email protected]

When do we share personal data?

We will treat personal data confidentially and will only disclose or share it when necessary to provide our services, conduct our business operations or as required by law, as outlined in our ‘legal basis’ section.

We may share data securely with those inside our company or with our trusted, professional partners, who have a legitimate interest in accessing this information. These include Google who we use to deliver advertising solutions on our behalf and provide us with anonymised Google Analytics data. You can view details of Google’s privacy policy here.

We will only disclose information to external parties where required by law, or where we obtain your express consent to do so.

User account data may be disclosed on the website, in relation to information provided by a user linked to that account e.g. a username may be disclosed with reviews posted by that user.

Where do we store and process personal data?

All European Rail Guide servers are UK-based, and all other personal data is received and stored in the UK. All data is held on secure, password protected systems, or where in physical form, in a secure physical environment.

How do we secure personal data?

We have a robust approach to data security and the technologies and procedures we use to protect personal information. This includes but is not limited to:

• we protect data against accidental loss, and to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery, by having an automated system backup procedure;
• we prevent unauthorised access, use, destruction or disclosure of personal data, by restricting access to those with a dedicated system password, and
• except where there is a legal obligation, personal data is not made available to third parties without the express permission of the data subject e.g. where an email contact is provided to a supplier in relation to a repair enquiry or competition entry.

We have safeguards in place to ensure no unauthorised disclosure of personal data; connections are encrypted, user accounts are password protected with minimum password strengths enforced and the website is secured through application of an appropriate security certificate.

How long do we keep your personal data for?

We retain data for no longer than reasonably necessary; for expired/inactive user accounts, and expired business listings, this is 1 year after initial sign-up. For email contacts, this is 6 months from initial contact, unless there are clear indications to make an alternative time frame more suitable. Expired data is fully deleted from our systems.

Your rights in relation to personal data

Under the requirements of the GDPR, we respect the right of data subjects to access and control their personal data. At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject, have the following rights:

• Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
• Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
• Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.
• Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
• Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
• Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you also have the right to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling.
• Right to judicial review: in the event that we refuse your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. You have the right to complain as outlined below.

All of the above requests will be forwarded on should one of our partners be involved in the processing of your personal data.

For full details of your rights under current data protection law, or where you wish to make a complaint about our use of your personal data, you can refer to the guidance given on the relevant regulatory authority, which in the United Kingdom is the Information Commissioners Office.

Updates to our privacy notice

We reserve the right to update our Privacy Notice at any time. Any such updates will be reflected in this online Privacy Notice immediately and we will provide the date of the most recent update.

How to contact us?

Should you wish to exercise rights as outlined here, or have any questions or concerns about our privacy practices, or personal information we hold and/or process, you can contact Susanna Oldfield on [email protected] or c/o Cowshed Works Limited, The Barn, Walton on the Hill, Stafford ST17 0LG

Cookies used on europeanrailguide.com

In common with many other websites, European Rail Guide uses cookies to personalise your device with advertising relevant to you. These are industry-standard technologies from Google, which are covered by their Privacy Notice and Service Terms. We do not and our cookies do not allow us to collect or hold data that is personally identifiable.

europeanrailguide.com cookies - We use a single persistent cookie to allow you to log in to the site and stay logged in, we do not use this cookie for tracking/logging your activity on the website. If you log out of the website our cookie is deleted and a new one will be created the next time you log in.

Google Adsense - We use Google's Adsense advertising program and they use cookies to log the peformance of these adverts on europeanrailguide.com. You can find out more about Google's cookie policy here: http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ads/

Google Analytics - We use Google Analytics to show us how users are using the website which in turn allows us to improve the content and layout, details can be found here: http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ads/ - Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting - We have enabled this feature of Google analytics that enables us to see the gender, age and interests of users that Google collects via its advertising systems. This information reaches us anonymously and provides us with a basic overview of the users visiting the site so that we can plan our content and features.

You can opt out of these Google features here: https://www.google.com/settings/ads.

Social Media - europeanrailguide.com uses social media plug ins in the form of like / tweet / G+ buttons, this allows you to share our content via these networks if you're already logged in to them. You should be aware of their privacy policies and how they track your usage of websites that implement these buttons, this is beyond the control of www.europeanrailguide.com.

Cookie consent

We use Google's cookie consent tools to allow you to control how cookies are used in the Google advertising on this website, you can access and edit your settings by clicking the Privacy and cookie settings link at the bottom of every page that uses them.

Managing Cookies

All of the major internet browsers allow you to manage cookies which includes being able to view them, remove them, and block them. We recommend that you check your browser settings to ensure that you're happy with the privacy settings, this will allow sites like europeanrailguide.com and our partners to only provide you with cookies that are in line with your requirements.