The bits we keep (and the bits we don't).

Visiting the Balkans is an independent editorial project, currently operated as a sole-proprietor activity from France. For anything related to your personal data, write to privacy@visitingthebalkans.com.

The project is in its early days. When the company is formally incorporated, this page updates with the registered details and the date at the top will reflect the change.

Two things, that's it:

A) Your email — only if you give it to us. When you subscribe to the newsletter, write to us, or fill out a contact form. What you write is what we have. Nothing more.

B) Anonymous browsing data. Masked IP, browser type, pages visited. Collected by our analytics tool, configured for privacy. None of this identifies you. We don't sell it. We don't use it to chase you across the internet with ads — because we don't run ads.

What we don't collect: sensitive data (health, religion, political views), financial information, precise geolocation, data from minors. If that ever changes, you'll see it here before it happens.

• To reply to you. When you write, we use your email to answer. After the conversation ends, the message stays in our email archive — we don't cross-reference it with anything.
• To send you the newsletter — if you subscribed. One-click unsubscribe in every email we send. No tricks.
• To improve the site. Anonymous analytics tells us which articles work, which pages are unreadable, where readers come from. It helps us write better. It doesn't profile you.
• To comply with the law. If a competent authority formally requires it, we hand over what we have. We'd tell you first if the law allows.

The technical providers we need to keep the site running. Each one only handles what's strictly necessary. All of them are bound by data processing agreements and comply with the EU GDPR.

As of today:

We don't sell your data. We don't pass it to advertisers. There's no surprise partner at the end of this list.

• Emails you send us: as long as the conversation makes sense to keep. After that, archived without active processing.
• Newsletter subscription: until you unsubscribe.
• Analytics data: 13 months, then deleted.

Under the EU GDPR, you can exercise these rights at any time:

• Access — find out what we hold about you.
• Rectification — correct anything wrong.
• Erasure — ask us to delete it.
• Objection — ask us to stop processing it.
• Restriction — keep it but stop using it.
• Portability — take it elsewhere.
• Withdraw consent — anytime, free of charge.

To exercise any of these, write to privacy@visitingthebalkans.com. You'll get a reply within one month.

If you don't think we've handled this properly, you can file a complaint with the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés), www.cnil.fr — France's data protection authority. We'd ask you to talk to us first, but you're well within your right to skip us.

If you're a UK resident, you also have the right to file a complaint with the ICO (ico.org.uk). If you're an EU resident outside France, you can file with your local data protection authority.

• Cookies have their own page. Read it here.
• Some providers have servers outside the European Economic Area. When that's the case, transfers are covered by adequacy decisions or Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission. Current list in section 04.
• If we update this notice, we change the date at the top and — if the change is significant — email subscribers about it.

If you read something here you don't understand, write to us. It's our job to explain it, not yours to decode it.