Privacy Policy
Last updated 21 September 2026. This policy describes what www.hanoitourism.org actually does today. When something changes — and the advertising section below is about to — this page is updated and the date above changes with it.
Who is responsible
Hanoi Tourism Guide (www.hanoitourism.org) is an independent travel publication about Hanoi, Vietnam. It is run by a single publisher and is the data controller for the information described here. To ask about your data, to request a copy of it, or to ask for it to be deleted, use the contact form.
What we collect
If you read the site and nothing else
You do not create an account, you cannot comment, and there is no newsletter to subscribe to. Reading a guide involves no form and no login.
Our host, DreamHost, keeps standard web server logs of requests to the site: IP address, date and time, the page requested, browser user agent and referring page. These are generated automatically by the server, are used for security and diagnostics, and are retained on the host’s own schedule. We do not use them to build a profile of you. Cloudflare, which delivers the site, handles each request on its way through.
If you send us a message
The contact form asks for your name, email address, a topic and your message. That goes to the publisher’s email inbox and is used to reply to you and, where you have sent a correction, to fix the article. Contact form submissions are not added to any list, are not used for marketing, and are not shared. Messages are deleted once the matter is closed, and in any case within twelve months.
Analytics
The site uses Google Analytics 4, added through the Site Kit by Google plugin, to see which guides get read and how people arrive. This sets Google Analytics cookies in your browser and sends Google your IP address, pages viewed, approximate location, device and browser type, and how you got to the site. IP addresses are anonymised by Google Analytics 4 before being stored. We look at this data in aggregate. We do not attempt to identify individual readers from it, and we have never tried to link it to anything else.
We also use Google Search Console, which reports on search queries that led to the site. It works from Google’s own search logs and does not place anything in your browser.
You can switch analytics off in this site’s cookie settings at any time, or opt out of Google Analytics entirely using Google’s browser add-on, which works across every site that uses it. Whether it runs before you have made a choice depends on where you are reading from; see “Your choices” below.
Advertising
As of the date at the top of this page, this site carries no display advertising, and no ad network runs on it. The booking links described under “Booking links and commission” below are a separate arrangement, and they are running now. We are in the process of applying to Google AdSense, and the rest of this section describes what will apply once ads are live. It will be rewritten in the present tense on the day the first ad appears.
When advertising is enabled, ads will be served by Google and its certified third-party vendors. Google uses cookies, including the DoubleClick DART cookie, to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet. You will be able to opt out of personalised advertising at any time through Google Ads Settings, and to opt out of third-party vendor cookies generally at aboutads.info/choices and youronlinechoices.com. Third-party vendors’ own use of data is governed by their own privacy policies, not this one.
Other cookies
WP Super Cache, which makes the site load faster, may set a cookie when a page is served that tells the cache not to serve you a stale copy. It is functional, contains no personal data and is not used for tracking. The contact form and WordPress itself may set short-lived cookies for spam prevention and to preserve what you typed if a submission fails. One more is set by the site itself: once you answer the cookie dialog or bar, cookie_consent_2143c2 records your choice so that you are not asked again on every page, and a companion cookie, cookie_consent_2143c2_loc, remembers for a day which country you are reading from, so the right rules apply without looking it up again.
Every cookie described here can be blocked or deleted through your browser’s settings. Blocking analytics or advertising cookies does not stop you reading anything on the site. The cookie policy lists every cookie and every item of browser storage in use, generated from the services actually running here.
Booking links and commission
Some links on this site earn a commission. Links to hotels, apartments and booking sites are handled by Stay22, a booking-link partner whose script turns them into commission-tracking links as the page loads. If you book after following one, the booking site pays us a commission; the price you pay 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 not what a cookie notice usually describes. Stay22 does not set a cookie. It recognises your device from the characteristics of your browser — fonts, screen, language and similar details — and keeps an identifier in your browser’s local storage under the names visitor_id_id22 and cache_id22, so that a booking made later can be credited here. Like any service your browser connects to, it also receives your IP address and browser details when it loads, and it processes data outside the EU. Blocking third-party cookies does not stop any of this; the cookie settings on this site do.
Stay22 sits in the Advertising group of those settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. 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.
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, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Stay22 — 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. Readers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates get a notice instead: everything described on this page starts when they arrive, the notice says 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_2143c2 that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. An answer lasts up to a year, and a refusal given in the dialog six months, before you are asked again. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: the scripts stop and what they stored on your device is cleared, including visitor_id_id22, cache_id22 and the thumbmark_* keys.
Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Hanoi 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, Hanoi 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. The button switches off everything except the strictly necessary — Stay22 and any ad partner included — and clears what Stay22 stored on your device if you had let it run; the link reopens the full choice at any time.
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.
Legal bases (UK and EU GDPR)
- Server logs and security — legitimate interest in keeping the site running and defending it from abuse.
- Replying to your message — legitimate interest in answering someone who has chosen to write to us, and performance of the request you have made.
- Analytics and the booking partner — consent. That is why, if you are in the EEA or the UK, neither runs until you have agreed, and why you can withdraw that agreement at any time from the Cookie settings link. Advertising, if it goes live, will rest on consent too.
Who your data goes to
Google LLC, for analytics and search reporting, and in future for advertising. DreamHost, as our hosting provider. Cloudflare, which delivers the site and handles each request on its way through. Stay22, the booking partner described above, once it is allowed to run. That is the list. We do not sell data and we do not trade it. Because the booking partner receives information about your visit, the site treats that as potential “sharing” under US state law and offers a Do not sell or share control; see “If you are reading this in the United States” above. Data processed by these providers may be stored on servers in the United States and elsewhere outside the EU.
Your rights
If you are in the UK, EU, California or another jurisdiction with statutory data rights, you may ask for access to your personal data, correction of it, deletion of it, a portable copy, or that we stop processing it. Write to us through the contact form and we will respond within thirty days. In practice, the only personal data we hold that could identify a reader by name is a contact form message, and we will delete it on request without argument. Californian readers should note that we have never sold personal information; because the booking partner described above may count as “sharing” under the CCPA, the site gives you a way to opt out of it, set out under “If you are reading this in the United States” above.
If you think we have handled your data badly, tell us first — but you are entitled to complain to the data protection authority where you live.
Children
This site is written for adults planning travel and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us their details through the contact form, tell us and we will delete the message.
External links
Our guides link out to embassies, Vietnam Railways, UNESCO, health authorities, hotel and restaurant websites and other travel resources. Once you follow one of those links you are on someone else’s site, under someone else’s privacy policy. We check that what we link to is relevant; we cannot vouch for how it handles your data.
Where a guide embeds something from another site — a map, a video, a post — that embed is held back behind a placeholder until the relevant category is allowed, so it cannot quietly set anything on your device before you have chosen. Clicking the placeholder loads that one item.
Changes
Material changes to this policy will be reflected in the date at the top. If display advertising goes live, the advertising section will move from future tense to present tense on that day.