Last updated 25 September 2026.
This policy explains what jerusalemtourism.org collects, why, and what you can do about it. It describes the site as it actually operates today. Where something is planned but not yet running, it says so.
Who we are
Jerusalem Tourist Guide is an independent travel publication at www.jerusalemtourism.org. It is the data controller for the information described below. To reach us about anything on this page, use the contact form.
What we collect
Server logs
Our host records standard web server logs for every request: IP address, date and time, the page requested, referring page, and browser user-agent string. These are kept for security and troubleshooting and are not used to build a profile of you.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to understand which guides people read and where they leave. Once it is allowed to run, it sets cookies in your browser and sends Google a record of the pages you view, an approximate location derived from a truncated IP address, and details of your device and browser. We do not use it to identify individuals, and we have no interest in doing so — the questions we ask of it are things like whether the Old City guides are being read on phones.
You can switch it off in this site’s cookie settings at any time, opt out entirely with Google’s browser add-on, or block cookies for this site. Whether it runs before you have made a choice depends on where you are reading from; see “Your choices, and what runs before you make them” below.
Search Console
Google Search Console tells us which search queries lead here. It reports aggregate figures only and does not identify individual visitors.
The contact form
If you write to us, we receive your name, email address, the subject you selected and your message. That arrives as an email and is kept only as long as needed to deal with what you raised — corrections are usually resolved and deleted within a few weeks. We do not add contact-form addresses to any mailing list, because we do not run one. The form uses a hidden anti-spam field rather than a third-party CAPTCHA, so nothing about your submission is sent to another company.
Comments
Comments are closed across the site and no comment form is displayed. Historic comment data has been deleted.
Advertising
No display advertising is currently shown on this site. We intend to carry display advertising through Google AdSense to cover hosting and research costs, and this section describes what will happen once it is live. The booking links described in the next section are a separate arrangement, and they are running now.
- Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site.
- Google’s use of advertising cookies — including the DoubleClick DART cookie — enables it and its partners to serve ads based on your visits here and to other sites.
- You can opt out of personalised advertising at Google Ads Settings, or opt out of participating vendors at aboutads.info.
- Third-party vendors may also place cookies through this site; we do not control those cookies and cannot access what they contain.
We will publish a Google-certified consent management platform before serving ads to visitors in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, and this page will be updated to describe it when it goes live. The one commission the site does earn, on booking links, is described next.
Booking links and commission
Some links on this site earn a commission. Jerusalem Tourist Guide works with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network that connects the site to hotel, flight, transfer and activity booking companies. We do not paste tagged links into the guides: Travelpayouts runs a script that turns ordinary links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking ones as the page loads, and it can add booking boxes and suggestions of its own. If you book after following one of those links, the booking company pays us a commission out of its own margin, and your price 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 more than a cookie notice usually describes. When the script runs it receives your IP address and browser details, as any service your browser connects to does, and it reports to Travelpayouts how the page is used: the page’s address and the one you arrived from, which links you click, how many keys are pressed and in which part of the page (not what is typed), and whether an ad blocker or a private window is in use. Those reports are tied together by a random session identifier kept in a cookie on this site called am_user_session, which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading, and, if Google Analytics is allowed as well, by the identifier Google Analytics keeps for your browser. The script also fetches typefaces for its booking boxes from Google Fonts, which gives Google your IP address, and keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage so that those boxes match the design.
If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers of their own, on their own domains, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited here. 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, and Travelpayouts handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.
The script sits in the Advertising group of this site’s cookie settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. Refusing it costs you nothing: the links still work, at the same price.
Cookies in use today
- Google Analytics (
_ga,_ga_*) — distinguishes visitors and sessions, once analytics is allowed to run. Typically expires after two years. - Your cookie choice (
cookie_consent_b329cf) — records the answer you give in the cookie dialog or bar, so that you are not asked on every page; a companion cookie,cookie_consent_b329cf_loc, remembers for a day which country you are reading from. Both are set by this site and readable by nobody else. - Travelpayouts (
am_user_session) — a random session identifier the booking partner’s script sets once it is allowed to run, renewed while you read and gone 30 minutes after you stop. The same script keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage. - Page caching — our caching layer may set a short-lived cookie so that logged-in editors are served uncached pages. Ordinary readers are not tracked by it.
- WordPress — session and login cookies are set only if you log in to the site, which readers have no reason to do.
Every browser lets you block or delete cookies. Doing so will not stop you reading anything here. The cookie policy lists every cookie and item of browser storage in use, generated from the services actually running here.
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 Travelpayouts — 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_b329cf 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: what you switch off stops running, and if that includes analytics, the Google Analytics cookies are cleared. The one cookie Travelpayouts keeps on this site, am_user_session, is no longer renewed once its script stops and lapses within half an hour; anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.
Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Jerusalem Tourist 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, Jerusalem Tourist 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 — Travelpayouts and any ad partner included — and the link reopens the full choice at any time. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; the session cookie it kept on this site lapses within half an hour, and anything it set on its own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.
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 visitors)
Server logs and basic security measures rest on our legitimate interest in keeping the site running and defending it from abuse. Replying to a message you sent us rests on our legitimate interest in answering correspondence you initiated. Analytics and the booking partner rest on consent, which is why, for these visitors, neither runs until you have agreed; you may withdraw it at any time from the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page, or with your browser’s cookie controls.
Who else sees your data
Our web host, which operates the servers and holds the logs. Cloudflare, which delivers the site and handles each request on its way through. Google, for the analytics described above and for the typefaces the booking partner’s script fetches. Travelpayouts and the booking companies it works with, once that script is allowed to run. Our email provider, for messages you send through the contact form. That is the entire list. We do not sell personal data for money; how the US state-law meaning of “sale” and “sharing” is handled is set out under “If you are reading this in the United States” above. Some of these providers are based in the United States, and transfers rely on the standard safeguards those companies publish, including the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where applicable.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask what we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to processing, or to receive a copy in a portable format. Californian residents additionally have the right to know what has been collected, to request deletion, and to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, as described above. Ask through the contact form and we will respond within thirty days. In practice, we hold very little about any individual reader — a message, if you have sent one, and the record of your cookie choice described above — and it is often quicker to tell you that than to run a search.
If you are in the UK or the EU and think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.
Children
This site is written for adults planning travel and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from them. Our family travel guides are written for parents, not for the children travelling with them.
Links to other sites
Our guides link out heavily — to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, museum ticketing pages, rail timetables and government advisories — because those are the authoritative sources. Some links to booking and travel sites earn a commission, as described under “Booking links and commission” above. Once you follow a link you are on someone else’s site under someone else’s privacy policy, and this one no longer applies.
Changes
When this policy changes materially — for instance when display advertising is added — we will update the date at the top and describe what changed rather than quietly revising the text.
What changed on 25 September 2026. The site now carries booking links through the Travelpayouts affiliate network and runs a consent tool, and this policy describes both. The sentences saying the site had no affiliate links and received no commission were removed, because they stopped being true when the Travelpayouts script was added. No display advertising runs yet.