Privacy Policy

Who we are

Trift (“Trift”, “we”, “us”) publishes travel guides, stories, and destination pages at trift.io. For anything in this policy, email us at hello@trift.io.

What we collect, and why

You can read everything on Trift without giving us any personal data. We only collect data when you choose to send it to us.

When	What	Why
You subscribe to the newsletter	Your email address	To send you the newsletter. Nothing else.
You use the contact form	Your name, email address, the topic you pick, and your message	To reply to you.
You pitch a story	Your name, email address, the format you chose, and your pitch	To consider the pitch and get back to you. If we commission it, we keep your details for the editorial and payment process.
You load any page	Standard server logs held by our hosting provider: IP address, browser type, pages requested, timestamps	Security, abuse prevention, and keeping the site running. We do not use these logs to profile readers.

We do not run advertising, we do not use analytics trackers, and we do not build profiles of readers. We never sell personal data.

Legal basis

Where data protection law requires a legal basis (including the UAE Personal Data Protection Law and the EU and UK GDPR), we rely on your consent for the newsletter, on our legitimate interest in answering messages and considering pitches, and on our legitimate interest in securing the site for server logs. You can withdraw newsletter consent at any time using the unsubscribe link in any email or by writing to us.

Who else sees your data

We use a small number of service providers to run the site. They process data on our behalf and are not allowed to use it for their own purposes.

• Netlify hosts the site and stores form submissions (contact, pitch, newsletter sign-ups). Netlify’s servers are in the United States and the European Union.
• Google Workspace handles our email, so anything you send to hello@trift.io is stored there.

Some pages also load content from third parties. These providers may receive your IP address when the content loads:

• Bunny Fonts serves the site’s typefaces.
• Unsplash serves some photography.
• YouTube serves embedded videos on destination pages. We use YouTube’s privacy-enhanced embed, which does not set tracking cookies until you play a video.
• OpenStreetMap serves embedded maps on some story and writer pages.
• Google Maps is linked from place names. Nothing loads from Google until you click a link.

We will disclose personal data if the law requires it, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Trift, our writers, or our readers.

International transfers

Trift is operated from the United Arab Emirates and our providers store data in the United States and the European Union. Where data leaves the country it was collected in, we rely on our providers’ standard contractual protections.

How long we keep it

• Newsletter email addresses: until you unsubscribe, or until we close the newsletter.
• Contact messages: up to 12 months after the conversation ends.
• Pitches: up to 12 months if we do not commission the piece. Commissioned writers’ records are kept for as long as we work together and for the period our accounting rules require afterwards.
• Server logs: our hosting provider keeps them for a short rolling period, typically 30 days.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal data we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct it if it is wrong;
• delete it;
• stop using it for a particular purpose, or restrict how we use it;
• send it to you or another provider in a usable format.

Email hello@trift.io and we will respond within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm your identity first. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

Children

Trift is written for a general audience and is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has sent us data, email us and we will delete it.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS only. Form submissions are stored by our hosting provider with access limited to the Trift editorial team. No system is perfectly secure, so please do not send us sensitive information such as passport or payment details through the contact form.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If the change is significant and we hold your email address, we will tell you by email.