Privacy

How the site is served

The site is a folder of pages built ahead of time and handed out by a plain web server, which runs on a hosting platform that scales down to nothing between visitors. No code of ours runs while you read, there is no database, and there is nothing to log in to. That is the design, not a stage we have not reached yet: a site that cannot store anything about you cannot lose it either.

The calculator, and the one thing that does leave your browser

While you fill the calculator in, everything happens on your own device. The duty is worked out in your browser, and the figures are written into the address bar so that the result you are looking at is a result you can bookmark. Nothing is transmitted while you type. No request is made at all.

Opening a saved link is a different thing, and we will not pretend otherwise. When a bookmarked, shared or printed link is opened, the browser sends the whole address to the server, query string and all — and the query string is where your gold, cash, phone and baggage figures live. Those page requests are recorded in ordinary web server logs. So the moment a summary link is opened, its figures have been written to a log.

The practical version: what you type is yours, but a link you hand to someone else is not. If a figure is sensitive, read it off your own screen, and print the summary rather than forwarding the link.

What the server logs hold

Like every web server, this one records the requests it answers: the address asked for, the date and time, the response code, the browser identification string, the referring page where the browser sends one, and the network address the request came from. Page requests are logged. Requests for fonts, images and the fingerprinted asset files are not — those are switched off in the server configuration. The hosting platform keeps its own record of the same traffic as part of running the service.

These logs are operational. They exist so that a broken page or an outage can be found and fixed. They are not joined to anything else, not used to build a profile of anyone, and not shared. They are kept for as long as the hosting platform keeps them by default; we do not export or copy them anywhere.

Trips you save

Saving a trip stores its label, its query string and the date you saved it inside your own browser, under the one storage key below. It is never sent anywhere, never synced between your devices, and cannot be read by us. Deleting a saved trip on the calculator page removes it; clearing this site’s data removes all of them at once.

Storage keybdtg.trips.v1

Pages kept for offline use

The site installs a small background worker so that the calculator, your summary and the arrival walkthrough still open with no connection — the moment you need them most is a customs desk abroad, on roaming. It keeps copies of those pages in your browser’s own cache. The copies live on your device and nowhere else, and clearing this site’s data removes them.

Cookies

The site has no login or session cookie. Google Analytics may set measurement cookies, including cookies whose names begin with _ga, to distinguish visits and produce usage reports. Trips you save and offline copies remain in browser storage as described above; they are not Analytics cookies and are not sent to Google.

Third parties your browser contacts

The typefaces come from Google Fonts, and visit measurement comes from Google Analytics. Your browser contacts the Google hosts below, so Google receives requests that include network and browser details. The Analytics request also carries the privacy-limited page information described below.

• fonts.googleapis.com
• fonts.gstatic.com
• www.googletagmanager.com
• www.google-analytics.com

Links to missions, embassies and the tax authority go to those organisations’ own sites. Following one is an ordinary visit to them, under their rules rather than ours, and we add nothing to the address that would identify where you came from.

Advertising

The site is built to support advertising, but no advertising is being served today and inactive ad positions are not displayed. No ad network code is loaded, no ad request is made, and no advertiser learns anything about you from this site.

That changes if advertising is switched on, and it cannot be switched on quietly — it takes a new build with an ad network configured, after which that network’s own code would run in your browser and could set cookies of its own. This page will name the network and say what it collects before such a build goes live.

Analytics

This site uses Google Analytics 4, measurement ID G-2MH3GCGBTH, to understand which pages are useful, how visitors arrive, and broad device, browser and geographic patterns. Google processes that measurement data and may use cookies to distinguish visits. We use aggregate reports, not Analytics to identify individual readers.

Calculator values are stored in the address query string. Before a page view is sent, the reported page address keeps only the origin, pathname and standard campaign tags (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content and utm_term); every other query key and fragment is dropped. The referrer is reduced to origin and pathname. Gold, cash, phone and baggage figures are not intentionally sent to Google Analytics, and no custom event reports what you enter into the calculator.

What this site never does

• No accounts, no sign-in, no email list.
• No selling or trading of visitor information. Google processes the limited measurement data described above to provide Analytics.
• No fingerprinting code written by this site, and Analytics is not used here to identify individual readers.
• No advertising profile is built from what you calculate, now or after ads are switched on.

What you control

• You can block Analytics cookies or the Google tag without losing access to any guide or calculator feature.
• Clearing this site’s data deletes your saved trips and every offline copy. Nothing is held anywhere else to restore them from.
• Blocking the font service is safe. Pages fall back to the typefaces already on your device and every figure still works.
• Turning JavaScript off leaves the guides completely readable. Only the calculator, the search box and the printable summary need it, and each says so rather than rendering blank.

Changes to this policy

The date at the top is the date of the last change of substance. This page ships from the same build as the code it describes, so the two cannot drift apart quietly — a change to one without the other is a defect, not a delay.

Questions about this policy

Name the section and quote the sentence you mean. It turns a vague worry into something that can be checked against the code and either fixed or explained.

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