Last updated 31 July 2026.
Wherever We Roam is a personal travel journal run by two people. It is not a company and it is not funded by advertising. This page explains, in plain language, what happens to your information when you visit or subscribe.
The short version
We collect your email address only if you choose to give it to us, we store it on our own server, we use it only to send you our own posts, and we never sell it or share it with anyone. There is no advertising and no analytics on this site.
What we collect
If you subscribe
We store your email address, the date you signed up, whether you asked for each new post or a nightly summary, and whether you have confirmed the address. Nothing else — we do not ask for your name, and we do not try to work out who you are.
Subscribing is double opt-in: we send one confirmation email, and if you do not click the link in it, nothing further is ever sent. Subscriber records live in our own database on our own hosting. We do not use Mailchimp, Substack or any other mailing service, so your address is not copied to a third party.
Every email we send carries an unsubscribe link, and most mail apps will also show their own unsubscribe button. Unsubscribing takes effect immediately and removes any mail still queued for you.
If you just read
Our web host records standard server logs — the requesting IP address, the page requested, the time, and the browser’s user-agent string. This is ordinary web-server housekeeping used to keep the site running and to spot abuse. We do not build profiles from it.
What we do not do
- No analytics. No Google Analytics, no Plausible, nothing counting you.
- No advertising, and no advertising networks.
- No tracking cookies. A plain visit to this site sets no cookies at all.
- No selling, renting or sharing of your email address, ever.
- No newsletter tracking — we do not use tracking pixels, and we do not record whether you opened an email or clicked a link in it.
Other companies involved
Running a website means a few other parties necessarily see some data:
- IONOS hosts the site and carries our email. They see server logs and the mail we send.
- OpenStreetMap supplies the tiles for our map. When a page with the map loads, your browser fetches those images directly from OpenStreetMap, which means they receive your IP address. See their privacy policy.
- YouTube (Google) hosts our videos. Pages containing an embedded video load it from YouTube, and Google may set cookies or collect data at that point under their own policy. Pages without a video do not contact Google at all.
- Retailers we link to. Some product links on our tips pages are affiliate links. Following one takes you to that retailer, who will typically tag the visit so they know it came from us — that is how the commission is attributed. We receive no personal information about you from it: at most we can see that some number of purchases happened, never who made them. Nothing is tracked while you are on our site, and simply reading a page with an affiliate link on it sends nothing anywhere.
Cookies
Reading this site sets no cookies. WordPress sets cookies only if you leave a comment or log in as an author — neither applies to ordinary visitors. Because we set nothing that needs consent, there is no cookie banner to click through.
How long we keep things
Subscriber records are kept until you unsubscribe. Unsubscribed addresses are retained in a suppressed state so that we do not accidentally email you again after you have asked us not to. Server logs are rotated by our host on their own schedule, typically within a few weeks.
Your choices
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email. You can also write to us and ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it entirely — including the suppressed record. We will do it, and we do not require you to explain why.
Children
This site is not aimed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Wherever We Roam Video Uploader
We use a private tool of our own called Wherever We Roam Video Uploader to publish our travel videos to our own YouTube channel. It is not something anyone else can sign up for, and it never touches visitors’ information — but because it signs in with Google, its data handling belongs here too.
The only Google account it ever signs into is our own, the one that owns the channel. It requests permission to upload videos, and read-only access so it can tell when YouTube has finished processing a video and confirm it is pointed at the right channel. It touches no other Google service — not Gmail, Drive, Photos, Contacts or Calendar — and reads no profile information beyond the channel name.
It stores an OAuth refresh token in a file readable only by us on our own laptop, plus the IDs and processing status of videos it uploaded itself. None of that is kept on this website or any server we rent. Information obtained through Google APIs is never sold, transferred or disclosed to anyone, and its use adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
Access can be revoked at any time from Google account permissions.
Changes
If we change how any of this works, we will update this page and change the date at the top. If a change is significant and you are on the mailing list, we will tell you in an email rather than quietly editing the page.
Contact
Questions about any of this go to christy@wherever-we-roam.com.