Privacy Policy

On this page

1. Who we are
2. When you contact us
3. Cookies
4. Google Analytics
5. Third-party services
6. Sharing your data
7. Your rights
8. Rules can change
9. Changes to this policy

This policy explains what personal data Driving France collects, why, and what your rights are. We keep it to a minimum: you can use the whole site without telling us who you are, and analytics cookies are only set if you agree to them.

Who we are

Driving France (driving-france.co.uk) is run by Westcountry Travel Media, which is the data controller for personal data collected through this website. You can contact us about privacy using our contact form.

When you contact us

• If you use our contact form, we collect your name, email address, and your subject and message.
• We use them only to reply to you. Our legal basis is our legitimate interest in answering your enquiry.
• The form sends your message to us by email. It isn’t stored on the website. We keep emails only as long as we need them to deal with your enquiry, and we don’t add you to any mailing list.
• To stop spam, the website briefly keeps a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address to limit how many messages can be sent in an hour. It’s deleted automatically after an hour.

Cookies

We don’t run advertising on the site. The cookies we use are:

• Your cookie choice: a cookie called bf_consent remembers whether you accepted or rejected analytics cookies, for 6 months, so we don’t ask you on every page.
• Analytics (only if you accept): Google Analytics cookies, described below.

Some of the third-party services described below may set their own cookies when you use them.

Google Analytics

• With your consent, we use Google Analytics, provided by Google, to understand how people use the site: for example, which pages are read, how visitors find us, and what device and browser they use. This helps us improve the guides.
• We use Google’s Consent Mode. Analytics cookies are only set if you click Accept in our cookie banner. If you reject, or don’t choose, no analytics cookies are set and nothing is stored on your device; the Google tag may still send Google basic, cookieless information that a page was viewed (such as the page, the time and your browser type), which can’t be used to recognise you on another visit.
• Google Analytics sets cookies named _ga and _ga_ followed by an ID. They let Google tell visits apart, and last up to 2 years. Google processes the data under its own terms and privacy policy, and may process it outside the UK.
• We don’t use Google Analytics to identify you, and we don’t combine it with anything you send us through the contact form.
• Changing your mind: use the “Cookie settings” link at the bottom of any page. If you reject analytics, we delete the Google Analytics cookies on this site.

Our legal basis for analytics is your consent.

Third-party services

• Affiliate links: some links, such as those to Amazon and Europcar, go through affiliate programmes (Amazon Associates, and Awin for Europcar) so they can tell the company that you came from us. When you click one, the network and the company you visit may set cookies to record that. We don’t receive your name or contact details from them.
• Links to other websites, including official French and UK government sites and our sister site Book a Ferry to France, are covered by those sites’ own privacy policies once you follow them.
• Route planner: our route planner works entirely in your browser from data on our own site. It doesn’t send what you type to anyone.
• Hosting: like all websites, our web host keeps standard server logs, such as IP addresses and the pages requested, for security and to keep the site running.

These services have their own privacy policies, which we encourage you to read.

Sharing your data

We don’t sell your personal data. We only share it with the services needed to run the website and send our email, or where the law requires us to.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and to ask us to correct it, delete it, or stop or limit how we use it. To make a request, contact us using the details above.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk, but we’d appreciate the chance to sort it out first.

Changes to this policy

We’ll update this page if we change how we use personal data. The date at the top shows when it was last checked.