Updated 10 October 2026
Privacy policy
What's collected when you read this site, what happens if you sign up for something, and what's never done with any of it. This describes what the site actually does, in plain language — it isn't a substitute for legal advice about your own situation.
Just reading the site
A small first-party tracker records the page you read, the domain (not the full address) of whatever site sent you here, a rough country from your connection, and whether you're on mobile or desktop. Alongside that, your IP address and browser are combined and run through a one-way hash (SHA-256) so repeat visits can be told apart from new ones — your actual IP address is never stored. Records older than 90 days are deleted automatically.
This site also loads Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and a Pinterest tag on every page, and a Reddit Ads pixel where that's turned on. These are third-party scripts, not built by TieredTravel: they can set their own cookies and measure your visit for Google's, Pinterest's and Reddit's own purposes, under their own privacy policies — Google's, Pinterest's and Reddit's. They currently load without asking first — there is no cookie-consent step on this site yet. If you'd rather they didn't run, a browser or extension that blocks trackers will stop them; the first-party counter above still works either way.
Cookies
| Cookie | What it's for | Lasts |
|---|---|---|
| tt_session | Keeps you signed in, if you have an account — in the app, and on city guides, which use it to show what you've saved and planned there. Only a hash of it is stored on the server — the cookie itself is the only copy of the real value. | 90 days |
| tt_signed_in | Set beside tt_session while you're signed in, so the site's header can show your account links instead of "Sign in". It holds the single character "1" — nothing that says who you are — and the server never relies on it. | 90 days |
| tt_tier | Remembers which budget tier (budget / mid-range / luxury) you last picked. Not tied to your identity. | 1 year |
| tt_reset | Set only when you open a password-reset link: it carries the link's one-use code from the email to the form, so the code never appears in a page address. Deleted once the password is changed. | 1 hour |
| tt_oidc | Set only while you sign in with Google: it ties Google's reply to the browser that asked for it, so nobody can finish a sign-in you didn't start. Deleted as soon as you come back from Google. | 10 minutes |
(There's also an admin-only session cookie for the site owner's own dashboard — it's never set for a reader.) Google, Pinterest and Reddit's own scripts set additional cookies of their own, covered above.
If you create an account
An account lets you save cities and plan a trip, in the app or from a city guide. That needs an email address and a password — the password is stored as a one-way hash, never in a form that could be read back as your actual password. Saved cities and trip plans are stored against your account so they show up on any device you sign in on. Deleting your account (from Profile, in the app) removes all of it immediately, everywhere, including every device's session — there's no 30-day grace period and no backup copy kept.
If you forget your password, the app can email you a link to choose a new one. The link works once, for an hour, and only a hash of its code is kept on the server until then. The email is sent through Resend (see below). Choosing a new password signs your account out on every other device.
You can also sign in with Google instead of a password. Google then tells the site three things: your email address, whether Google has verified it, and a permanent ID for your Google account. The address and that ID are kept with your account so the site recognises you next time. The site never sees your Google password, doesn't ask for your name, photo or contacts, and can't read or post anything in your Google account. Deleting your account deletes that link too.
If you sign up for the newsletter
Your email address (and, if you signed up from a specific city's page, which city) is kept here first and sent on to Kit, the service that actually sends the weekly guide emails — so it's used for exactly that, and Kit's own privacy policy governs what happens to it there. Every email has an unsubscribe link.
If you set a fare alert
A fare alert stores your email address and the route and price you asked to hear about. It's used for nothing except emailing you when that fare is met, and it stops automatically after six months. Every alert email has a one-click link to stop it, and confirming the alert in the first place is a deliberate second step — after the one email asking you to confirm, nothing more is sent to an address until its owner clicks the link in it.
When you click a booking link
Clicking through to book something — a hotel, a flight, a tour — is logged the same privacy-preserving way as a page read (a hashed identifier, not your IP), together with which link and which page, so we can see which pages actually earn. You're then sent to the partner's own site — Booking.com, Kiwi.com, Klook, Hostelworld, GetYourGuide, Viator, SafetyWing, Airalo and others — and from that point their own privacy policy applies, not this one. See how this site makes money for the full list of who's paid.
Where this runs
The site and its database run on a server in Germany. Cloudflare, a US-based provider, sits in front of every request for security and speed — it sees the same request any CDN does, and it's how the site stays up.
The emails the site sends itself — fare alerts and password resets — are delivered by Resend, a US-based email service, sending from its EU region in Ireland. It handles your address and the email only to deliver it, and its open and click tracking are switched off, so it doesn't record whether you opened an email or which link you clicked. The newsletter is sent by Kit instead, as described above.
Children
This site isn't directed at children, and accounts aren't knowingly created by anyone under 13.
Your data, your choice
If you have an account, deleting it (in the app, under Profile) removes everything tied to it immediately. For anything else — a newsletter signup, a fare alert you want gone sooner than its six months, or a question about what's held about you — email [email protected].
This page changes when what the site does changes, and the date at the top is bumped whenever that happens — it isn't restamped automatically. About TieredTravel · methodology