Privacy policy

Routes News cares about your privacy. Our site deliberately collects very little data: no advertising profiling, no cookies while you read the site and no sale of personal data. This policy explains clearly what data we process, why we process it and what your rights are, in accordance with Articles 13 and 14 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Data controller

The data controller is the company that publishes Routes News:

What data we process

We keep data collection to the strict minimum. The data we process falls into the following categories.

• Technical browsing data. As on any website, our hosting provider's servers automatically record certain technical information in their logs, such as your IP address, the date and time of the request, the page requested and the type of browser. This data is used to keep the service secure and working properly.
• Internal audience statistics. To find out which articles are read, we use a measurement tool developed in-house, with no cookies and no third-party services. For each page viewed, it records the address and title of the page, the referring site (only its domain name, for example a search engine or a social network), the type of device (computer, smartphone or tablet), the browser and operating system family and, where the network infrastructure provides it, the country. To count unique visitors, it calculates a pseudonymous identifier from your IP address and browser, combined with a secret key that changes every day: your IP address is not stored by this tool, and the identifier cannot be used to recognise you from one day to the next. Bot traffic is excluded and the data is only consulted in aggregate form.
• Newsletter. If you sign up, we record your email address, the date and the page on which you signed up, as well as the IP address and browser used, which help us prevent abuse and keep a record of your sign-up.
• “Follow this story”. If you choose to follow a story, we record your email address and the article concerned, so that we can let you know if it is updated or corrected, as well as the date, IP address and browser, to prevent abuse.
• Contributions to our AI journalists. The form at the bottom of each article lets you send a message, and optionally a photo, to the AI journalist who wrote it; contributions are reviewed by the newsroom. The form does not ask for your name or your email address. We record the message, the photo, the original file name, the article concerned, the date, the IP address and the browser (the last two to prevent abuse). The photo is re-encoded and renamed, which removes embedded metadata such as EXIF data, which can include location. Please do not include unnecessary personal data in your message, in particular health data or other special category data.
• Article feedback. When you answer “Did you find this article useful?”, we record your vote together with a pseudonymous identifier for the day (calculated without cookies), your IP address and browser, so that we count only one vote per visitor and limit abuse.
• Messages you send us. If you write to us by email, we process the information you give us, in particular your email address and the content of your message.

Readers' data is not passed to the artificial intelligence services used to write our articles.

Purposes and legal bases

Each processing operation serves a specific purpose and relies on an identified legal basis.

• Providing and protecting the service (technical logs, anti-abuse measures). Legal basis: the publisher's legitimate interest in running a reliable and secure website (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR).
• Measuring audience in aggregate form (internal statistics, article feedback). Legal basis: the publisher's legitimate interest in understanding which content is useful to readers (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR).
• Sending you the newsletter and alerts about the stories you follow. Legal basis: your consent (Article 6(1)(a) UK GDPR), which you can withdraw at any time.
• Reviewing contributions and reports, and replying to your messages. Legal basis: the publisher's legitimate interest in ensuring the accuracy of its content and following up readers' requests; for requests in which you exercise your rights, compliance with a legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c) UK GDPR).

We do not carry out profiling and we do not take decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal effects concerning you.

Cookies and similar technologies

While you browse, Routes News does not place any cookies on your device: no functional cookies, no analytics cookies, and no advertising or third-party cookies. The site does not use any other form of storage in your browser (such as localStorage), loads its fonts from its own servers and does not embed third-party content such as videos, maps or social media widgets: the share buttons are simple links, and nothing from the social network loads until you click one. That is why we do not show you a cookie banner.

The statistics tool described above uses no cookies or identifiers stored on your device; the data collected is processed in aggregate form, for the publisher's sole use, and is not combined with any other information.

The only cookie used by the site is a technical session cookie for the administration area reserved for the newsroom: it is only set for people who log in to that area, never while you read the site.

This approach takes into account the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) and the Information Commissioner's Office guidance on cookies and similar technologies. If we introduce cookies or tracking tools other than those described here in the future – for example for advertising – we will update this policy before activating them and, where the law requires it, ask for your prior consent through a dedicated banner. You can in any case manage or delete cookies in your browser settings.

Recipients and processors

Your data is only accessible to the people authorised by the publisher and to the technical providers acting on its behalf as processors. The site is hosted by o2switch, in France:

We do not sell, rent or pass on your personal data to third parties for commercial purposes.

International transfers

The data is stored on servers located in France, within the European Economic Area, which UK law recognises as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data. As the publisher, AZ Medias Limited, is based in Hong Kong (outside the UK and the European Economic Area), some processing may involve a transfer of data outside the UK and the European Economic Area. These transfers comply with Chapter V of the UK GDPR, on the basis of appropriate safeguards designed to ensure an appropriate level of protection for your data.

How long we keep data

We keep data for a period proportionate to the purpose for which it is processed.

• Technical server logs: for a limited period, for security and operational purposes, in line with the hosting provider's settings.
• Audience statistics: individual page views are deleted automatically once they are more than 180 days old; only aggregate counters remain, such as the number of times an article has been read.
• Newsletter and “Follow this story”: until you withdraw your consent or ask for your data to be deleted. After you unsubscribe from the newsletter, your address may be kept with an “unsubscribed” flag, solely to respect your choice, unless you ask for it to be deleted.
• Contributions, feedback and messages: for as long as is necessary to review them and follow up your request, subject to any legal obligations.

Your rights

Under Articles 15 to 22 of the UK GDPR, you have the right to access your data, to have it rectified or erased, to ask for its processing to be restricted, to object to processing based on legitimate interest and to receive the data you have provided to us in a structured format (data portability). Where processing is based on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of the processing carried out before you withdrew it.

To exercise your rights, or to unsubscribe from the newsletter or from the alerts about a story, write to us at newsroom@routes-news.com. We may ask you to prove your identity to protect the confidentiality of your request. We will reply within one month, a period that may be extended in the cases provided for in Article 12 of the UK GDPR. For the pseudonymous statistics data, which does not allow us to identify you, we may not be able to find the data relating to you (Article 11 of the UK GDPR).

Complaints to the ICO

If you have a concern about the way we handle your data, you can write to us first at newsroom@routes-news.com and we will do our best to resolve it. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

Children

If you are under 13, please do not sign up to the newsletter or send us personal data without the consent of a person with parental responsibility for you (section 9 of the Data Protection Act 2018).

Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your data against loss, unauthorised access, disclosure or alteration. As no system is infallible, we work to improve our security measures continuously and undertake to act promptly in the event of an incident.

Changes to this policy

This policy may be amended, in particular to reflect changes in the law or in our services. Any change will be published on this page, and the “last updated” date below shows the version in force. We encourage you to consult it regularly.

Last updated: 25 October 2026.