Privacy
Your privacy, in plain words.
This is a personal, non-commercial hobby site. It has no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no cookies of its own. I don't keep any visitor data myself, and nothing here is used for profiling or automated decisions. Two outside services do see something when you visit, and both are named below.
Who runs this site
Drift North is run by one person as a hobby. You can reach me at driftnorth.blog@proton.me.
What is stored on your device
This site sets no cookies and has no tracking of its own, so there is no cookie banner. There is one small exception that you control: if you use the Units switch (Metric / Imperial), your choice is saved in your browser's local storage (an entry called units) so the site remembers it next time. It stays on your device, is never sent anywhere, and you can delete it any time in your browser settings.
Hosting
The site is hosted by Netlify, Inc., a company in the USA. To deliver the pages and keep the service secure, Netlify processes your IP address and technical details of your request (such as the page you asked for and your browser type) in its server logs. My reason for allowing this is running a working and secure website (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)). Because Netlify is a US company, this data can be transferred to and stored in the US. Netlify states that it complies with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, uses the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, and processes data under a data processing agreement. I don't know how long Netlify keeps these logs: its privacy policy doesn't give a period that I could find. You can read more in Netlify's privacy policy.
Maps
Hike posts, and the map of every hike at /map, show an interactive map from OpenTopoMap, a volunteer-run project. Loading a page with a map means your browser asks OpenTopoMap's servers directly for the map tiles it needs, which gives OpenTopoMap your IP address, your browser and operating system, the part of the map you are looking at, and the address of this site. I show these maps because they are part of what this site is for — reading about a hike without seeing where it goes would be a strange kind of hiking blog (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)). OpenTopoMap does not publish a privacy policy, say where its servers are or say how long it keeps data, so I can't tell you more about what happens to that data.
Everything else
Fonts, pictures and videos are served from this site itself. The weather under each route is fetched from Open-Meteo when I build the site, not when you visit, so Open-Meteo never sees you. The Listen button uses your browser's built-in text-to-speech: depending on your browser and the voice you pick, the browser's maker may process the spoken text on its own servers. That is your browser's doing, not something this site sends.
I can't see what happens on Netlify's or OpenTopoMap's servers, which is why they are named above rather than described in detail.
Your rights
I don't run any analytics, accounts or tracking, so I hold almost no personal data about visitors. The data that does exist sits in Netlify's server logs and, when a map loads, with OpenTopoMap.
Under the GDPR you have rights over that data, including access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and data portability. Those requests should go to Netlify and OpenTopoMap, since the data is on their systems.
If you email me, I keep your message and address so I can reply, and delete them when they are no longer needed.
You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority; you can find yours in the list of European data protection authorities.
Last updated: 30 September 2026.