This policy explains what information this website collects, why, how long it is kept and what you can ask us to do about it. It describes what the site actually does rather than what websites generally do.
Last updated: 25 October 2026
Who we are
Searchable Information is an online magazine published at searchable.allabor.net by Allabor, an association of independent freelance writers and editors who work together on a project basis.
Allabor is not a registered company. For the purposes of UK data protection law, Allabor is the data controller for this website, and you can reach us at Allabor, Chremma House, London Road, Guildford, Surrey GU1 2AG, United Kingdom.
If you have a question about this policy or about your own data, the quickest route is our contact form, which reaches us directly. You can also write to the address above.
What this policy covers
This policy covers searchable.allabor.net only. We publish other sites, and if you reached this one through a link from elsewhere, the policy that applies is this one.
It does not cover sites we link out to. Our articles link to third parties, including tourist boards, government pages, retailers and reference works, and once you follow a link you are on someone else's site under someone else's terms.
What we collect, and when
We do not require an account to read anything here, and most visitors give us nothing beyond a page request.
If you write to us
The contact form asks for your name, your email address, a subject and a message. All four are needed for us to understand a message and reply to it.
Nothing you send through the form is stored on this website. The form emails your message to us and keeps no copy in the site's database, so your message lives in a mailbox rather than on the server.
We use what you send to answer you. We do not add you to a mailing list, and we do not have one.
Automatically, when you visit
Our web server records the ordinary technical details of each request: the IP address it came from, the time, the page requested, the referring page if there is one, and the browser's user-agent string. This is standard server logging and we use it to keep the site running and to identify abuse, scraping and attacks, of which there is a steady supply.
Searches you run through the site's search box appear in those logs as part of the page address, so it is worth not typing anything into it you would not want recorded.
Analytics, only if you agree
We use Google Analytics to understand which articles are read and which are ignored, so we know what to write and what to update.
Analytics is off until you turn it on. Nothing is sent to Google, and no analytics cookie is set, unless you accept analytics in the cookie banner. If you ignore the banner, decline it, or never interact with it, Google Analytics does not run. You can change that decision at any time through the same banner.
What Google Analytics records, with consent, is the pages you view, roughly where in the world you are, which browser and device you used, and how you arrived. We see it only as aggregate reports. We do not use it to identify individuals, and we have not enabled advertising features or audience sharing.
This site shares its analytics with allabor.net, our network's main site: both use the same Google Analytics property, so visits to the two sites sit in one dataset. The same controller and the same policy apply to both.
What this site does not do
This is a site for reading things. It is worth being explicit about what that rules out, because most privacy policies are long precisely because the site behind them does a great deal more.
There are no reader accounts and no way to register for one. There is no newsletter and no mailing list. There are no comments. We sell no advertising and host no advertising network, which means no advertising cookies and no tracking pixels. We run no embedded content from other companies, so no video players, no maps and no social media widgets or share buttons, which means nothing on these pages reports your visit to a third party. We do not build profiles of readers, we do not combine analytics with anything else, and no decision affecting you is made automatically or otherwise.
If that list ever stops being true, this policy will change before the site does.
Cookies
A cookie is a small file a website asks your browser to keep. This site uses few of them and sets none for advertising.
- sable-klaro, set by this site. Remembers your cookie choices so you are not asked again. Essential: this cookie exists because you were asked.
- SESS and SSESS cookies, set by this site. These keep you logged in, and are only set for editors signing in to the content management system. Ordinary readers never receive one. Essential.
- _ga, _ga_K4DQ34FC7N and _gid, set by Google Analytics. These distinguish one visit from another and one visitor from another. Set only with your consent.
The consent banner is managed by Klaro, an open-source consent tool that runs on our own server. It does not report your choices to anyone.
Google Analytics is loaded using Google's gtag.js script, served from googletagmanager.com, and is configured so that no analytics request is made before consent is given.
You can also clear or block cookies in your browser settings. Blocking the consent cookie means you will be asked again on each visit, which is irritating but harmless.
Our lawful bases for using your information
- Consent, for analytics. You give it in the banner and can withdraw it there at any time.
- Legitimate interests, for server logs, specifically our interest in keeping the site available, secure and free of abuse. We consider this proportionate because the data is technical, short-lived and not used to profile anyone.
- Legitimate interests, for replying to a message you have chosen to send us. If you write to us asking a question, answering it is what you wanted.
Who else sees your information
Very few parties, and no data broker among them.
- 20i Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (number 09775671), manages the United Kingdom server this site runs on, and in doing so has administrative access to it. They act as our processor and on our instructions.
- Google (Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC) processes analytics data, with your consent, as our processor.
- We will disclose information if we are legally required to, such as under a court order or a lawful request from an authority, and not otherwise.
We do not sell your data. There is nothing to sell and no market we would want to be in.
Information leaving the UK
This website runs on our own server in the United Kingdom, so the server logs described above do not leave the country.
Google Analytics is the exception. If you consent to analytics, that data may be processed outside the UK, including in the United States, and Google relies on the UK extension to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses for those transfers. If you would rather nothing went to Google at all, decline analytics in the banner and nothing will.
How long we keep things
- Google Analytics: no more than 14 months, which is the longest period this kind of Analytics property allows. After that, event-level data is deleted and only aggregate reports remain.
- Server logs: rotated and deleted automatically on a short cycle, and kept only while they are useful for keeping the site running and secure. They are not used for anything else.
- Contact messages: kept as long as needed to deal with what you wrote about, and then deleted. If a message starts a longer correspondence we keep the correspondence while it is live. Because the form stores nothing on the site, deleting a message means deleting an email.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:
- tell you what personal data we hold about you, and give you a copy
- correct it if it is wrong
- delete it
- restrict what we do with it, or object to our doing it
- provide it in a portable form, where that right applies
- stop processing based on consent, which for analytics you can do yourself, in the banner, without asking us
Ask us through the contact form or by post at the address above, and we will respond within one month. We will not charge you for it. In practice, for most readers the honest answer to a request will be that we hold nothing identifying you at all beyond whatever is still in the server logs.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk, by calling 0303 123 1113, or by writing to Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. We would rather you came to us first so we can put it right, but you do not have to.
Children
This site is written for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has sent us something through the contact form, tell us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change what the site does, we will change this policy and update the date at the top. Material changes will be flagged on the page rather than slipped in quietly.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about your own data, go through the contact form, or by post to Allabor, Chremma House, London Road, Guildford, Surrey GU1 2AG.