The short version
If you only read OldPubs, we hold nothing about you. No account, no cookie of ours, no row in any database, no profile. That is true of every pub page, the map, the Top 100 and everything else you can reach without signing in, and it is the position almost every visitor is in.
If you join the snug — the part of a pub page where readers write what they remember — then we hold your email address, the display name you choose, what you write, and which pints you have raised. Joining is the only thing that creates a record about you, you choose whether to do it, and you can delete the lot in one click. Everything we keep is listed below, with how long we keep it.
Four things involve somebody other than us: advertising, visitor analytics, the service that sends a sign-in code, and the bot check in front of the join form. All four are described below. We do not build a profile of you for any of them.
This policy applies to oldpubs.com.
Who is responsible
OldPubs is operated by the site owner as an independent publisher. For the purposes of UK GDPR and the EU GDPR, the operator is the data controller for the limited processing described here. To exercise any right in this policy, or to ask a question about it, write to hello@oldpubs.com.
What we collect ourselves
If you do not join: nothing that identifies you
- No account is needed to read anything. Every pub page, the map, the search and the Pint Passport work without one.
- The search boxes work inside your browser. We have no contact form and no newsletter. Corrections come by email, which means your message sits in an email inbox and nowhere else.
- No cookie of ours, unless you are signed in. Once advertising is running, Google sets its own consent and advertising cookies on this domain, which we never read — see the cookie policy.
- No fingerprinting, and we never sell or share personal data.
- One exception, and it is small. If you ask for a sign-in code we store the address you typed, with the code itself hashed, until the code is used or the nightly tidy clears it. We answer the same way whether or not that address already has an account here, which is the only way to stop this page being used to ask whether somebody is a member — and it means we briefly hold an address belonging to somebody who never finishes joining.
If you join the snug
Joining takes an email address and a display name. There is no password — we email you a six-digit code instead. This is everything we then hold, and nothing else:
| What | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your email address | It is the account: the only way to sign in, and where a sign-in code goes | Until you delete your account |
| Your display name | Printed beside what you write. It is the only thing about you anyone else sees | Until you delete your account |
| The sign-in code, hashed, and the address it was sent to | Proves the address is yours | The code dies in 10 minutes; the row is cleared when you use it, and by the nightly tidy at the latest |
| A session, hashed | Keeps you signed in. The cookie holds a random token and nothing about you | 90 days, or until you sign out |
| What you write, and the pints you raise | They are the contribution | Until you delete or withdraw them |
| Your IP address when you join | To stop one connection opening many accounts, and to cap how many sign-in codes it can ask for | Within 31 days, then deleted automatically by a nightly job |
| If you flag a memory: which one, and the reason you gave | So a person can look at it, and so the same complaint is not counted twice | Until you delete your account |
| A line recording a moderation decision | We are expected to keep a record of complaints and what we did about them | 24 months, then deleted. It holds no name and no address |
Deleting your account deletes all of it. One button, no “deleted member” byline left behind, and everything in the table above is gone from the database the moment you press it, your email address included.
One thing takes a little longer, and it would be wrong not to say so. A published memory is also baked into the pub’s own page when the site is built, so it leaves the page itself at the next build — within a day. The same is true of withdrawing a single memory. Write to hello@oldpubs.com if you need it gone sooner and we will rebuild.
Two things outlive an account, both deliberately. A moderation record: if a memory of yours was declined, or if you flagged somebody else’s, we keep a line saying what was decided and why, because we are expected to keep a record of complaints and what we did about them. It holds no name and no address, and it is deleted after 24 months.
What we never ask for and never store: a password, a payment detail, your location, your age, or any file. There is no way to upload a photograph to this site at all — photographs come to us by email and only appear once we have checked their licence.
The Pint Passport and other things kept in your browser
The Pint Passport, the “which is older?” quiz, the map filters you last chose and a note that you pressed “use my location” are stored in your own browser. That data stays on your device. It is never transmitted to us, never synchronised between your devices, and we cannot read it. Clearing your browser’s site data deletes it, and there is no copy anywhere else. The cookie policy lists each item by name.
Location
If you use “old pubs near me”, your browser asks your permission and then gives the page your approximate coordinates. Those coordinates are used in the page, on your device, to sort pubs by distance. They are not sent to us, not stored, and not passed to any third party. Refusing permission simply leaves the map where it is.
Search terms stay in your browser: the search index is a static file downloaded to your device,
and nothing you type is sent to us or to any search service. The sort and before values that
appear in the map’s address bar record which filters you chose, so that a view can be shared;
they never contain your location.
Visitor analytics
We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count page views and see which pages are read. It has been running since 21 September 2026, when the site owner switched it on; before that date nothing was loaded and nothing was counted. It is cookieless and sets no cross-site identifiers, and what it gives us is aggregate counts of pages, referrers, countries and device types — nothing that identifies a visitor. Like any request to any server, the beacon’s request reaches Cloudflare carrying your IP address, which Cloudflare processes under its own terms as described in Hosting and logs below; what reaches us is only the aggregate. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.
Advertising
The site is built to carry advertising served by Google, through AdSense. At the date of this policy no advertising is running: no publisher account is configured, so no ad script and no consent script is loaded and no advertising cookie can be set from this site. When advertising is switched on, Google and its partners may use cookies or similar technologies to serve and measure advertising, and in some configurations to personalise it.
- In the UK, the EEA and Switzerland, no advertising cookie is set until you have made a choice in the consent banner. You can withdraw or change that choice at any time, as easily as you gave it, with the Cookie settings button in the Legal column of the footer. That button is there whenever advertising is running, which is whenever there is a choice to withdraw — see the cookie policy.
- Elsewhere, ads may be personalised by default; you can opt out of personalised advertising at Google’s Ads Settings and at optout.aboutads.info, which is the Digital Advertising Alliance’s YourAdChoices tool.
- Google’s own explanation of how it uses data from sites that use its services is at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
We do not receive personal data from Google about you, and we cannot see who you are from an ad impression.
If you are in California
Personalised advertising counts as “sharing” under the California Consumer Privacy Act, even though no money changes hands and we never see who you are. We do not sell personal information and we never will. Once advertising is running you can turn personalised ads off for this site through the consent notice, and again through Google’s ad settings; either is a “do not sell or share” request as far as this site is concerned. A Global Privacy Control signal from your browser is honoured by Google’s consent tool. If you would rather ask us directly, write through the contact page and we will confirm what has been done.
Hosting, the database, and the service that sends your code
The site runs on Cloudflare. As with any web host, Cloudflare processes the technical information needed to deliver a page — your IP address and request details — and uses it for security, abuse prevention and network operation. That processing is Cloudflare’s, under its own terms; see the Cloudflare privacy policy.
Two of those services hold or handle what the snug collects, and they are named here because you are entitled to know who they are:
- Cloudflare D1 is the database the member table sits in. It is on the same Cloudflare account as the site and nothing is copied anywhere else.
- Resend sends the three emails this site sends: your sign-in code, the note saying a memory of yours is live, and the one-line reason if a memory is declined. Resend therefore receives your email address and the text of that message. It is a United States company, and that transfer happens on its standard contractual clauses; see the Resend privacy policy. It is used for nothing else — there is no newsletter and no marketing list.
Content loaded from elsewhere
- Map tiles come from OpenFreeMap when you open a map. Your browser requests tiles directly, which means your IP address reaches that service, as it would with any map.
- A bot check from Cloudflare Turnstile loads on the join form and on the memory composer. Your browser contacts Cloudflare directly, so your IP address reaches it, and we send the same address when we check its answer. It is there so that one script cannot open a thousand accounts. It is not on any other page.
- Fonts are served from this site, not from a font network.
- Photographs are served from this site and credited to their authors.
We link out to pubs’ own websites, to sources, and to map and directions services — each trail page has a link that opens the whole walk in Google Maps. Once you follow a link, that site’s privacy policy applies, not ours.
Legal bases
Where UK or EU data protection law applies, our legal bases are:
- Contract for your account, if you join: your email address, display name, session, memories and raised glasses all exist because you asked to join, and they are what joining is.
- Legitimate interests for the sign-in IP address, kept 30 days to stop one person opening many accounts; for the record of moderation decisions; and for aggregate, cookieless analytics and the security and delivery of the site. In each case we consider the interference minimal: the IP is never shown to anyone, never joined to what you read, and never used to advertise to you.
- Consent for advertising cookies and any personalised advertising.
We rely on consent for nothing else, because there is no newsletter and nothing is marketed to you. The only emails we send are the ones you asked for: your sign-in code, and — if you have joined — that a memory of yours is live, and the one-line reason if one is declined.
How long anything is kept
If you have not joined, we keep nothing about you at all, except any email you choose to send us, which is kept while a correction is being handled and then for a reasonable period as a record of what changed and why.
If you have joined, the table above says how long each thing lasts. The two to know are that a sign-in code dies after ten minutes and a sign-in IP address is deleted after 30 days, automatically. Everything else lasts until you delete it, and deleting your account deletes it in one step. Third-party retention is set by those third parties in the policies linked above.
Your rights
If UK or EU data protection law applies to you, you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability, and a right to withdraw consent at any time. Because we hold almost no personal data, most requests will be answered by telling you exactly that. Write to hello@oldpubs.com and we will reply.
You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner’s Office; in the EU it is your national data protection authority.
Children
This site is intended for adults of legal drinking age. It is not directed at children, we do not knowingly collect data about them, and we do not target advertising at them.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes with it and the substance of the change is described here.
The most recent change is a substantial one. On 24 October 2026 the site gained the snug, so it now holds an email address, a display name, what a member writes and a sign-in IP address for anyone who chooses to join. Before that date it held nothing about anybody at all. The If you join the snug section, the legal bases and the retention periods are all new, and so is the account deletion. Nothing about a reader who does not join has changed.
Before that, on 12 September 2026, a clarification rather than a change to what happens: that the Cookie settings button appears in the footer whenever advertising is running, because until then there is nothing to withdraw.
Found something wrong?Suggest a correction