This page explains, in plain terms, what data FindMyFerry uses. We aim to keep it minimal, and we don't run any third-party analytics or advertising trackers. One third party is worth naming even so: the route map page loads the Leaflet mapping library from a public code CDN (unpkg.com), so that CDN sees your browser's request for those two files. Everything else described below is first-party.
Cookies & local storage
- Essential: a small amount of browser local storage (not a tracking cookie) to remember your cookie-banner choice and your recently searched routes. The site doesn't work properly without these, and this data never leaves your browser.
- Affiliate tracking: when you click a "Book with…" link, our booking partner (e.g. Ferryscanner, Direct Ferries) sets its own cookie on its own site to attribute the booking to us so we earn a commission. That happens under the partner's privacy policy, not ours.
What our server logs
FindMyFerry keeps three plain log files on its own server — no third party ever sees this traffic:
- Searches: the route, date, passenger count and vehicle type you search for, and how many results it returned — this tells us which routes have demand we don't yet cover. You don't give us a name, email or any booking detail at search time, so none is recorded.
- Page views: the page path you viewed and the referring page, for basic traffic counts.
- Booking clicks: the partner, route and dates a "Book with…" click was for, and the page it was clicked from — so we can see which routes convert.
Every one of these three logs also records an IP address that is truncated before it is written to disk — an IPv4 address keeps only its first three octets (e.g. 188.245.96.0, not 188.245.96.179); an IPv6 address keeps only its first 48 bits. Page-view and booking-click entries also keep the browser's user agent string, used only to filter obvious bots (crawlers, uptime checks, curl/wget) out of traffic counts, never to build a profile of who visited. We do not store your full IP address in any log. A full IP is held in the server's memory — never on disk — so we can rate-limit a single source that would otherwise overload the search. It stops counting towards that limit after a minute, is dropped as the service clears out idle entries, and is gone entirely whenever the service restarts.
How long we keep it
Logs aren't kept forever on a fixed schedule: a nightly job rotates each log once it passes 20 MB — the current contents are compressed into a dated archive and the live file starts fresh. Only the 3 most recent archives per log are kept; older ones are deleted automatically. In practice that means a quiet log (few events) can span months before it first rotates, while a busier one rotates — and its oldest archive drops off — sooner.
What we don't do
We don't run third-party analytics or advertising trackers, we don't take payments or store card details, we don't store your full IP address, and we don't sell your data.
Affiliate disclosure
FindMyFerry earns commission from some booking links, at no extra cost to you. It never affects the ranking of results or the price you pay.
Contact
Privacy questions: hello@findmyferry.com.