Privacy and cookies
What lhfs.uk stores when you visit, review or report — and for how long. No tracking, analytics or advertising cookies.
Who we are
lhfs.uk (London Heathrow Friendly Spots) is an independent website. For anything about your personal data, email hello@lhfs.uk.
Browsing the site
- No tracking. We don’t use analytics, advertising or social-media trackers, and nothing on our pages loads from other companies’ servers. Fonts and images are served from our own server.
- Server logs. Like almost every website, our web server records requests (IP address, date and time, page requested and browser type) for security and troubleshooting. These logs are kept for a limited period and are not used to profile anyone.
- Outbound links. Links to other websites go through an address on our site (for example
/go/…/) so we can count how many people use each link. We record only the date and time, which link was used and which of our pages it was on — not your IP address, and no cookie is set. - Videos. If a page shows a YouTube video, nothing loads from YouTube until you press play. After that, YouTube’s own privacy policy applies.
Cookies
We only use cookies that are strictly necessary:
| Cookie | What it does | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Session cookie (PHPSESSID) | Set when you view a page with a form (place pages and the report form). It holds a random ID that protects the forms against forgery. It contains nothing about you. | Until you close your browser |
| Admin session | Only for the site owner when signed in to the admin area. | Until sign-out, or 2 hours of inactivity |
When you write a review
| What we store | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your ratings, title, review text, display name, and (if you give them) visit month and type of trip, plus the date | To publish your review and calculate scores. Published reviews are public. | For as long as the review is on the site. Rejected reviews are deleted after 365 days. |
| A scrambled (keyed-hash) version of your IP address | To prevent spam, duplicate and fake reviews, and to apply rate limits. We never store your actual IP address with your review. | Deleted after 30 days |
Please don’t include personal information in your review — yours or anyone else’s, such as a staff member’s full name. If you do, we may remove it before publishing (see our review policy).
When you report a review
We store the reason, any details you give and a scrambled version of your IP address (deleted after 30 days), so that a moderator can deal with the report and so the report form can’t be abused.
When you email us
We use your email only to reply and keep it only as long as we need to deal with your message.
Our lawful basis
We rely on legitimate interests: publishing genuine reviews for other travellers, keeping the site secure, and preventing spam, abuse and fake reviews (which the law also requires review publishers to take steps against). We have weighed these against your privacy, which is why we keep so little and hash what we do keep. You have the right to object.
Who sees your data
Published reviews are public. Otherwise, your data is only seen by the site owner and stored by our hosting provider. We don’t sell or share it, except where the law requires (for example, an investigation by a regulator).
Your rights and complaints
You can ask to see, correct or delete personal data we hold about you, to restrict how we use it, or object to our using it — email hello@lhfs.uk. Because we keep so little (and only hashed IPs, for 30 days), we may need details of your review to find it.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please complain to us first at the same address: we will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it without undue delay and tell you the outcome. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
Changes
If we change what we collect, we will update this page and the date at the top.