Last updated 5 October 2026
Privacy and cookies
What Food Feastivals stores when you visit, review, comment, report or suggest a festival — and for how long. No tracking, analytics or advertising cookies.
Who we are
Food Feastivals (foodfeastivals.co.uk) is an independent website. For anything about your personal data, email hello@foodfeastivals.co.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. - Calendar files. “Add to calendar” downloads a small file to your device; we don’t record who downloads it.
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 (festival pages, the report and suggestion forms). 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 or a comment
| What we store | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your review (ratings, title, text, display name, the year you went and, if you give it, who you went with) or your comment (text and display name), plus the date | To publish it and calculate ratings. Published posts are public. | For as long as the post is on the site. Rejected posts 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 post. | Deleted after 30 days |
Photos you add to a review
- Before we store a photo, we remove all hidden information from it — including GPS location, the date and time, and camera or phone details — and save a new copy (WebP, 1600 and 800 pixels wide) under a random file name. The original file you sent is not kept.
- Until a person has approved it, a photo is stored privately on our server and can’t be seen on the website.
- Approved photos are public, shown with your review and your display name, and may be added to the festival’s gallery. They are kept for as long as the review (or the gallery photo) is on the site.
- Rejected photos are deleted after 30 days. Deleting a review deletes its photos.
- We record that you agreed to the photo statement, and when. Please don’t photograph people close up or personal details.
Please don’t include personal information in your posts — yours or anyone else’s. If you do, we may remove it before publishing (see our policy).
When you report a post
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 the form can’t be abused.
When you suggest a festival or a correction
We store what you tell us, your connection to the festival if you say, your email address if you choose to give it (only so that we can reply), and a scrambled version of your IP address (deleted after 30 days). Suggestions — including any email address — are deleted within 180 days of being dealt with.
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 and comments for other visitors, keeping the site secure, keeping listings accurate, 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 posts 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@foodfeastivals.co.uk. Because we keep so little (and only hashed IPs, for 30 days), we may need details of your post 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.