Privacy Policy

Last updated: 30 September 2026

YuleFinder (“we”, “us”) is an interactive map of Christmas markets around the world. There are no accounts. This page explains exactly what data we touch and what we do — and don’t — keep.

The short version

• There is nothing to sign up for — browsing is anonymous.
• Your “My trip” list lives in your browser and never leaves it.
• No advertising cookies, no third-party analytics, and we never sell data.
• Our own page counter is cookie-less and never stores your IP address.

My trip

Markets you add to “My trip”, your language choice, your sort order and a coarse location if you choose “Nearest me” are saved in your browser’s local storage and used only on the page. None of it is sent to us; clearing your browser data deletes it.

Location

If you choose “Nearest me”, your browser asks you for permission and the position stays on your device, rounded to city level. On phones the map opens on your own continent, worked out from the time zone your phone reports — no location prompt and no lookup of any kind. On the “Add a market” form, typing a city or clicking the map sends that place name or those coordinates to OpenStreetMap Nominatim to find the square — only when you act, never in the background.

Market submissions and messages

If you submit a market through the “Add a market” form, we store the market details you provide and your email address. Your email is used only to send a confirmation link if one is needed, or to ask you a question — it is never shown publicly and is not used for marketing. Approved market details (name, location, dates, hours, what it offers, links) appear publicly on the map; your email does not. Messages sent through the contact form or a market page’s “Report an issue” button are stored with the email you chose to give. We record the submitting IP address briefly for rate-limiting and spam protection.

Cookies & analytics

YuleFinder sets no cookies. The map loads tiles from CARTO / OpenStreetMap and market photos from Wikimedia Commons, which receive your IP address as part of serving those files, as is standard for any website. The Leaflet library and the fonts are served from our own host.

We count page views with our own cookie-less counter on our server: it records the page, the referring site, the day, and a few coarse, aggregate details your browser already sends with every request — device type (mobile / desktop / tablet), browser, operating system, preferred language. It also records an approximate country, looked up from your IP address on our own server using a local database, after which the IP is immediately discarded — we never store it or send it to anyone. Nothing it records can identify you or follow you across days. It respects your browser’s Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals. When you click a “Stay nearby”, “Things to do”, “Tickets” or “Official site” button, the same counter records which button on which market page was clicked, with the same aggregate details and nothing else.

Country lookup uses the free IP Geolocation by DB-IP database (CC BY 4.0).

Affiliate links

Some outbound links — to Booking.com and GetYourGuide — are affiliate links. If you book through one, YuleFinder may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Those sites handle your data under their own privacy policies once you are there; we pass them nothing about you beyond the market’s location and dates in the link itself.

Your choices & deleting your data

• Use the map without giving us anything — nothing about you is stored.
• Clear your trip list any time with “Clear the list” in My trip.
• To delete a submission or a message, email us and we’ll remove it.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Email privacy@yulefinder.net.

We may update this policy as the service evolves; material changes will be reflected by the “Last updated” date above.