Cookies Policy

Effective: 5th November 2019

At Rail Europe, we are serious about your privacy and security. We believe in being open and transparent about how we collect and use your personal information. This includes when we use “cookies”. This notice explains how Rail Europe uses cookies and other tracking technologies through our website, ricksteves.raileurope.com as well as our mobile apps (for both iOS and Android).

What Is A Cookie?

Cookies are small text files, unique to your account or browser, that are sent between Rail Europe and your computer or mobile device. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device and, for instance, remember your preferences and generally improve your online user experience.

There are two types of cookies, “session” and “persistent”. Session-based cookies are stored only while you browse Rail Europe and are automatically deleted when you close your browser. For example, Rail Europe uses session-based cookies to hold a ticket in your basket while you browse the Site. If you don’t have an account, those tickets will disappear when you close your browser.

Persistent cookies last until you or your browser deletes them or until they expire. For example, if you are an account holder and signed in, Rail Europe uses persistent cookies to hold tickets in your basket while you are signed into your account so that you can close your browser and buy the tickets later. The duration of our persistent cookies are set out in the table below.

Although this notice refers to the general term ‘cookie’, it also applies to similar tracking technologies that we use (such as ‘web beacons’, ‘clear GIFs’ and ‘pixel tags’).

Visit this site (https://www.allaboutcookies.org/) to find out more about cookies.

What information about you does Rail Europe collect?

As is true of most websites, we collect information about your device, including your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information.

Here are a few examples of information that we collect with cookies and other similar technology:

Browser and browser version
Operating system and version
Referring Domain
UTM tracking from the referrer e.g. if you’ve come to Rail Europe via one of our affiliates
City/Country

Why Does Rail Europe Use Cookies?

We use cookies in a few different ways:

To let you do things on the website: Some cookies are associated with your account in order to remember that you are logged in or hold tickets in your basket.

To collect statistics: Some cookies help us learn how well our website and apps perform. We also use cookies to understand, improve, and analyse products, features, and services.

To improve your experience: Cookies can tell us which language and currency you prefer. They can help you fill out forms more easily, for example by prefilling passenger name fields. We may use cookies to help us improve our services, for example, to improve the performance of our pages you browsed on Rail Europe before placing an order or contacting us.

To ensure our website is secure: Cookies also make your interactions more secure, to make sure the personal information you give us does not also fall into the wrong hands.

To provide you with relevant marketing information: These cookies are used to deliver relevant advertising content and help measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.

Taking Control Of Cookies

Some people prefer not to allow cookies, or allow a part of them only, and you can manage your preferences through this dedicated menu:

Most browsers also give you the option to control them in your setting. In some browsers you can set up rules to manage cookies on a site-by-site basis, so you can prevent cookies being set by all sites except those that you trust. What you are able to do depends on which browser you are using. If you do not accept our use of cookies as set out above, you may either use the options set out above or configure your browser to reject cookies. The ability to do this is usually found in the options, settings or preferences menu of your browser or mobile device (and we include links for common browsers below).

The most popular browsers provide advice for managing cookies, such as these:

You can also opt out of targeted marketing through the Digital Advertising Alliance.

There are also lots of browser extensions and third-party apps that let you have more control of your online privacy, for example the Ghostery app.

On your iPhone, iPad or Android, you can change your device settings to control whether you see online interest-based ads.

However, if you choose to restrict our website and apps from creating cookies, you may find that your overall user experience of those services is compromised, for example the website will stop remembering your preferences and in some cases disrupt your experience of our website.

Updating this policy

We may update this notice and so we recommend that you check this notice regularly. We shall notify you of any significant changes by way of a notice on our website or by contacting you directly when reasonably possible.