The Short Version
We run a guides website. We do not sell your data, we do not require accounts, our analytics sets no cookies, and we collect as little as we can while still knowing which pages are useful.
What we do
- Measure which pages people read, without cookies
- Log which partner link was followed, from which page, without personal data
- Store what you send us through a form, and email it to ourselves
- Pass an enquiry to a specialist only when you have ticked the box asking us to
- Keep things only as long as we need them
What we don't do
- Set tracking cookies, or show a cookie banner — there is nothing non-essential to consent to
- Sell or rent your personal data
- Require an account to read anything
- Ask for immigration or financial details to read a guide
- Track you across unrelated websites for advertising
Who We Are
HowToEstonia.com publishes guides for foreigners living in, moving to, or running a company in Estonia. For the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation, the controller of any personal data collected through this site is the site's operator, reachable at hello@howtoestonia.com.
What We Collect
| What | When | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page views, referrer, country, device type | Every visit | To know which guides are worth writing | Aggregated; no individual record is kept |
| Which partner link was followed, and from which page | When you click an outbound partner link | To know which recommendations readers act on | In server logs, for as long as the host retains them |
| Name, email, phone, and what you tell us | Only when you submit a form | To answer you, and — if you tick the box — to match you with a specialist | Until the enquiry is resolved and a reasonable period after |
Analytics. We use Vercel Web Analytics. It sets no cookies and stores no identifier on your device, which is why this site shows no cookie banner: the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement is triggered by storing or reading information on your device, and we do neither. We see that a page was read, roughly where from, and on what kind of device. We do not see who you are.
We do not run advertising. There is no ad network on this site, and therefore no advertising profile of you being built here.
Outbound Links
Links to banks, insurers, brokers and service providers go through a redirect on this domain — /go/… — rather than pointing straight out. The redirect records which partner and which page the click came from. It does not record who you are, and it sets nothing on your device.
None of those links currently earns us anything. We have no affiliate agreement in place, so every outbound link on this site today is a plain link to the provider. If that changes, the pages carrying commissioned links will say so on the page itself, not only here.
Referral Enquiries
Some pages carry a form offering to match you with an immigration specialist. That form is the only place we ask for personal details.
What happens to it:
- It is sent to us by email. We read every one.
- We pass it to a specialist only because you ticked the consent box asking us to, and only for the purpose named next to that box.
- The specialist becomes an independent controller of your data at that point, and their own privacy policy governs what they do with it. We are not able to answer for them.
- We do not add you to a mailing list. There is no mailing list.
Do not put sensitive details in a form
A free-text box is the wrong place for passport numbers, financial account details, health information, or anything about a criminal matter. Tell us the shape of the situation; the specialist will ask for what they actually need, through a channel appropriate to it.
Legal Basis
Under Article 6 of the GDPR:
- Legitimate interests for analytics and for the outbound-link counts. Both are aggregate, neither identifies you, and running a site without knowing which pages are read is not realistically possible.
- Consent for passing your enquiry to a specialist. That is the tick box, it is not pre-ticked, and it is not bundled with anything else.
- Legitimate interests for holding your enquiry long enough to answer it.
You can withdraw consent at any time by writing to hello@howtoestonia.com. Withdrawal does not undo a referral already made, because we cannot un-send it — but we will tell you who received it.
Your Rights
If you are in the EU or the UK you have the right to ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, to correct it, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. Write to hello@howtoestonia.com.
In practice, for almost every reader the honest answer to "what do you hold about me?" is nothing — we have no record of you unless you sent us a form.
You can also complain to a supervisory authority. In Estonia that is the Data Protection Inspectorate (Andmekaitse Inspektsioon), and you may instead complain to the authority in your own country of residence.
Processors and Transfers
We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf:
- Vercel — hosting, and the analytics described above.
- Resend — delivery of the emails our forms generate.
Where a processor operates outside the EEA, the transfer relies on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
Security, Children and Other Sites
We do not hold accounts, passwords or payment details, which removes most of what there is to lose. Enquiries reach us by email and are not stored in any public-facing system.
This site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
Once you follow a link away from this site — including through a /go/… redirect — you are on someone else's site under their policy, not ours.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what happens to your data, we will change the date below. This page was last reviewed in August 2026.
Related
Note. This page describes what this site actually does with data. It is not legal advice, and it is not a template for anyone else's site.