Privacy and cookies

The short version: this site has no accounts, no forms, no newsletter and no analytics. It doesn't ask you for anything. What it does do is show adverts supplied by Google, and those adverts involve cookies and similar technologies on your device.

This policy covers dts.theapprenticeroute.co.uk. The site is run by an individual based in the UK; for data protection purposes, that person is the data controller, and you can reach them at hello@theapprenticeroute.co.uk.

What this site collects directly

Nothing. There is no sign-up, no login, no comment system, no contact form, no mailing list and no tracking pixel of my own. I don't run Google Analytics or any equivalent, so I have no idea who you are or which pages you personally read. If that ever changes, this page changes first.

If you email me, I obviously have your email and whatever you wrote in it. I keep those messages while they're useful (a correction thread, a removal request) and delete them when they're not.

Hosting and server logs

The site is served by Cloudflare, which processes requests on my behalf and keeps short-lived operational logs — including IP addresses — to serve pages, block attacks and stop abuse. That processing is necessary for the site to work securely and rests on my legitimate interest in keeping it available. Cloudflare's own privacy policy explains what it does with that data. Cloudflare may also set a security cookie to identify trusted traffic.

Advertising and cookies

Adverts on this site come from Google AdSense.

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies and similar identifiers to serve ads based on your prior visits to this site or other sites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this and other sites on the internet.
• You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google's Ad Settings. Opting out doesn't remove the ads — it makes them less relevant, not less frequent.
• You can opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info or, in the UK and Europe, Your Online Choices.

Google explains how it handles data from sites that use its services in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services and How Google uses cookies in advertising. Where Google acts as an independent controller of that data, its own privacy policy applies rather than mine.

Your consent choices

If you're in the UK or the European Economic Area, you'll be asked on your first visit whether you consent to advertising cookies and to your data being used for personalised advertising. Non-essential cookies aren't set before you answer. You can change or withdraw that answer at any time using the privacy or consent link shown by that message, and refusing costs you nothing — the whole site works either way, you'll just see non-personalised ads.

Cookies your browser has already stored can be cleared or blocked in its settings; every major browser lets you do this per site.

What the cookies are for

• Advertising — set by Google and its advertising partners to select ads, measure whether they were seen or clicked, cap how often you see the same one, and detect fraudulent clicks. These are the ones the consent message covers.
• Security — set by Cloudflare to distinguish real visitors from automated abuse. These are strictly necessary for the site to be served safely.
• Consent — a record of the choice you made, so you aren't asked on every page.

I don't set any cookies of my own, so I can't publish an exhaustive per-cookie list: the advertising ones are chosen by Google and its partners and change over time. The consent message lists the vendors in play at the time you're asked.

Readers under 18

A lot of this site is written for people aged 16 to 19 deciding what to do after school, and their parents. It is not directed at children under 13, and I don't knowingly collect information from them. If you're under 18 and would rather not see personalised advertising, decline the consent message — you'll still get the whole site.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask what personal data is held about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict its processing, and to receive a copy of it. Email hello@theapprenticeroute.co.uk to exercise any of these and I'll respond within one month.

Realistically, for a reader who has only ever loaded pages, I hold nothing that identifies you — so the more effective route for advertising data is Google's own controls, linked above. If you think your data has been mishandled you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK supervisory authority.

Changes

If this policy changes materially — new analytics, a new ad partner, anything that collects more than today — I'll update this page and the date below before the change goes live.

Last updated: 25 July 2026.