Privacy Policy
The short version: you can read every guide without giving us anything. If you hand us an email, we use it for the thing you asked for and nothing else.
Last updated August 11, 2026
No account, no requirement
There is no sign-up, no login, and no paywall. Browsing a port guide asks nothing of you. Everything below only applies if you choose to use a form.
What we collect, and when
When you ask for a personalized guide
The form takes your email, your ship, your sail date, and your party size (how many adults and kids, and the kids' ages). We use it to build and send one guide email. Ages are used to pick which recommendations you get and are never stored.
What we keep afterwards is two things. First, a record that someone requested a guide for that ship and date, so we don't email you the same thing twice — your address is stored only as a one-way SHA-256 hash there, never as readable text, and it expires after 90 days. Second, if your cruise is still ahead of you, a reminder entry that does hold your actual email address so we can send the two pre-cruise reminders (one a week out, one the day before). That entry deletes itself three days after you sail.
When you email yourself a saved plan
We take your email and the list of places you saved, send you that plan, and keep no copy of the message. If you also told us your ship and sail date, you get the same pre-cruise reminder entry described above, on the same delete-after-sailing timer.
When you ask a question
The contact form forwards your name, email, question, and any trip details you included straight to our support inbox. Nothing from it is written to a database — your question lives in email, and we only use your address to answer you.
Places you save, and share links
Saved favorites live in your own browser's local storage. We never see them unless you act on them. If you create a share link, the saved list and trip details behind that code are stored for 30 days and then deleted — no email or name is attached to it.
Automatic, on any form
Your IP address is used briefly as a rate-limiting key so one person can't flood the forms or use them to spam someone else's inbox. It is held for about an hour and is not attached to your email or to anything you did on the site.
Analytics and advertising
GoatCounter counts pageviews without cookies and without cross-site identifiers. We also record when a visit arrives from an AI assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude, as a plain count of that channel — nothing about you.
Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights report aggregate traffic and page-loading speed for the site.
Google Ads is the one piece here that behaves like conventional ad tech. When it is enabled, every page loads Google's gtag script, which can set advertising cookies and send requests to Google and DoubleClick so we can measure whether our own ads work. We don't sell ad space on this site — this only measures ads we buy. If you would rather it didn't run, a tracker blocker or Google's own ad settings will stop it, and nothing on the site breaks when you do.
When you click a link to a partner such as Booking.com or Amazon, it passes through a redirect on our own domain that records a random click ID, which page and section the click came from, and the time. That record contains no name, email, or IP address; it exists so we can tell which parts of a guide are useful.
Who else handles your data
We use a short list of vendors, and only for the jobs described above:
- Resend — delivers every email we send.
- Upstash Redis — stores the reminder entries, share codes, hashed submission records, and rate-limit counters.
- Vercel — hosts the site and processes the requests your browser makes.
- Google — supplies the interactive maps and place photos, and the advertising tag above.
- Visual Crossing — returns the forecast for a port and sail date. It receives the place and the date, not you.
- GoatCounter and Sentry — pageview counts and server error reports. Our error reports are scrubbed of email addresses, tokens, and passwords before they are sent.
- Affiliate networks — CJ Affiliate, Amazon Associates, and Viator see the click when you follow one of their links, under their own privacy policies. Which programs are live is listed on our disclosure page.
We do not sell your data, rent it, or hand it to a data broker. We have never run a newsletter list and don't plan to.
Stopping the emails
Every email we send carries a working unsubscribe link. Using it adds you to a permanent suppression list — stored as a hash of your address, so honoring the opt-out doesn't require us to keep the address itself — and no further scheduled email goes out. You can also just reply and ask, or write to help@cruisedayguide.com.
Getting your data deleted
Most of what we hold deletes itself: reminder entries go three days after you sail, submission records after 90 days, share links after 30. If you want something gone sooner, or want to know what we hold for your address, email us and we will handle it by hand — there is no form to fight with, and we don't ask you to prove anything beyond replying from the address in question.
Children
This site is for adults planning a trip. We don't knowingly collect anything from children. The kids' ages a parent can enter are used to choose recommendations and are never stored.
Contact
Questions about any of this, or about a change to this page, go to help@cruisedayguide.com. CruiseDayGuide is operated by Thingvalla Technology.
CruiseDayGuide • PO Box 540633, Merritt Island, FL 32954