Privacy information

Who operates Elsewhere

The legal operator’s identity has not been finalized. A proposed company name is not a registered-entity disclosure. A support and privacy contact must be configured before public launch.

Account and guide data

Elsewhere stores your email, full name, optional profile photo, salted password hash, session records, bookmarks, acquired itineraries, your optional Current Trip/start date, private manual activity and preparation checkmarks, and account recovery records. Checkmarks are personal reminders, not GPS tracking, proof of travel completion or booking confirmations. Guides also store their profile, drafts, published itineraries, originality declarations, uploaded media, extracted import source text, and AI review records. Content reports and administrative review actions are stored for moderation.

Public browsing does not require an account. Published guide previews and media marked public are visible to visitors. Full itineraries, drafts and private media require the appropriate account permissions. A bookmark does not grant full access.

Infrastructure and services

Guide Studio may look up Activity place names in Wikidata to find structured place records and website links. These lookups do not send uploaded documents, photos, travel notes or account identifiers to Wikidata. Public provider responses may be cached for up to 24 hours. Provider records and lookup dates are stored separately from Guide commentary; uncertain matches remain unresolved.

When configured, Guide Studio also sends public Activity place names and destination/country context to Google Places to resolve place identities. Explicit driving connections may send Guide-supplied coordinates or matched place IDs to Google Routes for road distance and duration estimates. These requests do not send uploaded documents, photos, private notes or account identifiers. Google place IDs and our matching timestamps are retained separately from itineraries; Google coordinates, descriptions and route results are not cached in the current configuration or copied into acquired versions. Opening a saved itinerary does not itself make a paid Google research request. Google Maps attribution identifies provider references; they are not verified trailheads, parking spaces, live traffic or availability.

Cloudflare Pages hosts the site and server functions. Cloudflare D1 stores account and itinerary data and legacy media recovery records. Original media and responsive display versions use private Cloudflare R2 storage. Cloudflare processes requests and may maintain infrastructure/security logs. Elsewhere does not claim that data stays exclusively in the Netherlands or European Union; hosting arrangements and international transfer disclosures require owner review.

Email/password authentication is implemented by Elsewhere; passwords and session tokens are stored as hashes. Google sign-in and Resend password-reset email are supported only when configured. They are not currently enabled. When configured, a Guide can explicitly request AI-assisted publishing: supplied source text and media filenames are sent to OpenAI; optional image analysis sends up to six small photo previews. Requests ask the provider not to store the response as application history. Background organizing temporarily retains response data at OpenAI for roughly ten minutes to support polling after a refresh; reopen promptly. Elsewhere saves completed drafts and private review records in its database. Review is required before publishing. Traveler AI personalization, payment processing and booking integrations remain disabled for V1.

Optional itinerary maps load OpenStreetMap tiles. Directions links send saved destination coordinates to Google Maps when selected. Find on map sends the Guide-supplied place name and address as a search when coordinates are unavailable. Elsewhere does not request your current location.

Essential cookies and browser storage

The secure session cookie keeps you signed in for up to 30 days. A separate essential cookie can preserve a selected free guide for up to 24 hours through authentication. If OAuth is configured, short-lived state and return cookies support that sign-in flow. Password-reset tokens expire after 15 minutes.

Session storage remembers the selected itinerary day for the current account and a temporary authentication notice. Ownership, bookmarks and claims are stored in the database, not solely in browser storage. V1 does not use advertising cookies, third-party marketing analytics SDKs, newsletter signup, or promotional tracking. No decorative cookie-consent banner is added.

Security and usage records

Minimal server-confirmed workflow counts help check publishing, uploads, imports and acquisitions. Optional product analytics is off by default and available only after an account holder opts in under Account settings. It records limited guide views, saves, shares and reader actions, with an account identifier solely to enforce consent and support deletion; daily totals contain no Traveler identifiers. Guests are not behaviorally tracked. No advertising identifiers, fingerprinting or cross-site profiles are used. We do not sell Traveler data. Our retention targets are 30 days for raw analytics events and 365 days for daily totals. Active use triggers cleanup; a separate daily cleanup deployment is still required to guarantee expiry when the site is idle. Turning optional analytics off removes retained behavioral events associated with the account; daily totals cannot be traced back to a Traveler. Search text, travel notes, authentication tokens, outbound URLs and GPS trails are excluded. Hashed network identifiers and expiring counters separately limit abusive requests. Error monitoring records a request reference, route, method and error type; application logs are designed to exclude passwords, tokens and request bodies.

Retention and deletion

Account settings let you update your name and profile photo, sign out, create a one-use recovery key, and request account deletion. Deletion revokes sessions, removes personal bookmarks, versions and library access, and anonymizes the retained account identifier. Authored guides are unpublished. Copies already acquired by other travelers, and media required by those copies, remain available with Former Guide attribution. Necessary moderation and transaction references may be retained; a final retention schedule has not yet been adopted.

Original photos are retained where format and storage limits allow, with optimized display versions. Removing media does not erase a published or acquired copy that still uses it. Backup copies can remain within Cloudflare’s recovery window; deletion and retention procedures require final operator review.

Requests and owner review

A working contact channel, operator details, legal bases, retention schedule, applicable privacy rights and international-transfer disclosures must be finalized before public launch. The absence of that contact channel is a launch blocker, not a request to contact an invented address.