Your account
We store your name, email address, a protected password hash, and account verification status. Passwords are not stored as plain text. A necessary session cookie keeps you signed in. We do not use advertising cookies.
What stays private
Your email address, saved places, trip plans, unpublished stories, business claim details, and reports are private account data. A trip owner can invite verified companions or create a read-only link that expires after 14 days. Anyone holding that link can read the shared plan, including notes and budget. Owners can revoke it at any time. Printing your itinerary creates a copy you control.
What you choose to share
Published stories and reviews show your profile name and the content you submit. They do not show your account email address. Traveller profiles are private unless you explicitly make one public. A public profile shows your name, biography, published stories and public collections. Uploaded photos follow their story, review or reviewed business listing visibility. We resize photographs and strip embedded metadata. Browser draft recovery stores unsaved writing on your device; discard a browser copy on a shared device. You can edit or delete your own content. Changing a published story to a draft removes it from the public journal; copies already shared by others may remain outside SurfCeylon.
Account email
Verification and password-reset messages use an email delivery provider when configured. If email delivery is unavailable, signup and recovery are paused rather than creating an account without a verification email. Account verification, password-reset and business-email confirmation links expire after one hour and can be used once. Business-email confirmation is separate from ownership review.
External places and images
Business links, Google contributor photos, and map links are external services. Opening a link or loading an external image makes a request to that service. With your permission, SurfCeylon uses Google Analytics (G-DG2R5BDQVK) to understand visits to public discovery pages. Google may set analytics cookies. We do not send account names or email addresses, private page URLs, search parameters, story content or email tokens. Page views use a general route title and a path without query parameters or fragments. Analytics is paused on account and private planning pages. You can change your choice below. Google signals and advertising personalisation are disabled. Read how Google uses data from sites using its services.
Managing your contributions
Your account provides controls to remove reviews, stories and collections, unpublish a traveller profile, and revoke trip links. Claim decisions and moderation records retain their evidence and history for independent review. Business access can be withdrawn without removing the published listing. Do not include identity documents, payment details or someone else's private information in contributions or claim evidence.