--- title: "Privacy Policy" url: https://cruisello.com/privacy-policy description: "How Cruisello collects, uses, and protects your data" updated: 2026-11-04 --- # Privacy Policy *Last updated: 2026-11-04* _Last updated: November 2026_ This Privacy Policy explains how **Cruisello** (the "Service"), a business registered in the Netherlands, processes personal data when you visit [cruisello.com](https://www.cruisello.com). Cruisello compares cruises. We do not sell trips; you book with the cruise line or a travel agent. You can use the Service without an account. You only need one for price alerts and saved sailings. ## Controller Cruisello (sole proprietorship, KvK 86726269), represented by Leon van de Wardt, Pimpelmees 16, 3911 EW Rhenen, Netherlands. Privacy requests: [gdpr@cruisello.com](mailto:gdpr@cruisello.com). General contact: [contact@cruisello.com](mailto:contact@cruisello.com). ## What we process - **Running the website:** IP address, time of the request, the address requested, browser and device details. - **Settings on your device:** currency, country, light or dark theme, recently viewed cruises. - **Analytics and error tracking with PostHog:** usage data, a pseudonymous ID and session recordings. - **Account:** email address, name, sign-in method, settings, price alerts and saved sailings. - **Communication:** emails you send us and emails we send you at your request. - **AI assistants:** the search details an assistant such as ChatGPT sends us when you ask it about cruises, with its language and approximate location settings. ## Legal bases - **Contract** (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR), for your account, price alerts and sign-in emails. - **Legal obligation** (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR), where the law requires us to keep data. - **Legitimate interests** (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), for running the website securely, preventing abuse, analytics and error tracking with PostHog, and showing maps. Information that is strictly necessary to run the website is stored on your device without consent. ## Hosting The website is delivered through Cloudflare, Inc. (USA), which runs our application (Cloudflare Workers), serves and optimises images and protects the site against attacks. Cloudflare processes your IP address and request details on every visit and briefly stores your IP address to limit repeated sign-in attempts. Cloudflare is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Our database, search and live-price service run on a server we rent in a data centre in Germany. Your account data is stored there. If that server fails, we can temporarily switch to servers of Fly.io, Inc. (USA) in a data centre in Amsterdam. Our application writes technical logs (requested addresses, error messages, response times) to find errors and detect attacks. Cloudflare keeps them for a few days; we keep a copy on our own server for at most 90 days. ## Cookies We store information on your device as cookies or in your browser's storage (local storage, session storage, IndexedDB). ### Strictly necessary | Name | Type | Purpose | Duration | | -------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------- | | `currency` | Cookie | Your chosen currency. Preset from your country on your first visit. | 30 days | | `currencies` | Cookie | Whether prices are shown in more than one currency. | 30 days | | `geo_country` | Cookie | Country code derived from your IP address, so we show booking offers available in your country. The IP address itself is not stored. | 30 days | | `better-auth.*` | Cookie | Keeps you signed in. Only set when you sign in. | Up to 7 days, extended while you use the site | | `silktideCookieChoice_*`, `silktideCookieBanner_InitialChoice` | Local storage | Your choice in the cookie banner. | Until you clear storage | | `cruisello-theme` | Local storage | Light or dark theme. | Until you clear storage | | `cruisello:recently-viewed`, `cruisello-price-seen` | Local storage | Cruises you viewed and the price you saw, so we can show price changes. This data never leaves your device. | Until you clear storage | | `cruisello-compare` | Local storage | Ships you picked to compare. | Until you clear storage | | `cruisello.departureAirports` | Local storage | Your preferred departure airports for flight suggestions. | Until you clear storage | | `cruisello:synced` | Local storage | Technical flag for the live-price display. | Until you clear storage | | `auth:loginToast`, `cruisello:deploy-reload` | Session storage | A confirmation after sign-in, and a single reload after a new version of the site ships. | Until you close the tab | | Zero database | IndexedDB | Cache for live prices on cruise pages, so price changes appear without a reload. | Until you clear storage | ### Analytics with PostHog PostHog sets these entries on every visit without asking for consent first. Details and your right to object are under Analytics below. | Name | Type | Purpose | Duration | | ---------------------- | ------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------- | | `ph_*_posthog` | Cookie and local storage | Pseudonymous ID and session data for PostHog. | 1 year | | `cruisello:engagement` | Session storage | Counts pages and time on site in this visit to decide whether to show you a short survey. | Until you close the tab | ### Cookie banner Your choice in the banner does not switch PostHog off. You can delete cookies and storage in your browser at any time. ## Analytics We use PostHog to find errors, keep the website stable and improve it. The provider is PostHog, Inc., San Francisco, USA. We use PostHog's EU cloud, with servers in the European Union (Frankfurt). Data is sent through our own address, p.cruisello.com. PostHog runs for every visitor from the first page view. PostHog collects the pages you view, the page you came from, clicks, scrolling, load times, technical errors and browser console messages, plus your browser, operating system and device type. It records your session (mouse movements, clicks, scrolling and the page content shown). Text you type into form fields is masked in the recording; the rest of the page content is not. PostHog processes and stores your IP address and derives your country and city from it. A pseudonymous ID is kept in a cookie and in local storage. If you are signed in, we link this data to your account ID, email address and name. If you take a short survey or use the "Send Feedback" link, PostHog stores your answers. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in finding errors, keeping the website stable and improving it (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object to this at any time under Art. 21 GDPR by emailing [gdpr@cruisello.com](mailto:gdpr@cruisello.com). PostHog deletes session recordings after 30 days and other usage data after at most 12 months. We have a data processing agreement with PostHog. Because PostHog is a US company, access from the USA cannot be ruled out; the EU Standard Contractual Clauses apply. More: [PostHog privacy policy](https://posthog.com/privacy). ## Account and sign-in There is no password. You sign in with one of these: - **A sign-in code:** we email you a six-digit code that is valid for five minutes. - **Google** (Google Ireland Limited), **Facebook** (Meta Platforms Ireland Limited) or **Discord** (Discord Inc., USA). You are sent to the provider's page, and we receive your name, email address, your profile picture if there is one, and an ID for your account with that provider. We do not post to your social accounts or read your friends list. We store your email address, name, sign-in method, your settings (for example currency, departure airports and notification channels) and, for every active sign-in, the IP address and browser you signed in with, to keep your account secure. The legal basis is the contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Social sign-in is optional; you can always use the sign-in code instead. These providers may transfer data to the USA and are certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. In [Account settings](/account) you can change your data, download a copy of it, disconnect providers and delete your account. You confirm deletion through a link we email you. Step-by-step instructions: [Data deletion](/data-deletion). The Service is not intended for anyone under 16. ## Price alerts and saved sailings With an account you can save sailings and set price alerts. We store the sailing, your target price, cabin type, number of guests, currency and how often you want to be notified. When a price changes we email you. If you add your own Discord webhook address in settings, we also send the notification to Discord (Discord Inc., USA). You can pause or delete alerts and switch email or Discord notifications off at any time. ## Newsletter If you sign up for the newsletter we store your email address, your first name if you give it, who you travel with, the language you signed up in and whether you have confirmed. We first send you a confirmation email with a link that works for 7 days. Only after you click it do you get newsletters; until then you get nothing else from us. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). You can withdraw it at any time through the unsubscribe link in every newsletter or by emailing us. ## Email We send email through Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc., San Francisco, USA): sign-in codes, confirmation of a new email address, confirmation of account deletion, price alerts, newsletter confirmation emails and newsletters. Resend processes your email address, the email content and technical delivery data. We have a data processing agreement with Resend; transfers to the USA are covered by the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or, where the provider is certified, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. ## Search, live prices and maps Cruise search (Meilisearch) and live prices (Zero) run on our own server in Germany. Search requests are forwarded without your IP address. For live prices your browser connects directly to zero.cruisello.com; your IP address is processed but not stored. Maps load map tiles from OpenFreeMap (tiles.openfreemap.org) and elevation data from Mapterhorn (tiles.mapterhorn.com), both open projects based on OpenStreetMap data. When a map loads, your browser sends your IP address and technical details to these servers. We set no cookies for this. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a fast search with current prices and in showing routes clearly (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). ## AI assistants (ChatGPT and other apps) You can use Cruisello inside an AI assistant, for example as the Cruisello app in ChatGPT or as a connector in Claude. When you ask the assistant about cruises, the assistant's provider (for example OpenAI or Anthropic) calls our server at cruisello.com/mcp. You use the assistant under its provider's own terms and privacy policy. That provider is responsible for your conversation, not us. With each request we receive: - the search details the assistant picked from your question, such as destination, travel dates, number of nights, number of guests, cabin type, budget, cruise line, ports or the ID of a sailing; - the assistant's language setting and the approximate location it shares (country, and sometimes region or city), which we use to pick the currency and language of the answer; - depending on the assistant, an anonymous identifier for you or your conversation, generated by the assistant's provider; - technical details of the provider's server, such as its IP address and software version. We do not receive your own IP address. We do not receive your conversation, your name, your email address or your account with the assistant, and we do not ask for them. You do not need a Cruisello account for this. We use this data to answer the request and to count how the app is used. For counting, PostHog records the tool that was called, whether it worked, how long it took, which kinds of filters were set (not what you entered), the number of results, which assistant called us, the language, the currency and the country. These events have no person profile and are not linked to a name or email address. If the assistant sends an anonymous identifier, we store at most a one-way hash of it, so we can count returning users without knowing who they are. Our server also writes the request to its technical logs as described under Hosting. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in answering your request and in understanding how the app is used (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Usage data is kept for at most 12 months, technical logs for at most 90 days. To object, email [gdpr@cruisello.com](mailto:gdpr@cruisello.com). Because the data has no name or contact details attached, please tell us roughly when you used the app and what you searched for so we can find it. Answers include links to booking pages. When you click one, your browser opens cruisello.com and we forward you to the cruise line or travel agent. That click is handled like any other booking link click, as described in the next section. The link carries a marker for the assistant it came from, so we can count clicks per assistant. ## Booking and partner links You book with the cruise line or a travel agent, not with us. When you click a booking link you leave Cruisello and that site's privacy policy applies. We do not pass on any data from your account. Cruisello is funded by commissions, so some links go through affiliate programmes, including Awin (Germany), Daisycon (Netherlands), CJ Affiliate (USA) and Viator (USA, for shore excursions). On a click, the programme learns that you came from Cruisello and may set cookies on its own domain to attribute a later booking to us. The programme is responsible for that. We receive commission reports without names or contact details. Links to Google Flights, Google Maps, Apple Maps and the share buttons for social networks are plain links. No data is sent until you click one. ## Recipients and international transfers We do not sell personal data. We only share it with processors that work on our behalf, or when you choose a third-party service yourself: Cloudflare (hosting, USA, Data Privacy Framework), our server's hosting provider (Germany), Fly.io (fallback, servers in Amsterdam), PostHog (analytics, session recording and error tracking, EU servers, US company, Standard Contractual Clauses), Resend (email, USA), Google, Meta and Discord (sign-in if you choose it), Discord (price alerts if you add a webhook), and OpenFreeMap and Mapterhorn (map tiles and elevation data). For transfers to the USA we rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (Art. 45 GDPR) for certified companies, and otherwise on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR). You can ask us for a copy. ## Retention - Account data, price alerts and saved sailings: until you delete your account. - Sign-ins: until you sign out or the session expires. Sign-in codes expire after five minutes. - Logs: at most 90 days. - PostHog: session recordings 30 days, other usage data at most 12 months. This includes usage data from AI assistants. - Entries on your device: as listed in the cookie tables above. ## Your rights Under the GDPR you can access, correct and delete your data, restrict processing, receive a copy of your data in a machine-readable format, and object to processing based on legitimate interests. To object to analytics with PostHog, email [gdpr@cruisello.com](mailto:gdpr@cruisello.com). Many of these you can do yourself in [Account settings](/account), such as downloading your data or deleting your account. Otherwise email [gdpr@cruisello.com](mailto:gdpr@cruisello.com). We reply within one month, usually much sooner. You can also complain to a data protection authority, in particular in the EU country where you live or work. Our lead authority is the Dutch **Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens**, Postbus 93374, 2509 AJ Den Haag, Netherlands ([autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl](https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl)). ## Security The connection to the website is always encrypted with TLS, and we use access controls on our systems. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will notify you as the law requires. We make no decisions based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on you. ## Changes We update this policy when we start using new services or change how we process data. The current version is always on this page. ## Browse - [Homepage](https://cruisello.com) - [All Cruises](https://cruisello.com/cruises.md)