The short version: Cruise Buddies stores the account, cruise and (if you choose) travel-document information you give us so the App can work and so you can match cruises with friends you connect with. You must be 18 or older to use it. We do not sell your information and we do not use it for advertising. Your travel documents are visible only to you. You can view, edit, or delete your data at any time.
This Privacy Policy explains what information Cruise Buddies (the "App"), operated by Cruise Buddies App LLC ("we," "us," or "our"), collects, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It applies to the App at cruisebuddiesapp.com. Your use of the App is also governed by our Terms of Use.
1. Information you give us
Account details: your email address; a password (stored only in hashed form by our authentication provider); your first and last name and username; and your date of birth, which is required so we can confirm you are 18 or older. You may also add a profile photo and a phone number. Access to the App may require an invite/access code.
Optional profile details: gender, pronouns, a Facebook profile link, your cruise-line loyalty status, and the countries you mark as visited. You choose in Edit Profile whether gender, pronouns and your Facebook link are shown.
Cruise information: the cruises you add (such as ship, dates, and itinerary), any private notes you attach to them, and the badges you earn.
Connections and messages: the friends you connect with and the messages you send to other users through the App.
Contributions and reports: corrections or sailings you submit to our shared cruise database, reports you send us (for example, a map that looks wrong, or a report about another user), and contact-form messages.
2. Travel documents (optional)
The Travel Docs feature helps you track visa, vaccination, passport-validity and Schengen-stay requirements for your cruises. If you use it, you may store: your citizenship(s), your passport's expiry date, the vaccinations you have had and their dates, stays you add outside your cruises (for Schengen day-counting), and reminders you have dismissed.
We never ask for or store passport numbers.
Vaccination details are health information. Add only what you are comfortable storing; you can remove any item at any time.
Only you can see this information. It is not shown to your friends or to other members, and it is not included when the App owner looks up an account (Section 7). Our servers enforce this, not just the App's screens.
The requirement checks run on your own device against rule tables built into the App. Your travel documents are not sent to AI services or other third parties.
Your travel documents are stored with your account by our database provider and are deleted when you delete your account.
3. Information collected automatically, and storage on your device
To operate the App reliably we process basic technical information such as your device and browser type, the App version you are running, and log data needed for security and troubleshooting. When your browser connects to the App or to the services in Section 6, those services receive your IP address, as any website does.
Usage information. To understand how the App is working and where people get stuck, we record when you last used the App (at most once a day), who invited you (if you tell us at sign-up or join through a member’s invite link), and a short list of in-app steps and error messages (including sign-in errors, linked to the account they were for) — for example “opened Add Cruise”, “sailing not found” or an app error. This never includes your messages, passwords or the contents of your travel documents. Only the App owner can see it; it is not shown to other members, shared or sold, and step and error records are deleted after 90 days.
We do not use cookies for tracking or advertising, and the App does not set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Instead, the App keeps a copy of your own data in your browser's local storage so it loads quickly and works offline: your sign-in, profile, cruises, friends list, message threads, messages waiting to be sent, and travel documents. This copy is removed from the device when you sign out. A few small settings are kept after sign-out, such as whether you have dismissed the storage notice and the Travel Docs notice, and the username you last signed in with on that device (so it can be filled in for you next time — tap “Not you?” on the sign-in screen to remove it).
4. How we use your information
to create and secure your account, sign you in, and confirm you meet the minimum age;
to provide the App's features — storing your cruises, drawing your maps and routes, matching you with friends who are sailing the same voyages or visiting the same ports, and showing your travel-document reminders;
to show cruises you choose to share to the friends you connect with;
to send you necessary service messages, such as email verification and account-related notices;
to maintain the accuracy of our shared sailings database;
to find and fix problems and improve the App (see Section 7); and
to keep the App safe, comply with law, and enforce our Terms.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.
5. What friends and other users can see
Cruise Buddies is a social app, so some information is shared by design:
Other signed-in members can see your name, username and profile photo, and the summary shown on your profile card, so that friends can find you and recognise your requests.
Friends you connect with can see the cruises you have not hidden, and the profile details you have chosen to show.
Your private notes on a cruise are never shown to anyone else — they are removed before a cruise is shared, and the App owner's account lookup does not include them either.
Never shown to other members: your email address, phone number, date of birth, and travel documents.
Messages are visible to the people in that conversation.
You control who you connect with, which cruises are hidden, and what your profile shows from Edit Profile.
6. Service providers we rely on
We use the following providers to run the App. Each receives only what it needs to do its job, and we do not authorize them to use your information for their own marketing.
Supabase — our database, authentication and file-storage provider. It stores your account, profile, cruises, friends, messages, reports and travel documents, and sends verification and account emails.
Netlify — hosts the website, and receives messages you send through the contact form.
Render — runs our routing server. When a map is drawn, your browser sends it the ports of that cruise so it can calculate the route.
Map and place-information services — your browser loads map images from OpenStreetMap, CARTO and Esri, looks up port locations with OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service, and loads short port descriptions from Wikipedia. These services receive the place or map area being shown, not your account details.
Content networks — the map software and country outlines are loaded from unpkg and jsDelivr, and cruise-line logos from Google's favicon service and Clearbit.
Anthropic (Claude) — used only for cruise-itinerary lookups that the App owner starts, to research public sailing information. Only ship names, cruise lines and dates are sent; no member's personal information is.
Public cruise-schedule data services — used by the App owner to keep the shared sailings database up to date. No member data is sent.
7. How the App owner may access accounts
To keep the App working correctly, the App owner may view a user's profile card and the cruises on it — including how itineraries, maps, and routes are displayed — in order to find and fix problems and improve the App. This access is limited on purpose:
only the App owner can do it, and it is enforced by our servers, not merely hidden in the App;
it does not include your email address, phone number, date of birth, travel documents, or private cruise notes;
it does not include your private messages, unless a message is part of a report someone sends us about a conversation; and
every time a profile is opened this way it is recorded, so there is a log of what was viewed and when.
8. Retention and deleting your account
We keep your information for as long as your account is active. You can delete your account at any time from your profile. When you do, we delete your profile details, your saved cruises, your travel documents, your friend connections, and your login credentials.
Some things are deliberately kept:
Messages you sent to other people remain in those conversations, along with the display name you used, so the people you were talking to keep the context of their own conversations. Everything else about your profile — photo, email, phone number, date of birth, username, and login — is deleted, and the account can no longer be signed into.
Sailing information you contributed to the shared cruise database remains, no longer attributed to you, so the shared database stays accurate for other users.
Reports and safety records (such as reports you sent or that were made about a conversation, and the log of owner profile views) may be kept for as long as needed to keep the App safe and resolve them.
If you want a message removed before you delete your account, delete it (or ask the recipient to) first. For any other request after deletion, contact us at contact@cruisebuddiesapp.com and we will consider it, including where privacy law requires us to act.
9. Security
We protect your information with measures including encryption in transit, hashed passwords, email verification, and server-side access rules that keep each user's private data separate. No online service can be guaranteed perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and to limit who can see it.
10. Your rights and choices
You can view and update most of your information directly in Edit Profile and Travel Docs, and you can delete your account at any time. Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, and to object to or restrict certain processing. To make a request, contact us at contact@cruisebuddiesapp.com. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.
11. Age requirement
You must be 18 or older to create an account and use Cruise Buddies. We check the date of birth you give at sign-up and refuse accounts for anyone under 18. If you believe someone under 18 has provided us information, contact us and we will remove it.
12. International users
The App and its providers are based in the United States, and your information is processed there. If you use the App from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States.
13. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date above and ask you to review and accept the updated policy the next time you use the App.
14. Contact us
Questions about this policy or your information? Contact Cruise Buddies App LLC at contact@cruisebuddiesapp.com.