Privacy Policy
Effective Date: 12.05.2025
Last Updated: 18.09.2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Sailors.tips (the website and mobile app, "we", "our") collects, uses and protects your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
1. Data Controller
The data controller for this website and mobile app is:
MESF OÜ
Email: [email protected]
2. What Data We Collect
| Data Type | Examples | Legal Basis under GDPR |
|---|---|---|
| Identification Data | First name, last name, public profile details | Art. 6(1)(b) - Performance of a contract |
| Contact Information | Email address | Art. 6(1)(b) - Account and service communication |
| User Content | Reviews, photos, routes, marina details, stores, services and anchorages submitted by you | Art. 6(1)(b) - Providing the service |
| Analytics Data | Site interactions via Google Analytics, subject to your cookie choice | Art. 6(1)(a) - Consent |
| Reward-Related Data | Data necessary to process contributor rewards and related accounting | Art. 6(1)(b) - Performance of a contract; Art. 6(1)(c) - Legal obligations |
Grounds for specific activities
| Data Type | Examples | Legal Basis under GDPR |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT/Codex connection and requested actions | Permissions, authorisation, drafts, publication and duplicate-submission protection | Art. 6(1)(b) — providing the requested service function |
| Selected location features | Nearby search, visit history you enable, coordinates of a place you add | Art. 6(1)(b) — providing the selected function; device location permission is controlled separately |
| Enquiries | Contact details and the question you submit | Art. 6(1)(b) — service support; Art. 6(1)(f) — handling other enquiries |
| Information checks, change history and security | Facility clarifications, sources, review decisions and operational records | Art. 6(1)(f) — catalogue accuracy, resolving errors and protecting the service against abuse |
| Data rights requests | Information needed to verify and fulfil a request | Art. 6(1)(c) — meeting applicable legal obligations |
When checking information and retaining its history, we consider the community’s interest in an accurate catalogue, the necessity of processing and its impact on your rights. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests by contacting [email protected]. Permission to connect an account does not by itself constitute consent to every processing purpose.
Connected services and your contributions
When you use Sailors.tips through ChatGPT or Codex, we process the connection to your account, granted permissions, authorisation records, supplied requests, selected places and submitted materials: reviews and ratings, place descriptions, photographs, feedback and marina suggestions. We keep drafts, their versions, expiry times and submission records to carry out your actions and prevent duplicate publication.
Feedback and marina suggestions are sent to our team with your account's public name and email for review and replies. For facility clarifications, we keep the selected marina and service, proposed value, explanation, account association, submission time and review history.
We use this information to find places, prepare and publish confirmed contributions, handle enquiries, correct information and prevent accidental duplicate actions. Connecting your account does not give Sailors.tips general access to your entire conversation history: we receive information and files supplied for a particular action.
3. Purpose of Data Processing
- To create and manage your account;
- To publish and moderate user-generated sailing content;
- To communicate with you about your account, submitted content or support requests;
- To process rewards for users contributing high-quality content;
- To analyze website usage and improve our service when you consent to analytics cookies.
3.1. Location in the Sailors.tips mobile app
With your permission, the app uses your device's location to show nearby sailing places. If you enable automatic marina visit history, it also uses location to identify marina stays.
Background detection is optional and requires a separate setting and device location permission. When enabled, Sailors.tips uses location even when the app is closed or not in use to detect arrivals at and departures from marinas and update the nearby areas monitored by the device.
Sailors.tips does not save a continuous route or a history of individual GPS coordinates for this feature. Visit records include the marina, approximate arrival and departure times, your confirmation or dismissal, and detection-quality information such as estimated distance and accuracy. These records are associated with your account and synchronised with the Sailors.tips service when a network connection is available.
You can turn off automatic detection or background detection in Marina visits, and revoke location permission in your device settings. You can delete individual visits or clear the history in the app. Deletion requests are synchronised with the service when a network connection is available.
Photographs, coordinates and publication
When you send a photograph from a chat or through the plugin's photo card, it passes through OpenAI's file service before Sailors.tips receives it. Uploads through a form on the Sailors.tips website use a separate flow.
When adding a place, we may read GPS coordinates from photo metadata to suggest a point on the map. You can check and change it before confirming. Draft information returned to ChatGPT or Codex may include suggested and confirmed coordinates. Where a photo was taken is not necessarily the location of the place being added.
Photographs may contain other metadata. Uploading or publishing does not guarantee its removal. Remove information you do not want to share before uploading.
A draft and photographs uploaded to it are not a public contribution. Publication requires separate confirmation of the material. Published reviews, places and photographs become available under our publication and moderation rules. Photos in a marina review may also appear in its gallery. Feedback and marina suggestions go to our team and do not automatically create a public listing.
Facility clarifications and information checks
Some facility changes appear immediately; others are reviewed first. A pending proposal is not a confirmed fact. Accepted information and explanations may appear on the website and in the app. Authors can see their proposals and status; proposals and review history are available to authorised staff and verification systems.
We may use external AI services, including OpenAI, to compare a clarification with public sources. Information about the marina, service, its current state and the clarification text may be sent to them. The author's name and email are not added as separate fields. Personal information you include in the explanation itself may be transmitted with it. Describe the service and avoid unnecessary personal information.
We retain sources and review results to resolve conflicting information and correct errors. Questions about a clarification can be sent to [email protected].
4. Cookies and Analytics
We use necessary cookies to keep the website working. With your consent, we also use Google Analytics to understand how users interact with our website. Google may collect technical information including:
- IP address, which may be processed in an anonymized or shortened form;
- Browser type, device type and approximate region;
- Page views and navigation behavior.
Google acts as a data processor or independent controller depending on the processing context. Learn more: Google Privacy Policy
Opt out: Google Analytics Opt-out
5. Data Retention
We retain your personal data only as long as necessary for the purposes stated above, including:
- Maintaining an active user account;
- Keeping published content available while it remains useful to the community;
- Fulfilling legal, accounting and tax obligations;
- Resolving disputes and preventing abuse.
Retaining contributions and technical copies
| Data | Retention period or criterion |
|---|---|
| Unsubmitted drafts and private photographs | Drafts expire 7 days after creation or the latest change that renews them. Scheduled cleanup is then provided. |
| A published marina review's draft and private photographs | The draft's expiry continues to apply. Cleanup does not delete the published review or public photographs. |
| A technical copy of a submitted place, review of another type of place, enquiry or marina suggestion | The submission content, result and private photograph expire 30 days after submission. Cleaning this copy does not delete the actual contribution, enquiry received by the team or separate records preventing duplicate operations. |
| Connection authorisation records | Scheduled cleanup is provided for expired and revoked records. Renewing a connection may create new records. |
| Published and submitted contributions, clarifications and review history | Kept to operate the catalogue, review contributions, establish the provenance of information and correct errors. Account deletion removes explicit author attribution but does not itself delete these materials. |
| Separate records preventing duplicate publication | Used to recognise repeated requests. Private publication receipts associated with an account are removed when the account is deleted. |
Expiry and physical deletion are separate steps. Cleanup is periodic; a storage failure may delay photo deletion. When an account is deleted, its private draft content is cleared, and technical information needed to retry failed file removal is retained.
Daily automatic server backups in DigitalOcean are retained for 7 days. Automatic backups of the managed PostgreSQL cluster are also created daily and retained for 7 days. Periodic cleanup after 30 days is configured for database backups made before updates, provided the update completed successfully and the backup is not being kept to investigate a problem. Cleanup after 30 days is also configured for daily application log files of the website and review system; deletion operates on whole daily files. These periods do not mean that all other operational records are automatically deleted.
These rules concern Sailors.tips copies. They do not set retention periods for conversations and files held by OpenAI or mean that backup copies are immediately erased.
6. Data Sharing
We do not sell your personal data. We may share personal data only in limited cases:
- When required by law, court decision or competent authority;
- When necessary to provide the service, for example analytics, hosting, email delivery or payment processing, under appropriate agreements;
- When you publish content that is intentionally visible to other users or the public.
Providers and recipients
- DigitalOcean — Website, database and backup hosting: information held in those systems.
- Cloudflare — Website delivery and protection: IP addresses, technical details and request data passing through its network.
- Mailjet (Sinch) — Email delivery: recipient addresses, message content and delivery information.
- OpenAI — ChatGPT/Codex — Requests, action results and files exchanged when using the connected service. Your OpenAI service’s terms and settings apply.
- OpenAI API — information checks — Information sent by Sailors.tips for AI checks is described above. This process is separate from your ChatGPT/Codex conversation.
- CARTO and Google Fonts — Plugin map and interface resources. Requests may transmit technical data and the displayed map area; the information depends on client loading or proxying.
- Google Analytics — Analytics data with your consent, as described in the cookies section.
- Service staff and Telegram — Authorised staff handle enquiries. A Telegram notification about a plugin enquiry contains its type and reference number, without the full text, author name or email.
OpenAI API has its own retention rules, including security logs. Sailors.tips draft-deletion periods do not determine when OpenAI deletes its copies. See OpenAI API data controls. Data in ChatGPT/Codex is subject to OpenAI’s privacy policy and the relevant product settings.
Transfers outside the EEA
Providers and their subcontractors may process data outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States. Transfers by our service providers use the mechanisms provided in the applicable agreements: adequacy decisions or EU standard contractual clauses and necessary supplementary measures. This does not mean that all data is stored exclusively in the EU.
Processing terms: DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, Mailjet/Sinch, OpenAI API. For details about recipients and applicable safeguards, or a copy of the relevant safeguards, contact [email protected].
7. Your Rights Under GDPR
As a data subject, you have the following rights:
- Right of access - to know what data we hold about you;
- Right to rectification - to correct inaccurate data;
- Right to erasure - to delete your data in applicable cases;
- Right to restrict processing - to limit how we use your data;
- Right to object - to certain uses of your data;
- Right to data portability - to receive your data in a structured format;
- Right to withdraw consent - where processing is based on your consent;
- Right to lodge a complaint - with your local Data Protection Authority.
To exercise your rights, contact us at [email protected].
Disconnection, account deletion and your data rights
You can disconnect Sailors.tips in the connection settings of ChatGPT or Codex. Disconnection does not itself delete previously submitted contributions.
When you delete your account, we remove or replace personal profile data, close access and remove explicit links between retained materials and your account. Useful published contributions and submitted enquiries, marina suggestions and facility clarifications, including those awaiting review, are kept with anonymised author attribution. This does not publish a private enquiry or change its review status.
This process does not automatically remove personal information included in free text or an image. To request removal or correction of that information, contact [email protected] and identify the material. Keeping a contribution does not override your GDPR rights; requests are assessed in light of the circumstances and applicable requirements.
If a draft offers a deletion action, you can use it. Contact us at the same address for other requests to access, correct or erase data. How to delete your account.
Deleting data in Sailors.tips does not itself delete a conversation or file in ChatGPT or Codex. Use the relevant service's controls for data held by OpenAI.
Anonymised author attribution means removing the explicit account link; it does not guarantee that a person cannot be identified from the content.
8. Data Security
We use appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your data from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure or destruction.
9. Policy Updates
We may update this policy. The current text and update date are published on this page. If new processing requires separate consent, we will request it separately.