Privacy Policy

The short version

Browsing this site does not require you to give me anything. There is no advertising network, no third-party analytics or advertising tracker, no cross-site profiling, and no newsletter list. The only personal information I hold is what you type into the contact form and send me on purpose.

Information you send me

The contact form asks for your name, your email address, your message, and optionally the address of a page you’re writing about. Submissions are delivered to the site owner by email and may be stored on the website so I can find them again.

I use that information to reply to you, to investigate corrections, and to check reader cabin reports against other sources. I do not sell it, rent it, or pass it to anyone for marketing. Anything you send may be kept as long as it’s useful for corrections or verification, and you can ask me to delete it.

Please don’t send me booking references, payment details, passport or other government ID numbers, or anything else sensitive. I have no use for them and no way to act on them.

If you send a cabin report

Reader cabin reports may inform what a guide says. If a report you send changes a published guide, the guide describes the finding, not you. Your name and email address are not published, and photographs you send are not used on the site unless you say they can be. If you’d rather your report stayed completely private even in summarized form, say so in the message.

Information collected automatically

Like nearly every website, the web server records standard technical information when a page is requested: IP address, browser and device type, the page requested, referring page, and a timestamp. This is used for security, spam prevention and diagnosing problems.

Cookies

The site does not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. WordPress may set functional cookies in limited situations, for example if you log in to an account on the site or if you leave a comment and ask the browser to remember your details. Ordinary reading does not require any of that, and you can block or delete cookies in your browser without breaking the site.

Services this site uses

CruiseShipInsights runs on WordPress. The following are installed and handle data on the site’s behalf:

• Web hosting. The hosting provider processes server logs as described above in order to serve the site.
• Jetpack, by Automattic, provides security, performance and site management features. Where its measurement and protection features are active, some technical request data is processed by Automattic.
• Kadence Blocks provides the page layout tools and the contact form. Form submissions are emailed to the site owner and may be stored on the site.
• Yoast SEO generates titles, descriptions and sitemaps. It does not collect visitor information.

Two further plugins are installed and only do anything on pages where their content is actually embedded: Smash Balloon Instagram Feed, which loads content from Instagram when an Instagram feed appears on a page, and Interactive Geo Maps, which loads a mapping library from its provider when a map appears on a page. Both mean your browser makes a request to that third party on those pages, subject to the third party’s own privacy policy. Where no feed or map is embedded, neither service is contacted.

Embedded content from other sites

Articles may embed video, such as a cabin tour hosted elsewhere, or link to cruise line deck plans. Embedded content behaves as if you had visited that other site directly, and the other site’s own privacy policy and cookies apply. Following an outside link takes you out of this policy’s scope entirely.

Advertising and affiliate tracking

The site currently carries no advertising and takes part in no affiliate programs, so there is no ad network and no affiliate tracking on it today. If that changes, this policy and the Affiliate Disclosure and Cruise Travel Disclaimer will be updated to name what is in use before it goes live.

Email

There is no newsletter and no mailing list at present. Nobody is added to a list for contacting me. If a subscription option is added later, it will be opt-in, it will say what you’re signing up for, and every message will carry an unsubscribe link.

Children

This site is written for adults planning cruises and is not directed at children. I do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has sent me personal information, contact me and I’ll delete it.

Your choices

You can ask me what personal information I hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted. Send the request through the contact page from the email address you originally wrote from, or tell me enough for me to find the message. Depending on where you live, you may have rights under laws such as the GDPR or state privacy laws in the United States. I’ll honor those requests regardless of where you live, because the amount of data involved is small enough that sorting readers by jurisdiction would be sillier than just doing it.

To be clear about what this page is: it’s a plain description of how a small independent website handles data. It has not been reviewed or certified by a lawyer or any compliance body.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS and kept updated. No website can promise perfect security, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise, which is another reason not to send me anything sensitive.

Changes to this policy

If the site starts using a service that handles reader data, this page gets updated with the specifics and a new date at the top. It won’t be revised quietly.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request about your own information: use the contact page.