Short version: an email address to log you in, plus
whatever you choose to type. No advertising, no tracking across other
sites, and nothing sold. Anonymous page counts only. The
details are below.
What's stored
Your email address: required, because it is
how you log in. You get a code by email; there is no password.
Your tour: the events on it and the name you
gave it, so it follows you between devices.
Your name: required in your profile, because
everything social here is attributed to it. Other members see it; they
never see your email.
Anything optional you fill in: current base,
where you are from, countries visited, a note to your
friends, and on the passport page the business you travel for (its name,
registration number and country). All of it can be left blank, and
you can clear it at any time. Where you are from and the business are
printed in your own passport and shown to nobody else; the note goes
to your friends, and to nobody else.
Stamps in your passport: if you are stamped at
a Kimchi Stamp, we keep which event, which city, and the date. That is
a record of you having been somewhere in person, so it is treated as
the most sensitive thing here: only you and the Kimchi Tours desk can
see it, none of your friends sees it, and it is in no map or total
anywhere on the site. The book is not shared, listed or searchable. A
gold stamp is only ever issued face to face, by someone scanning the
code in your passport; an ink one is your own word that you were
there, given and taken back on the passport page. They are deleted
with your account.
Your travel journal: if you open the journal, it
keeps a page for each stamp, for each stop on your tour once its dates
have passed, and for each base you have had since you opened it, along
with whatever you write on its pages: notes, tips, people's details,
and the stickers you place. It is yours alone. It is not shown to
anyone, not to your friends and not to the Kimchi Tours desk,
and there is no way to share it. It is deleted with your account.
Tours you follow by code: the older mechanism,
no longer handed out. Authors are shown a number and never a name.
A friend is different and is described just below: it is not
anonymous, in either direction.
Friends: a friendship goes both ways, and
each of you sees the same things of the other. From the square in your
passport or your invite link it takes effect at once, because holding
your code is the consent. From the traveller search it is a request:
they see your name and membership number, and nothing else until they
accept. Declining sends you no message. A friend always sees your
name, your base, the countries you have visited and your note, as far
as you have filled them in; your tour only while you share it with
friends, which starts off. Your
membership number goes with your name; it never changes, which is how
somebody knows a renamed account is still you. Hiding a friend changes
only what you see, and they are not told. Removing one ends it for
both of you. Your requests are yours alone. So is your list of friends,
with one exception: on your member card, described below, a friend sees
the friends the two of you have in common, people they already know.
Nobody else sees any of it.
Who else sees it
Your email: nobody, ever. Your name: the members
you come across here. Your friends: what is described above. Beyond
that, nobody by default, and each of these is a choice you make:
The map counts your base country:
a number per country, never your city or name, and a single member can
light a country up. The countries you have visited join a count of
their own the same way: a number per country, never a name.
Your member card opens from your name. Anyone
who can already see your name in a list can open it: your friends,
anybody with a request between you, and other members in Discover
while you both allow other members to see you. It shows a face drawn
in their browser from your account id (never your email, and nothing
is uploaded or sent), your name and membership number, and your base
with the date you set it (their browser also works out how far it is
from their own base) and the countries you have visited: always to a
friend, and to anybody else only while you both allow other members
to see you. A friend also sees your note, the friends you have in
common and the events you have in common; nobody else does, and
nobody but a friend sees your tour, and a friend only while you share
it.
On that same map, your friends see a dot on
your city, with your name, when you last changed it and your note if
you wrote one. It is the same line they already read beside your name
in their list. Nobody else sees it, and removing a friend, by either
of you, removes it for them.
Other members whose paths cross yours see your
name and membership number, the crossing itself (the city and the days,
the event you both hold, or that one of you is based where the other
is going) and the disciplines your tour leans to, never the tour
itself, and only while you allow other members to see you and they
allow it too. That same switch lists you in Discover, the member
search, with your base. It starts off for a new account. The map also
counts, for anyone who allows it, how many members will be in a city
the week they are: a number, never a name.
A share link hands someone the events on your
tour. The snapshot kind carries no name and cannot be updated; the
follow-code kind lets whoever holds it see your tour as you edit it,
until you stop sharing.
An invite link is your traveller code in a
URL. Anyone holding it can accept it, and accepting makes the two of
you friends. You each see the other's name, base, countries and note,
and the other's tour while it is shared. Either of you can undo it at
any time, and a new code makes old links stop working.
Suggesting an event sends what you typed,
along with your email if you are signed in.
Who processes it
The site runs on Vercel (hosting) and
Supabase (database and login emails). They process this data to
run the service and for nothing else. Map outlines come from Natural
Earth.
Vercel also counts page views and performance
timings for us: first-party, no cookies, no tracking across
other sites, and nothing tied to your account.
The sign-in window runs a bot check from
Cloudflare (Turnstile), so that nobody can use the code emails
to flood an inbox. It runs only when you open that window, it is
invisible unless something looks wrong, and it tells us nothing about
you beyond passing or failing. What Cloudflare itself collects is in
their Turnstile Privacy Addendum.
"Use my location" sends your coordinates
elsewhere, and only when you press it: your browser
asks your permission, then they go to OpenStreetMap to be
turned into a city name. They're rounded to about a kilometre first,
they aren't stored, and nothing is sent if you don't use the button.
How long, and how to get rid of it
Your data is kept while the account exists. Sign out
offers to clear this browser's copy; that is local only and leaves the
account untouched.
To see what is held, correct it, or delete the account
and everything attached to it, email
privacy@kimchi.tours and it
will be done.
You can also complain to your data protection authority. In Denmark,
Datatilsynet.
Cookies
No tracking or advertising cookies. Your tour, theme
and login session are kept in this browser's own storage because the
site does not work without them. Nothing there is used to follow you
anywhere else.
Changed on 23 September 2026: friends now
always see your base, the countries you have visited and your note,
and only your tour still takes a switch. The switch that put you on
the Travel map is now "Allow other members to see my base, countries
visited and where our paths cross": if it was on for you, it still
is, and it now also shows members who are not your friends your
countries and where your paths cross. Nobody but a friend sees your
tour.
