Your privacy

Introduction

Vietlume is a map for discovering places, culture and food in Vietnam, built and run by the Vietlume team in Vietnam. It is still in an early, experimental stage.

This policy covers the vietlume.vercel.app website and the Vietlume app for iPhone, iPad and Android (section 08). The app is not yet on the App Store or Google Play.

What we collect

You can browse the map, read about places and draw lots without an account. Personal data only appears when you do one of the following:

• Create an account or sign in — see section 03.
• Turn on notifications on the site or in the app — section 03.
• Comment, rate, vote on whether a place is worth going to, save places, plan a trip or report content — section 04.
• Join Vietlume Studio — apply as a creator, send photos and field notes, claim a place or declare your stay — section 04.
• Press the locate button on the map — section 05.
• Using the website or the app: Vietlume counts visits, the screens you view and the features you use, with your device type and where you came from — section 06.
• Your browser keeps a few choices such as language and colour theme — section 07.
• Use the app and allow location, the camera, photos or notifications — section 08.

Vietlume does not buy data about you from anywhere else, and does not combine your data with outside sources.

Account information

When you sign up with email, you give a display name, an email address and a password. The password is hashed one-way with bcrypt before it is stored; nobody, including the operator, can read the original.

When you create an account — with email, Google or Apple — you tick a box confirming you are 16 or older and agree to the Terms of Use and this Policy. Vietlume records which document you agreed to, which version, when, and where (at sign-up, when agreeing again after a major change, or when applying to Studio). No IP address or device information is stored. This record is deleted with your account and is included in your data download.

When you sign in with Google, Vietlume receives your email, name and profile picture from Google — not your contacts, calendar or anything else. Only an email address Google has verified can open an account. Vietlume keeps the identifier Google assigns to your account, so it recognises you next time, even if you change your email. If that email already has a Vietlume account created with a password that has never signed in with Google, the first Google sign-in removes the old password and signs out every device: whoever holds the mailbox Google verified owns the account. You can set a new password under Account → Security.

Things you may add yourself: a handle, a profile picture, a short bio, your province, up to 5 links, your birth date, and your gender (female or male — leaving it blank is fine). Your birth date is always private. Today it is only used to show a generation label such as “Gen Y” on your profile, which you can turn off. Your gender is private too: it never shows on your profile or to anyone else, and is only used to pick illustrations that suit you, such as the character art in Vietlume Studio. If Vietlume ever uses it to tailor suggestions by age, this page will say so first.

Every device you sign in on creates a session. Vietlume records the browser or device type and when it was last used, so you can sign out of each one. We do not store IP addresses in sessions.

Vietlume tells you about the following, and you choose whether each one also comes as a push notification: someone replied to your comment; someone new follows you; someone invited you to a group spin room or to edit a folder; a group room opened voting or has chosen; a correction or a place you suggested has been reviewed, or feedback or a report you sent has an outcome; and, if you take part in Vietlume Studio, a contribution accepted, a new tier, a place in the month's top three, a reminder to reconfirm your place's details, when its verified mark turns grey, and a booking link that no longer opens. These always reach you: your comment was removed, or a folder of yours was made private or taken out of Discover, after a moderation review; a decision on your Studio application (including a request for more information) or ownership claim; and a Studio contribution that was declined or removed. Each notification sits in your account’s inbox — its kind, where it opens in the app (a place, the contributions page, a group-room code, the Saved tab or your followers list), words that name the place, itinerary or travel season concerned and nothing else, when it was sent and when you read it — so you can find it again under the bell on the site or Me → Notifications in the app. An invitation notice names neither the person inviting you nor the folder — both are in the invitation in Saved. Follower and group-spin invitation notices do not name the person either — the name shows when you open your followers list or enter the room. A moderation notice about a folder gives the reason and the date you can share it again (or suggest it in Discover again), not the folder's name; it opens Saved. On the site, if you turn on notifications for your browser, Vietlume stores the delivery address your browser’s push service issues, two keys used to encrypt the content, your language and when it was last updated, linked to the sign-in session in that browser; signing out stops that browser receiving them. The switches under Account → Notifications (site) or Me → Notifications (app) only turn off push notifications — every notification still goes to your inbox so you can find it again. “Pause all push notifications” stops every push, including the ones that always reach you.

If your account is given or changes an admin role (curator, operator, admin), we record the old role, the new role, who made the change and when, so there is a trail if it needs checking. The record is kept until the account is deleted.

What you create

• Comments. Shown publicly with your name. With anonymous mode on, other people cannot see who you are — but Vietlume still knows which account wrote it, so reports can be handled.
• Comment photos and profile pictures. Re-encoded on upload; all hidden information in the file — including where it was taken — is removed before storing.
• Ratings and worth-going votes about a place. Vote totals are public; your own choice appears next to the top-level comment you write about that place (section 12). If a rating or a worth-going vote looks bought or cast by puppet accounts, a moderator can take it out of the counts. It is kept, with the reason, who removed it and when, so it can be restored; until then you cannot rate or vote on that place again. Your comments are not touched.
• Saved places, the folders you keep them in, the people you follow and the people who follow you, and the people you blocked. Only you see the list of people you blocked, and they are not told. Vietlume uses it so the two of you don't see each other's comments, folders or profile, and can't follow, reply to or invite each other. Blocking removes any follows between you and any co-editing of each other's folders; unblocking doesn't bring them back.
• My taste — the vibes, styles and budget you pick to get better suggestions, and the window you read Discover in (this week, this month or next month).
• My trips. The trip name, the trip date if you set one, places by day and part of day, times, notes, costs (description, amount, who is in charge, whether it is paid, who shares it) and a packing list. Only you can see it — there is no way yet to invite others or open a trip by link. The Excel file is built in your browser, not on our servers.
• Folders. Only you can see them by default. Besides Private, Anyone with the link and Public, you can choose Friends — only people who follow you and whom you follow back — or Followers — anyone who follows you; anyone can follow you, so this level is less closed than Friends. At these two levels viewers must be signed in; the folder shows on your profile only to them, and they can spin from it. Turn on "Anyone with the link" and whoever has the link can see the folder's name, when it was last updated, the places in it, and your display name, handle and profile picture — not your other folders. They can save single places or save the whole folder as their own copy. Choose "Public" and the folder also appears on your public profile — its name, number of places, main province or city and photos of the first few places — and opens the same page as the link. You can invite people to edit a folder with you: by username (@handle) — they join only once they accept — or with an edit link that anyone who opens it, signs in and taps join can use. People editing a folder see and can add or remove every place in it, and see one another's display name, handle and profile picture and who added which place; only you can rename it, change who can see it, change its links or delete it. A place in a folder you edit counts as saved for you — so when someone else adds or removes a place, your saved places change with it. At Public you can also turn on "Suggest in Discover" (off by default): a folder holding five or more public places may then appear under "Gathered by travellers" in Discover for every reader, signed in or not — the folder's name, your display name and handle, the number of places, the main province or city and photos of the first few places. Turning the switch off or leaving Public takes it out of Discover within minutes.
• Suggesting a place. When you suggest a place Vietlume does not have yet, we keep the place name, the link you paste (if any), the city or area you were viewing and the account that sent it, so an operator can review it. Other signed-in people may see the name of a pending place, but not who sent it. If you delete your account the suggestion stays but is no longer linked to you.
• Reports and edit suggestions you send about a place, comment, photo, profile, ready-made itinerary, travel season, story, area map, activity, collection or a folder someone shared — with what you fill in yourself: a reason, a description, a quoted passage, months, a source link, a pinned spot. A pinned spot marks where the reported thing is on the map, not where you are; Vietlume does not use your device location for this. A folder's owner is not told who reported it.
• Group draw rooms. Guests pick a nickname that everyone in the room can see. No account needed. The host can invite other users by name; Vietlume records who invited whom to which room until the room expires (3 hours).
• Vietlume Studio — your application. When you apply to be a creator, Vietlume keeps the display name you want to be credited under, the region you travel most, three samples (a photo or a note about a place), up to five links to things you have posted, and when you agreed to the commitments. Only reviewers see the application. Sample photos sit in private storage and are deleted once the application is approved or declined; the text, links and the reviewer's reason are kept with the application. If it is declined you see the reason and can apply again after 30 days.
• Creator photos, field notes and trips. Photos you send through Studio carry the licence you choose — CC BY 4.0, CC0 or “Vietlume only” — and show with the display name from your application, kept exactly as it was when you sent the photo. Hidden information in the file, including where it was taken, is removed before it is stored. A field note keeps what you wrote, the day you were there and your evidence photos; evidence photos are seen only by reviewers, except the ones you choose to post on the place page. A note hides itself 12 months after the day you were there. Others can tap “Helpful”; Vietlume records who tapped so it is not counted twice, but only the total is shown. Trips you have taken and choose to publish are checked by a reviewer first. When something is declined you see the reviewer's reason.
• Points, tiers and monthly ranks. Each approved contribution, and each time someone saves or copies something you made, adds points to your ledger; Vietlume records who saved or copied it so points are not added twice. Only you and Vietlume's operators see points; others see your tier and monthly rank (section 12).
• Place owners and stays. To claim a place, you say whether you are its owner, a manager or authorised staff, and choose one proof: a photo of the sign with a code Vietlume gives you, a photo of the business registration, or a reviewer calls the place's already-public phone number and you enter the code they read out. Proof photos sit in private storage, only reviewers can open them, and they are deleted once there is a decision or the claim runs out of time (section 13). Vietlume does not keep your own phone number. What you declare or change for the place — name, address, phone, website, type, rooms, monthly “from” prices, house rules, where to book — is the business's information: it is public and stays with the place. A stay declaration draft stays on your device until you send it (section 07). Every hour Vietlume opens the booking links to check they still work; those requests carry none of your data.

Location

Vietlume only asks for your location when you press: the locate button on the map, or “Use location” in the Around you part of Discover. The map uses it to place a “you are here” dot; Discover uses it to find a few places near you. If you have allowed it before, the map and Discover locate you when they open — unless you chose “Stop using my location on Vietlume”.

The coordinates stay in your browser. Vietlume does not send them to its servers, does not store them, and keeps no location history of yours. To find places near you, Discover only sends the name of the nearest city — to load that city's places — and works out distances in your browser.

One thing worth knowing: once the map centres on you, the browser loads the places inside the visible area. That area tells the server roughly where you are looking — close to where you are — while it answers. It is not stored or logged.

You can withdraw location permission at any time in your browser settings.

Usage and technical data

Vietlume counts for itself how the website and the app are used, to learn how many people use them, where they come from and which features are useful. Each browser, and each app install, carries a random id with no name or email in it. Each time you open Vietlume we record: website or app; the page that sent you (only its domain, for example google.com) and the link's utm_ tags; whether you opened it from a notification or from a link (for example a shared link) is also recorded as where you came from; the country and province estimated from your IP address by Vercel (section 11); your device's language and time zone; the device type (phone, tablet, computer), operating system and browser with their main version number, and the app version; screen size, window size (rounded to 10 pixels), pixel density and orientation. During that visit we record the names of the screens you view (for example "Map") and of the features you use (for example "Save to folder"), with the time.

We do not store your IP address or your browser's raw identification string (User-Agent — we keep only the name and main version read from it), and we do not record page paths or addresses, which places or folders you open, or anything you type, and we do not fingerprint your device. When you are signed in — even if you sign in partway through — the whole visit is linked to your account, and Vietlume remembers that this device has used that account. Visits on this device while you were not signed in are counted as yours if the device is linked only to your account, so you are not counted twice. Vietlume staff accounts are not counted while signed in (browsing before signing in may be counted like anyone else's), and visits by self-identified bots are not recorded. Only the Vietlume operations team sees the figures, as totals. You can turn this off for each browser in section 07, and — from the app version that includes this switch — in the app under Me → Security (section 08).

Links you share from Vietlume carry utm_medium=share so we can tell a visit came from a shared link. It carries no name or id of yours.

When you view Recommendations, Vietlume records which places were suggested and which you opened or saved from them, linked to your account, to improve suggestions. It is deleted with your account.

Vietlume's servers use your IP address for at most 60 seconds to block request floods, then drop it. Our infrastructure providers (section 11) keep their own access logs under their own policies.

Cookies and on-device storage

Cookies are sent with every page load. On-device storage (localStorage) stays in your browser and is only read by the page when needed. Vietlume uses no advertising cookies.

When you turn on notifications for your browser, the site registers a service worker only to show notifications and open the right page when you click one. It stores nothing and never reads or intercepts the site’s requests; turning browser notifications off stops it receiving anything.

The mobile app

The Vietlume app shares its account, servers and everything in this policy with the website. This section covers only what the app does differently.

The app asks for a permission only when you use the feature that needs it, and keeps working if you say no.

• Location — only while the app is open, never in the background. It places the “you are here” dot on the map, and finds a few places around you in Discover, as in section 05: the coordinates stay on your phone and are not sent to the server — Discover only sends the name of the nearest city. If you have allowed it, the map opens around the last position your phone remembers.
• Camera and photo library — when you take or choose a photo for a comment, your profile picture, or Vietlume Studio (place photos, evidence photos, sample photos, a sign or document photo when claiming a place). Only the photo you pick is uploaded, and the hidden information in it (including where it was taken) is removed as in section 04.
• Save to Photos — add-only access, when you save a fortune slip. The app reads nothing in your photo library.
• Notifications — if you turn them on, Vietlume stores the notification token Expo issues for your phone, the phone type (iOS or Android), your language and when it was last updated, linked to the sign-in session on that phone. The token is used only for the notifications listed in section 03. No ads, no suggestions. Turn each kind off, or pause them all, under Me → Notifications; signing out stops that phone receiving them.
• Motion sensor — shake to draw in Random. No permission is needed; motion data is not stored or sent anywhere.

The app does not use the microphone, contacts, calendar or your phone’s advertising ID, and does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

If you sign in with Apple, Vietlume receives from Apple an identifier, your email (possibly Apple’s private relay address) and your name if you choose to share it. If that email already has a Vietlume account created with a password that has never signed in with Apple, the first Apple sign-in removes the old password and signs out every device. You can set a new password under Me → Security.

If you sign in with Google in the app, Google’s sign-in library runs inside the app and sends Google some data itself — Google says an identifier to record the access you grant, and your IP address to estimate your phone’s general location for fraud prevention. Google handles that under Google’s privacy policy; Vietlume receives only your email, name and picture, as in section 03.

Your sign-in tokens live in the phone’s secure storage (Keychain on iPhone, Keystore on Android). A few small choices sit in the app’s own storage, like the table in section 07: your seat in a group room, the suggestion assistant’s memory, today’s fortune draws, whether you tapped “Later” on the invitation to turn on notifications, the Studio tier you were congratulated on, and your stay declaration draft. Removing the app erases all of this but does not delete your account — to delete it, see section 16.

The app counts how it is used the same way as the website (section 06): each install carries a random id, and the app sends the figures through Vietlume's website so Vercel can estimate the country and province. From the app version that includes this switch, the Usage statistics switch is under Me → Security, and on the Me screen when you are not signed in; it is on by default. When you're signed in, the figures are linked to your account (section 06). Turning it off stops this device sending anything and deletes the random id. The app still does not use your device's advertising ID (above).

App error reports go to Sentry as in section 11.

How we use data

• To sign you in and keep what you have saved and written.
• To show your public profile and comments to others (section 12).
• To show a Public folder you allowed in Discover on its "Gathered by travellers" shelf (section 12).
• Review Vietlume Studio applications and contributions, add points, set tiers and monthly ranks, credit photographers, and confirm who owns a place (sections 04, 12).
• To suggest places that fit your taste, from My taste and what you have saved or rated. Discover also looks at the folders you save to or edit, to tell you when a place in them comes into season or has a new story or photos, and at your trip dates to flag the seasons and festivals that fall on your trip — only you see this part.
• To handle reports and keep the community safe.
• To learn how many people use Vietlume, where they come from, on what devices, and which features are worth building on (section 06).

Vietlume does not sell or rent your data, does not use it for targeted advertising, and sends no marketing email.

AI at Vietlume

AI helps Vietlume collect and check information about places — history, food, licensed photos — from public sources such as official sites, the press, open image libraries and public reviews on map platforms. This runs separately from account data.

Your comments, profile, uploaded photos and taste are not fed to any AI model. Internal AI tools are available to the operator only.

If you ask your own AI assistant to plan a trip, it reads Vietlume's public catalogue (/llms.txt) and hands you a link. The link only carries the destination, number of days and place names — nothing about you — and you must sign in to save it. Vietlume does not send your trips to any AI provider.

Third-party services

Vietlume rents infrastructure from the providers below. They process data on Vietlume's behalf and may not use it for their own purposes.

• Vercel, Render, Neon — run the website, the application server and the database, all in Singapore. For the statistics in section 06, the part of the website running on Vercel sees your IP address while passing the request on, and gives Vietlume's application server only the country and province estimated from it; the application server does not store your IP address.
• Cloudflare R2 — stores the photos you upload.
• Google — Sign in with Google, and the site's fonts: your browser loads them from Google, so Google sees your IP address.
• OpenFreeMap — the base map; its servers see your IP address and the area you are viewing.
• Expo, Apple, Google — deliver push notifications to the app: Expo receives your phone’s notification token and passes the notification on through Apple (iPhone) or Google (Android). A notification carries a place name and where to open in the app (for a group room, the room code) — never the text of a comment or another person’s name.
• Your browser’s push service — Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari) or Microsoft (Edge), depending on your browser: delivers notifications to the browser once you turn them on. The content is encrypted before it is sent, so the service sees only the delivery address and the time.
• Sentry — receives error reports when the site or app breaks: the error message, the failing code, your browser or device type, operating system, app version and the page path (without anything after a ?). Never your name, email, what you wrote or cookies. Sentry sees your IP address when it receives a report but does not store it; it keeps only the country and city estimated from it.

There are no third-party analytics or advertising tools on the site. The only error-tracking tool is Sentry, above.

What other people see

Your public profile shows your display name, handle, profile picture, bio, province, links, join date, contribution count, your generation label if you turn it on, recent comments and ratings, the folders you set to Public, how many people follow you and how many you follow. The lists themselves are visible only to you unless you turn on "Anyone can see my follow lists". Anonymous comments do not appear there, and neither do ratings on places where you commented anonymously. Top-level comments with a photo also appear on the “What people who went say” page of the destination or province the place belongs to, under your name as on the place page — or the masked name if you posted anonymously. In Discover’s “Those who went before” section, comments always appear without a name.

Top contributors: this page ranks people by points — hearts your comments receive × 2, comments × 5, approved suggestions × 10 — for this month or all time. It shows the display name, handle, avatar, points and those three counts of the people at the top. Anonymous comments are not counted and never surface here. You are included by default; turn it off in Privacy and you no longer appear — your points are still counted so you can see them yourself.

Whether you said a place is worth going to appears next to the top-level comment you wrote about it — next to the masked name if the comment is anonymous. It is your choice at the time you wrote, and it stays on the comment even if you later withdraw the vote. My trips are not shown to anyone else.

A folder you set to "Anyone with the link" or "Public" is visible to anyone who opens the link, signed in or not; a "Public" folder also has a card on your profile, so anyone viewing your profile can open it. That page is not listed in search engines. When the link is pasted into a messaging app or social network, that app fetches a preview card with the folder's name, your display name, the number of places and the names of the first few.

A Public folder you allow in Discover may, once it holds five public places, appear under "Gathered by travellers" in Discover — marked as gathered by a person, not picked by Vietlume — with its name, your display name and handle, the number of places, the main province or city and photos of the first few places; tapping it opens the same page as the link. Anyone reading Discover sees it, signed in or not, and can report the folder to Vietlume.

People editing a folder together see one another: display name, handle, profile picture, how many places each has added and who added each place. The folder's owner also sees the people they invited who have not answered yet; other editors do not. An edit link opens a page for anyone who has it, signed in or not: the folder's name, number of places, number of people editing, and the owner's display name, handle and profile picture. That page is not listed in search engines.

Vietlume Studio: under a creator's photo show the display name from their application and the licence; under a field note show the display name, handle, profile picture, tier and the day the writer was there. The Featured creators page — open to anyone, signed in or not — shows each creator's display name, handle, profile picture, tier, monthly rank by region, one highlight photo with its credit and contribution counts, plus a few people Vietlume picks each month with the reason Vietlume wrote. A creator's public profile adds a Studio block: tier, the months they were in the top three (region, rank), contribution counts, places covered and published trips — the title, days and places, with no travel date, costs, notes or co-travellers. Points are never shown to anyone else, and neither is who tapped “Helpful”.

Place owners: your name and account are not shown on the place page. A place you own carries the verified mark next to its name — on the place page, cards and lists — with the latest confirmation date; if you have not reconfirmed for 9 months, the mark turns grey. A stay's page also shows the business details you declared. Anyone searching for a place in Studio can see whether it already has an owner, not who. Changes you make to your own place do not show as contributions on your profile.

Your email and birth date are never shown to anyone else.

How long we keep data

Your account information and content are kept until the account is deleted; your comments and their photos then stay under an anonymous name (see Deleting your account). Sign-in sessions expire after 30 days without use. Notifications waiting to go out sit in a queue; their text stays there only until sent (usually seconds) and is then deleted. The rest (kind, time, delivery status) is kept 30 days to avoid sending twice, and older entries are deleted when the next notification is queued. The notification inbox keeps 90 days; older notifications are deleted when a new one arrives.

A comment you delete disappears from the site at once and its photos are really deleted, but the comment's text stays in the database. When you change your profile picture, the old one is not yet removed from storage.

Deleting a trip removes it for good, with all its items, costs and edit history. Deleting one item keeps it so you can undo, until the whole trip is deleted.

Making a folder private, changing its link or deleting it stops the old link from working at once. A copy someone made with "Save the whole folder" is theirs and is not deleted with yours. A preview card a messaging app has already fetched stays on that app's side. Moving a folder from "Public" to "Anyone with the link" takes it off your profile, but the link still opens — including for people who saw it there. To stop the old link working, change the link or make the folder private.

Turning an edit link off stops it working at once; turning it on again makes a new link. If you leave a folder or its owner removes you, your name no longer shows next to the places you added; the places stay in the folder. When the owner deletes a folder it is gone for everyone editing it, and places only that folder held are no longer saved for them.

If a folder is reported and a moderator makes it private, its view link and its edit link stop working at once, it leaves your profile and Discover, and for 7, 30 or 60 days (the moderator's choice) you cannot share that folder in any way — no "Anyone with the link", no Public, no edit link and no new invitations, and pending invitations are cancelled; the people already editing it stay. If a moderator only takes the folder out of Discover, you are told why, its sharing level stays as it is, and for 7, 30 or 60 days you cannot turn "Suggest in Discover" back on. The decision is kept in the moderation log with the reports.

A Studio application is kept after its decision — the text, links and reason — while sample photos are deleted. Ownership proof photos are deleted once a claim is decided; a claim still undecided after 44 days (the sign code's 14 days plus 30) closes by itself and its proof photos are deleted too. Sample photos uploaded but never sent with an application are deleted after 7 days. A field note leaves the place page 12 months after the day you were there, but is kept until you delete your account. Business details you declared stay with the place.

Vietlume does not yet clean up some old data automatically — expired group rooms, the Recommendations log, the old-style action counts. We are working on it and will state exact periods here when it is done. The new usage statistics already have a set period, below.

Usage statistics (section 06): each visit, with the screens and features in it, is kept 90 days and then deleted — once that day's figures have been added up; if adding up is missed, the data is kept until it is done. The record of which device has used which account is also deleted 90 days after it was last used, and may likewise stay longer if adding up is missed. The daily and monthly totals (how many visits and people by source, device, screen and feature) contain no device id or account and are kept long term. The old-style action counts (filtering by vibe, searching an area, with the city and district) are no longer recorded; what already exists is deleted with your account and will be deleted for good when the old table is removed.

Security

• All connections use HTTPS. Passwords are hashed, never stored readable.
• One session per device; signing out ends that session on the server. Changing your password signs out every other device.
• On the web, the token that keeps you signed in sits in a cookie that scripts on the page cannot read; access tokens last one hour.
• Vietlume staff accounts (admin, operator, editor) sign in with a password and a two-step code from an authenticator app. The app's secret key is encrypted before it is stored; recovery codes are stored only as hashes.
• Photos you upload are stripped of hidden information, including where they were taken.
• Only operators with a moderation role can see reports.

No system is perfectly secure. If an incident affects your data, we will say so on this page and through the contact channel in section 20.

Your rights

• See and edit your profile, My taste and your password — under Account.
• Delete comments, ratings, votes, folders, saved places and trips — right where you created them.
• Hide from top contributors, open or close your follow lists — in the Privacy part of your account, on the web and in the app.
• Block and unblock — block from someone's profile or comment; unblock in Account → Security (web) or Me → Security (app).
• Withdraw usage statistics on this device — the switch in section 07 (website) or under Me → Security (app, from the app version that includes this switch).
• Revoke location permission in your browser settings, or your phone’s settings for the app.
• Turn off notifications kind by kind under Account → Notifications on the site or Me → Notifications in the app; entirely in your browser’s or phone’s settings.
• Get a copy of your data and delete your account — under Account → Security (web) or Me (app): one JSON file with everything we keep about you — including usage statistics: each visit linked to you, with its screens and features and when each happened (including visits while not signed in on a device linked only to your account), and the list of devices that have used the account — and a delete-account button.

Deleting your account

Delete it under Account → Security (web) or Me → Delete account (app), after entering your password again — or signing in again with Google/Apple if the account has no password. Deleted at once: your account, profile, every avatar you ever uploaded, star ratings, worth-going votes, hearts, saved places and their folders, your trips, every signed-in session, the role-change record if any, your phones’ notification tokens, your browsers’ notification subscriptions, your notification inbox and settings, your follows both ways (people you follow and people who follow you), group-spin invitations, and blocks (people you blocked and anyone's block of you), and your record of agreeing to the terms. Your folders that other people edit with you are deleted too, and places only those folders held are no longer saved for them. You leave every folder of someone else's that you edit, and pending invites are deleted; places you added there stay, without your name. Kept, anonymous: your comments and their photos, shown as "Ẩn*****" so other people's replies keep their thread — to remove a comment for good, delete it first. This cannot be undone. A page just for this, usable without the app: vietlume.vercel.app/xoa-tai-khoan.

If you take part in Vietlume Studio, these are also deleted straight away: your application with its sample photos, your field notes, unpublished evidence photos, the “Helpful” taps you made, your points ledger, monthly ranks, Vietlume's picks of you, published trips, your ownership of places with their proof photos (those places lose the verified mark), and every “Vietlume only” photo. CC BY and CC0 photos already published stay under the licence you granted, still credited with the name you used when you sent them but no longer linking to any profile. Business details you declared, booking links and published creator collections stay but are no longer tied to your account; a collection keeps the display name you had when you published it.

Reports you have sent are kept for the moderation record but are no longer linked to you.

Your usage statistics are deleted at once too: visits while you were signed in, every visit while not signed in on any device that has ever used your account (including a device shared with someone else), and the record of which devices used the account. Anonymous visits on devices that never used your account cannot be linked to you and stay like any other anonymous visit.

Children

Vietlume is for people aged 16 and over. When you sign up, you confirm that you are at least 16.

Data outside Vietnam

Your data is stored and processed in Singapore (website, server, database) and on Cloudflare's network (photos). Signing in with Google goes through Google's servers in the United States. Error reports go to Sentry's servers in the United States. Push notifications in the app go through Expo's servers in the United States, then Apple's or Google's. Notifications to a browser go through its maker’s push service, mostly in the United States.

When this policy changes

Whenever Vietlume changes how it handles data, this page is updated and the date at the top changes. Important changes — a new kind of data, a new provider — will be announced on the site before they take effect.

Contact

Vietlume is run by the Vietlume team. The name of the legal entity will be added when it exists.

Privacy contact: coming soon