Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how CebuZone ("we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, stores, and protects information when you use cebuzone.com and related services.

CebuZone is a Cebu travel discovery website. You can browse places, use the map, favorite places, mark weekend interest, create and share shortlist baskets, vote on shared baskets, and submit recommendations. This policy should be read together with our Terms & Conditions.

You can browse many parts of CebuZone without creating an account. We do not require a traditional login for ordinary discovery use.

Depending on how you use CebuZone, we may process:

We may use information to:

When you use interactive features, CebuZone may receive your IP address as part of ordinary web requests. Where traffic reaches CebuZone through Cloudflare or similar proxies, CebuZone may read platform forwarding headers to determine the connecting client address for these operational purposes.

For many application features, CebuZone stores a hashed representation of the IP address rather than the raw IP address. Purposes may include:

A hashed representation is a one-way technical transform of an IP address. It is not shown to visitors in ordinary use of the site, and CebuZone APIs are designed not to return raw IP addresses or IP hashes to the browser. Hashing reduces direct exposure of raw IP addresses, but it does not automatically make the resulting information anonymous or impossible to associate with a visitor, especially when combined with other technical or contextual information available to CebuZone or its infrastructure providers.

IP-based controls are technical safeguards rather than a perfect identification mechanism. Multiple people may share an IP address, such as when using the same Wi-Fi network, and the same person may use different IP addresses over time. CebuZone uses these measures primarily to reduce spam, abuse, and duplicate interactions rather than to establish a visitor's identity.

Infrastructure providers that deliver the website (for example Cloudflare, Google Cloud, MongoDB, or AWS) may still process connection data, including IP addresses, under their own policies as part of operating the service. CebuZone does not control those independent practices.

CebuZone's Shared Basket feature allows visitors to create a collection of places and share it with others for voting. To help prevent duplicate voting, CebuZone may use a hashed representation of a visitor's IP address to determine whether that visitor has already voted in a particular basket. A visitor may vote once per basket, and votes cannot be changed. This is an abuse-prevention mechanism for the integrity of the voting feature; it does not mean CebuZone can identify a person with certainty.

CebuZone may also use a hashed IP representation to enforce limits on the number of active Shared Baskets that can be created from a particular network address. The current limit may be up to five active baskets per IP address. This is a feature safeguard, not an account limit, because visitors do not need accounts.

Shared Baskets are public through their unique sharing links. Anyone who has the link may be able to view the places contained in the basket and its voting results while the basket remains active. Do not include sensitive or private information in a basket or its contents.

When you create or vote on a Shared Basket, CebuZone may store:

Shared Baskets currently remain active for about three months from creation. After a basket expires, CebuZone permanently deletes the expired basket and its associated votes through scheduled cleanup. Hashed IP information stored with that basket or those votes is removed when those records are deleted.

If you favorite a place, CebuZone may store a hashed IP representation together with the place identifier so the site can remember that interaction and help prevent duplicate favorite records. Favorite records are currently kept for as long as needed to operate the Favorites feature and are not subject to an automatic short retention period.

If you mark that you are going to a place this weekend, CebuZone may store a hashed IP representation for the current week to help prevent duplicate marks. Weekly intent records are later aggregated and removed as part of CebuZone's weekly processing. Related weekly count statistics are retained for a limited period (currently about 90 days).

CebuZone may also use hashed IP representations in short-lived daily rate-limit counters for favorites, Shared Basket creates/votes, and place submissions. Those counters are temporary and expire shortly after the relevant calendar day ends.

If you submit a place, description, photo, video, link, recommendation, or other content, we process the information you provide so we can review, store, publish, moderate, or respond to the submission. Please avoid including unnecessary personal information in submissions.

The contributor name you provide is published publicly as attribution on the place page if your submission is approved, together with any social profile link you supply. Please use a name you are comfortable showing publicly.

If you provide an email address or other contact detail with a submission, CebuZone stores it on the submission and on the resulting place record for moderation, credit, and rights-verification purposes. It is not published — CebuZone's public API responses strip contributor email addresses before sending place data to the browser. Contributor contact details are kept for as long as the related submission or published place content is kept, and are used to contact you about your submission, not for marketing.

When a contribution is submitted, CebuZone sends an internal moderation notification through Telegram containing the place name, the contributor name you provided, and the submission time. Photos, contact details, and the rest of the submission are not included in that notification.

Published submissions may be visible to other visitors. Licensing, ownership, moderation, removal, and credit/compensation rules for submitted content are described in the Terms & Conditions.

CebuZone lets visitors leave a public review of a place: a 1-5 star rating, a written comment, and a display nickname. Submitting a review also requires an email address, which CebuZone uses only to verify and manage the review — it is never published.

After you submit a review, CebuZone emails a confirmation link to the address you provided. A review is not shown publicly, and does not count toward a place's rating or review count, until you click that link. The link expires after 7 days if unused.

Once verified, your rating, comment, nickname, and the date of your review are shown publicly on the place page. Your email address is never shown to other visitors and is not included in CebuZone's public API responses.

When you submit a review, CebuZone may store:

CebuZone administrators can hide ("deactivate") a published review, for example in response to a report, and can later restore ("reactivate") it. Deactivating or reactivating a review does not delete it, and updates the place's publicly shown rating and review count to reflect only currently published reviews.

Reviews cannot currently be edited or deleted by the visitor who submitted them. To request a correction or removal, contact us at [email protected].

CebuZone uses Google Analytics (GA4) to measure website usage. Google Analytics may collect information such as pages viewed, general usage interactions, device and browser information, approximate location information where provided by Google Analytics, and technical information. Google Analytics may also use cookies or similar technologies under Google's own policies. CebuZone does not control Google's independent retention settings.

CebuZone's own frontend currently uses browser localStorage (not cookies) for certain features, including:

CebuZone sets no cookies of its own. The cookies and similar technologies involved are set by Google Analytics, by embedded third-party content, and — where advertising is shown — by advertising providers, as described under "Advertising" below.

If you are visiting from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, CebuZone asks for your consent before any of that loads. Until you accept, Google Analytics runs in a restricted mode that sets no analytics cookies, and videos embedded from YouTube or Facebook are not loaded — you see a placeholder with a button instead, so nothing reaches those providers unless you choose to load it. You can decline and continue browsing the map and every place page normally, and you can change your decision at any time using the "Cookie settings" link in the site footer. Your choice is stored in your browser's localStorage, not in a cookie.

Elsewhere, including the Philippines, Google Analytics loads on page load and embedded videos load with the page, as described in this policy. The region is determined from a country code supplied by CebuZone's network provider; CebuZone does not geolocate your IP address itself for this purpose.

Some place pages embed video from YouTube or Facebook, and the map and certain frontend libraries load from third-party services (CARTO, OpenStreetMap, Google Fonts, unpkg, cdnjs). When such content loads, those providers receive your IP address and may set their own cookies under their own policies, whether or not you interact with the embed. CebuZone does not control that. Map tiles and fonts are needed for the site to function and are not covered by the consent prompt.

You can also clear browser storage or adjust cookie settings in your browser, or use browser or extension controls to block third-party content. Blocking third-party analytics cookies may limit measurement but should not prevent ordinary browsing of place pages; blocking embedded providers may stop videos or map tiles from loading.

CebuZone may display advertising supplied by Google, through Google AdSense. Google acts as a third-party vendor on this site and operates under its own policies; CebuZone does not control how Google processes the information it collects for advertising.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies and similar technologies to serve ads based on your prior visits to CebuZone or to other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet. Where advertising is shown, those cookies are set by Google or its partners, not by CebuZone.

You can opt out of personalised advertising by Google at Google Ads Settings. You can opt out of personalised advertising by many other vendors at aboutads.info. Opting out stops advertising from being personalised; it does not stop advertising from being shown.

If you are visiting from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, personalised advertising is not used unless you consent. You can decline and continue using CebuZone normally, and you can change your decision at any time using the "Cookie settings" link in the site footer.

CebuZone carries the Google AdSense code on its pages. The advertising cookies described above are set only when an ad is actually served, so if no advertising appears on a page, no advertising cookie has been set by it.

CebuZone relies on third-party services to operate. These providers may process technical information as necessary to provide their services. Each operates under its own terms and privacy policies. CebuZone does not control their independent data practices.

CebuZone uses reasonable technical and organizational measures appropriate to the nature of the information processed. Depending on the feature, safeguards may include HTTPS, IP hashing for certain application records, rate limiting, access controls, cloud infrastructure protections, database controls, and abuse-prevention checks.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Retention depends on the type of information and the feature involved:

We may retain information longer where reasonably necessary for security, abuse prevention, legal compliance, dispute handling, or service operation.

Depending on applicable law and the circumstances of the processing, you may have rights relating to access, correction, objection, deletion, restriction, or other forms of control over your personal information under Philippine law or other applicable law.

Because many features use hashed technical identifiers rather than accounts, our ability to locate or delete records may depend on the details you provide and the nature of the data. To make a request, contact us at [email protected].

You can also stop using interactive features, clear browser storage, or adjust cookie settings in your browser.

CebuZone is a general-audience travel discovery website. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly seek to collect personal information from children for marketing or profiling purposes. If you believe a child has submitted personal information to CebuZone, please contact us so we can review and take appropriate action.

CebuZone may link to external websites, maps, booking services, social media, or other third-party resources. Those sites are operated independently of CebuZone. Their privacy practices are governed by their own policies.

CebuZone may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version will be published on this page with a revised "Last updated" date. Continued use of CebuZone after changes are posted means you acknowledge the updated policy.

Prefer not to email? You can also send a message through the CebuZone contact form.