Privacy policy

Information you share

You can browse cafés and articles without creating an account. When you use other features, we handle:

• Account information. Sign-in details, an account identifier, and profile information such as your name, email address, username, and avatar, depending on what you provide through Clerk or a connected sign-in provider.
• Saved cafés. Your saved places, lists, visit status, and notes, associated with your account.
• Coffee meetup schedules. Event titles, organizer and participant names, time zones, and availability you enter in When2Cafe. People with a shared schedule link can view the event and participants’ availability.
• Comments and ratings. What you post, together with your displayed name, avatar, rating, and posting date. Published comments are visible to other visitors, so avoid including private information.
• Messages and suggestions. Feedback, café links, city requests, notes, an optional contact email, and information about the page or browser used to submit them.

We use this information to provide the features you request, maintain your account, review contributions, respond to messages, and protect the site against misuse.

Browsing and analytics

Our site and service providers process technical information such as your IP address, browser and device details, referring pages, visited pages, request times, and errors. We use this information to deliver the site, detect abuse, and diagnose problems.

We use PostHog to understand searches, page visits, reading activity, and interactions with site features. Analytics can include browser and session identifiers, selected filters, and diagnostic information. When session replay is enabled, it can also include a recording of interactions with a page.

When you sign in, we associate analytics with your account identifier and may send your name, email address, and username to PostHog. This helps us understand account activity and investigate problems. Signing out does not delete information already recorded.

Location

Nearby café search can request your precise location through your browser. If you allow access, we use your coordinates to search for nearby places. Search requests and diagnostics can include those coordinates; when a nearby search finds no cafés, the site also sends the coordinates to PostHog to help identify gaps in our coverage.

Location access is optional. You can deny or revoke it in your browser or device settings and search by city instead.

Cookies and browser storage

Coool Café and its providers use cookies and similar browser storage for sign-in, sessions, security, preferences, and analytics. These technologies can recognize your browser across visits. Authentication and analytics storage serve different purposes.

You can inspect, block, or clear cookies and local storage in your browser settings. Blocking them may affect sign-in and saved preferences. Clearing browser storage does not remove account information or other records already held by us or our providers.

Service providers and sharing

We use providers to operate the site and process information for the purposes described above, including:

• Clerk for authentication and account management.
• PostHog for analytics and diagnostics.
• Cloudflare and our hosting and database services for content delivery, storage, and security.
• Map and media providers when their content is loaded. Embedded Instagram or TikTok content, where present, can send your IP address and browser information to that provider.

Café suggestions may pass through our automation tools for review. Public comments are shared with site visitors. We may also disclose information when required by law or when necessary to investigate abuse and protect the site and its users.

Providers can process information in countries other than your own. Their privacy notices explain their processing practices. If you follow a link to Google Maps, a café website, a social network, or Buy Me a Coffee, that service handles your visit under its own policy.

Advertising

Google AdSense is not currently serving ads on Coool Café. We are preparing to use it and will update this policy and provide applicable consent choices before enabling advertising.

If enabled, Google and other advertising partners may use cookies, web beacons, IP addresses, and browser or device identifiers to deliver and measure ads and prevent fraud. Advertising cookies can support personalized ads based on visits to this site and other websites, depending on your choices and applicable requirements.

Read how Google uses information from partner sites and its advertising policy. You can manage Google ad personalization in My Ad Center and find choices for participating third-party advertisers at YourAdChoices. These provider settings do not replace consent choices required on this site.

How long information is kept

Retention depends on the information and why it is held. Account, saved-place, and schedule records support your ongoing use of those features. Messages and contributions support review, follow-up, and the content you submit. Analytics, security records, and backups follow the settings and retention practices of the systems holding them.

You can ask us about retention or request deletion using the contact address below. Some records may need to be retained for security, legal obligations, or resolving disputes. Removing an account does not necessarily remove a separately published comment or a copy still held in a backup; include those records in your request.

Your choices and requests

• Browse without signing in, and use city search without granting location access.
• Manage available account controls in account settings, and saved places in favorites.
• Change location permissions and cookie settings in your browser or device.
• Email us to request access, correction, or deletion of information associated with you, or to ask about your privacy choices.

Your rights depend on the law that applies to you and can also include objecting to processing, restricting it, requesting a copy of your data, withdrawing consent, or contacting a data protection authority. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request. Do not send passwords or sensitive identity documents in your initial email.

Children’s information

Coool Café is a general-audience café guide. If you believe a child has provided personal information that should be removed, contact us so we can review it.

Changes and contact

We will update this page when our data practices change and show the revision date at the top. Privacy questions and requests can be sent to Long Huỳnh at [email protected].