Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

The Vibe Index (“we”, “us”) is a crowdsourced city-rating platform at thevibeindex.org. We help travellers discover cities through real traveller stories.

2. What we collect

• Account data — when you sign in via Clerk (Google OAuth or email), we receive your email address and profile name. We store your email and display name in our database to associate your contributions with your account.
• Content you submit — travel experiences, city ratings, and replies you post. This content is stored in our database and, once approved, displayed publicly.
• Usage data — we use PostHog to collect anonymised analytics (pages visited, feature interactions) to improve the product. No personal identifiers are attached to analytics events.
• Log data — our hosting provider (Fly.io) may retain standard server logs (IP address, request timestamps) for up to 30 days for security purposes.

3. How we use your data

• To display your public contributions on the platform
• To send you email notifications about your submissions (approval, rejection) via Resend
• To moderate content and prevent abuse
• To understand how the product is used so we can improve it

4. Third-party services

• Clerk — authentication provider. Your sign-in credentials are managed by Clerk and subject to their privacy policy.
• Mapbox — powers the interactive map. Map tile requests may be logged by Mapbox per their privacy policy.
• PostHog— product analytics. Data is processed in the EU and subject to PostHog's privacy policy.
• Resend — transactional email. Your email address is shared with Resend solely to deliver notification emails.

5. Data retention

We retain your account data and submitted content for as long as your account is active. You may request deletion of your account and associated data at any time by contacting us at hello@thevibeindex.org. Note that content you have posted may remain in aggregated form (e.g. city scores derived from your experience) even after your account is removed.

6. Your rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete personal data we hold about you. To exercise these rights, email hello@thevibeindex.org.

7. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product evolves. Material changes will be announced via the platform. Continued use after an update constitutes acceptance.

8. Contact

Questions about this policy? Email us at hello@thevibeindex.org.