Privacy notice
The Guide TCI is a travel guide for the Turks and Caicos. This notice explains what personal data we collect when you use The Guide TCI, why we collect it, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights under the laws that apply to you.
What this notice covers. The Guide TCI is being built as a personalized travel guide, and behavioral data is part of how the product gets better — that's a deliberate design choice, and we want to be straightforward about it. This notice describes the data practices we are building to, so that it does not change under you as features arrive. Where something is not live yet, it says so.
Who we are
The Guide TCI ("we", "us", "our") is the data controller for the data described in this notice. Our operating entity and registered jurisdiction will be confirmed in the next version of this notice, before the public product launch.
For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, contact legal@tci.guide. We aim to respond within 30 days.
What we collect
Waitlist signup
When you join the waitlist, we collect:
- Your email address — submitted by you on the signup form.
- Your IP address — recorded automatically from your network connection.
- Your browser's user-agent string — sent automatically by your browser.
- Timestamps — when you signed up and when (if) you confirmed your email.
- A confirmation token — a random single-use string we generate so you can verify your email by clicking a link.
Messages you send us
If you email us (for example, hello@tci.guide or legal@tci.guide) or use a contact link on the site, we keep your message, your email address, and whatever you choose to include, so we can respond and keep a record. We store these with our other server-side records.
Site analytics and behavioral data (anyone who visits)
We understand how visitors use this site in two ways: our own records, kept on our own systems, and analytics services we may engage, which set their own cookies. Both record:
- Pageviews and session activity
- Your IP address — recorded automatically from your network connection, and used for analytics, security, and to operate and improve the service.
- Location, at the level our data allows
- Device, browser, and operating system
- How you arrived at our site — the referring page or search query where your browser shares it, and any tags in the link you followed.
- Events related to specific user interactions, such as form submissions
We also keep our own server-side records of operational events on the same infrastructure that runs the service.
What we'll collect once the full product launches
Where the product is going, so the notice does not change under you:
- Account data — email, password hash, optional name, basic preferences you choose to share
- Behavioral data — how you interact with logged-in features, captured by our analytics services and our own server-side records
- Conversations with our AI assistant, where you opt in — used for personalization and improving the assistant
- Affiliate referral data — when you click an affiliate link, the partner sees a referral code identifying The Guide TCI as the source
Why we collect it
Honestly: we collect data to make the product better, more personalized, and financially sustainable. Specifically:
- To run the waitlist — notify you when we open, send the confirmation email, prevent abuse of the form.
- To understand site usage — analytics help us understand visitor patterns and inform our product.
- To personalize the product (post-launch) — behavioral signals help us recommend the right restaurant, neighborhood, or activity for who you actually are.
- To improve the product — usage patterns help us identify topics where users want more.
- To fund the service — behavioral and stated-preference data supports the commercial arrangements that pay for the product. We do not and will not sell your personal data.
- To prevent abuse and protect the service — IP address and user-agent are used for short-window rate limiting and spam triage.
Legal basis (UK GDPR / EU GDPR)
If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, our lawful bases under UK GDPR and EU GDPR are:
- Consent (Article 6(1)(a)) — for waitlist signup (you actively submit your email and confirm via the email link). Post-launch this extends to account creation, opt-in marketing communications, AI conversation capture, and marketing cookies.
- Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) — for analytics (understanding how the site is used), rate-limiting and spam-triage (security), and our own server-side operational records. Our interest is providing and improving the service. You can object at any time and we provide opt-out paths below.
- Contract (Article 6(1)(b)) — will apply post-launch where you sign up for paid features. We are not yet offering any.
Where your data is stored and who processes it
- Cloud hosting and database provider (United States) — application database and web hosting.
- Transactional email provider (United States) — sends confirmation and notification email.
- Business email provider (United States) — email inbox provider for The Guide TCI.
- Analytics and analytics-warehouse providers (United States) — visitor analytics and the warehouse it is stored in.
- Advertising, sponsorship and measurement partners — businesses whose placements appear on our surfaces, and the services that measure them.
These services are based in the United States, which means your data is transferred outside the UK, the EEA, or the Turks and Caicos Islands. These transfers rely on the providers' standard contractual clauses and equivalent safeguards published in their data processing agreements.
We share data only with the service providers and partners described above, and we do not sell it. Affiliate partner links (post-launch) send you to a third party at the moment you click — under that partner's own privacy practices.
Cookies
This site currently uses two categories of cookie:
- Essential session cookie — a signed cookie used by the application. Does not track you across sites.
- Analytics cookies — set by our analytics services; typically retained up to 14 months. Used to understand site usage in aggregate.
- Visitor cookie — a random tag we set so we can tell a returning visit from a new one and count how many people use our sites. It holds nothing personal.
Marketing and affiliate cookies will be disclosed when added.
Cookie consent banner. A consent banner is being prepared and will ship before the public product launches. Until the banner ships, you can opt out of analytics today by:
- Using your browser's private / incognito mode
- Blocking analytics scripts at the browser or extension level (uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc.)
How long we keep it
- Waitlist record — until you ask us to delete it. Unconfirmed records auto-delete after 90 days; confirmed records auto-delete if the waitlist has not reached you within 3 years. The IP address and user-agent purge after 90 days regardless. During the 90-day window before deletion of an unconfirmed record, we may send up to two reminder emails to complete signup.
- Analytics user-level data — up to 14 months. User-level data is reset for any individual visitor 14 months after their last activity.
- Server-side operational records — retained on our own infrastructure. We have not yet locked a retention window; we will document and apply one before the public product launches.
- Messages you send us — kept while we handle your request and as part of our records.
- Account data, conversation history, and behavioral profile (post-launch) — retention windows will be specified in the comprehensive post-launch notice.
Personalization and monetization
The Guide TCI is being built as a personalized travel guide. Behavioral and stated-preference data is used to:
- Recommend restaurants, neighborhoods, activities, and travel options that match who you are
- Choose which commercial placements are relevant to you — sponsored placements are clearly marked as sponsored
- Identify topics where users want more
- Improve the product over time
We do not sell personal data.
AI conversations (post-launch)
The Guide TCI will offer an AI assistant that you can chat with about TCI travel and life. If you opt in, your conversations will be stored and may be used for personalization and improving the assistant. You will be able to opt out at any time, delete your conversation history, and request a copy of your data. Conversation data may pass through a third-party AI model provider as part of generating responses, under that provider's data-handling agreement.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you have rights that include:
- Access — ask us what data we hold about you.
- Erasure — ask us to delete your record (UK GDPR / EU GDPR Article 17 or local equivalent).
- Rectification — ask us to correct anything inaccurate.
- Withdraw consent — ask us to remove you from the waitlist (deletes your record), or opt out of cookies / tracking categories.
- Object — to legitimate-interests processing (analytics, rate-limiting, operational records).
- Portability — ask us to send you a copy of the data you gave us, in a portable format.
- Lodge a complaint with the data protection authority where you live — for example, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for the UK, or the relevant supervisory authority for your EU member state.
To exercise any of these rights, email legal@tci.guide.
For residents of the Turks and Caicos Islands: the TCI does not currently have a dedicated statutory data protection regime or regulator. We apply recognised data-protection standards to the data we hold. If you have concerns we cannot resolve, you retain general civil and constitutional remedies under TCI law.
EU and UK representative
The Guide TCI has not appointed a representative in the European Union or the United Kingdom under GDPR Article 27. We are a Turks and Caicos travel guide. If that changes, we will reassess this position and may appoint a representative at that point. If you are in the UK or the EEA and have a question or request about your data, email legal@tci.guide and we will handle it directly.
What we don't do
- We do not sell your personal data.
Children
This service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child has signed up, contact legal@tci.guide and we will delete the record.
Changes to this notice
If we change this notice, we will update the date at the top. Before the public product launches, this notice will be replaced with a comprehensive notice covering account features, personalization, AI conversations, and partner relationships in full.