Your privacy, in plain language.

Information you provide

Member accounts (business owners and marketplace sellers): when you register, we store your name, email address, phone number, and a securely hashed password. Passwords are never stored in readable form. Email verification and password-reset tokens are stored as one-way hashes and expire automatically.

Submissions: business registrations, marketplace listings, content suggestions, and event or blog submissions are stored so they can be reviewed and published. Anything you choose to publish — such as a business name, contact details, or listing photos — will be visible to other visitors.

Information stored on your device

Saved places and marketplace watchlist items are kept in your own browser’s local storage (“discover-virac:saved:v1” and “discover-virac:saved-marketplace:v1”). They never leave your device unless you clear them.

Sign-in sessions use strictly necessary, tamper-evident cookies (member_session for members, admin_session for administrators). These keep you signed in and cannot be used for advertising. The member session lasts up to 30 days; the admin session lasts up to 8 hours.

Automatically collected information

In production, the site uses Vercel Analytics, a privacy-friendly analytics service that measures aggregate visits without advertising cookies or cross-site tracking.

Basic technical data (such as IP-derived request identifiers) may be used briefly for rate limiting and abuse prevention on forms like registration, sign-in, and submissions. This data is not used for marketing.

Transactional email

If you register an account, we send transactional emails (email verification and password resets) via our email provider. Your email address is shared with that provider only to deliver those messages.

External links and embedded content

Contact, map, and source links take you to third-party websites and services (for example, map providers, business websites, and search references). Their privacy practices are their own — please review them on those sites.

Your choices

You can browse the directory without an account. You can sign out at any time to end your session, clear your browser’s local storage to remove saved places, and contact us to correct or delete your account information.