Skip to content
Etzian Blog

Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 28, 2026

Etzian ("Etzian," "we," "us," or "our") operates a private, invite-only travel blogging application that lets families share travel posts, photos, and comments within closed groups. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we use and protect it, and the rights you have over it.

Etzian is not a public social network. You cannot create an account by signing up freely — access is by invitation only, sent by an existing group administrator or a platform administrator.

This policy is written primarily to comply with Québec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, as modernized by Law 25, and with the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which governs private-sector organizations across Canada. Etzian does not knowingly target users in the European Union or California, and the European GDPR and the California CCPA/CPRA do not apply to Etzian's operations at this time.

Information We Collect

We collect only the information needed to operate the service:

  • Account data: your email address, a password (stored as a salted hash — we never store or can see your plaintext password), your display name, and an optional avatar image.
  • Content you create: blog posts, photos and galleries, and comments you choose to submit within your group(s). This content is visible to other members of the same group — it is not public and is not visible to members of other groups. A small number of platform administrators can also access group content (posts and comments) for support, safety, and moderation purposes; that access is read-only and is recorded in the administrative audit log described below. When a post is deleted, it is no longer visible to you or to other members, but it is kept and remains visible to your group's administrators and the platform administrators, who can restore it. Group administrators and platform administrators can also download a copy of a post (its text, photos, and comments) as an archive.
  • Group membership: which group(s) you belong to and your role within each group (for example, member or group administrator).
  • Session data: when you log in, we set a single functional session cookie containing a random session identifier. This session automatically expires after 12 hours of inactivity. We do not use tracking cookies, analytics cookies, or advertising cookies of any kind.
  • Invite and password-reset tokens: when you're invited to a group, or when you request a password reset, we generate a single-use, time-limited token and email it to the relevant address so you can complete that action. Invite tokens expire after 14 days; password-reset tokens expire after 1 hour.
  • Newsletter subscription and consent record: a group's newsletter is opt-in only — nothing is sent to you unless you check a consent box that names exactly what you're agreeing to and links to this policy. When you do, we record that you consented and when. If you later unsubscribe (from within the app, or via the one-click link in every newsletter email), we record that too, but we keep the original consent record rather than erasing it — this is what lets us demonstrate, if ever asked, that consent was genuinely given.
  • Login records: each time you log in, we record that you logged in and when — your account and a timestamp, nothing else (no IP address, no device or browser details). Your group's administrators and the platform administrators see aggregate activity figures for the group (such as the number of logins in the last 30 days) and the date of each member's most recent login. No one is shown a history of your individual logins.
  • Admin audit log: for the small number of platform administrators only, we log administrative actions (which administrator, what action, and when) — including when an administrator opens a group's posts or comments — for accountability and security purposes. This log does not apply to ordinary group members and records the request made, not the content viewed.

We do not collect or retain IP addresses on a per-user basis. Basic abuse-prevention rate limiting is applied at the system level, not tied to individual users' IP addresses.

We do not run advertising, we do not use third-party analytics or tracking tools (such as Google Analytics), we do not sell personal information, and we do not share personal information for marketing purposes.

How We Use It

We use the information above solely to operate Etzian:

  • To create and authenticate your account, and to keep you logged in via your session.
  • To let you and your group members view, create, and interact with posts, photos, and comments within your shared group(s).
  • To send you transactional emails: invite emails, password-reset emails, notifications when new posts are published in your group, and occasional updates composed by your group's own administrator and sent only to members of that same group. We never send messages to purchased, rented, or externally sourced mailing lists.
  • To maintain the security and accountability of the platform, through the limited administrative audit log described above.
  • To show your group's administrators and the platform administrators how active and how large a group is (storage used, number of posts, logins, and each member's most recent login), so they can look after the group and manage its storage.

We do not use your information for any purpose beyond these — in particular, not for advertising, profiling, or automated decision-making.

Third-Party Service Providers

Etzian relies on a small number of third-party service providers to operate. Each acts as a processor on our behalf and is contractually and technically limited to the specific service it provides:

  • Mailgun — our email delivery provider. We share the recipient's email address (and relevant message content, such as an invite link or reset link) with Mailgun solely to deliver invite emails, password-reset emails, new-post notifications, and group-scoped admin updates.
  • Cloudflare R2 — our object storage provider. Uploaded avatar images and post photos/galleries are stored with Cloudflare R2.
  • DigitalOcean — our hosting provider. The Etzian application server and database run on infrastructure hosted by DigitalOcean.

We do not use any other third-party processors, and we do not share your personal information with any party outside of this list except where required by law or as described in this policy.

Data Retention

  • Account and content data (your profile, posts, photos, comments, and group membership) is retained for as long as your account or group membership remains active, or until a deletion request is fulfilled as described below.
  • Deleted posts (with their comments and photos) are kept for as long as the group exists, visible only to its administrators and the platform administrators, until a group administrator permanently removes them or the group is deleted.
  • Login records are kept for 12 months, then deleted automatically.
  • Password-reset tokens expire and become unusable after 1 hour.
  • Invite tokens expire and become unusable after 14 days.
  • Session cookies expire automatically after 12 hours of inactivity.

Your Rights

Under Québec's Law 25 and PIPEDA, you have the right to:

  • Access the personal information we hold about you.
  • Correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information.
  • Withdraw your consent to our collection and use of your personal information, understanding that because an Etzian account is required to use the service, withdrawing consent will generally mean we can no longer provide you with access to your account or group content.
  • Request deletion of your personal information. Etzian does not currently offer a self-service "delete my account" option within the product. To request deletion, email us at privacy@etzian.com and we will process your request manually.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@etzian.com. We will respond within the timelines required by applicable law.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to file a complaint with Québec's Commission d'accès à l'information (CAI), the regulator responsible for oversight of privacy law in Québec, or with the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) if you believe PIPEDA has been violated.

Data Breach Notification

If a breach of security safeguards involving your personal information creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify you and report the incident to Québec's Commission d'accès à l'information, consistent with our obligations under Law 25.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or in applicable law. We will update the effective date at the top of this page when we do. If changes are significant, we will make reasonable efforts to notify active users directly, such as by email.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this policy or about how Etzian handles your personal information, contact us at privacy@etzian.com.