Privacy Policy

Information you provide

• Account information: name, email address, profile image, authentication provider, and account identifier when you register or sign in.
• Community information: posts, questions, comments, reports, saved-post activity, and other content you choose to submit.
• Inquiry information: your name, email, organization, message, and related details when you contact us or submit a partner inquiry.
• Membership information: membership role, access level, and, if paid membership is introduced, membership status and expiration. We do not intentionally store full payment-card details.

Information collected automatically

• IP address, approximate country or region, browser and device information, requested pages, timestamps, referral information, and security events.
• Content language, category, post views, and similar usage data used to understand which guides are helpful in each language.
• Cookies, session identifiers, and local-storage values used for authentication, language preferences, saved settings, and the "do not show for 24 hours" popup preference.

If you choose Google or another social provider to sign in, the provider and our authentication provider, Clerk, may send us basic account information such as your name, email address, profile image, provider identity, and verification status. We use this information only to create or connect your ELK account, authenticate you, protect accounts, and provide account features.

We do not receive or store your Google password. ELK's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs will comply with the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

• Provide, personalize, maintain, and improve the Service.
• Authenticate users and apply member, paid-member, editor, and administrator permissions.
• Enable saved posts, comments, community posts, reports, inquiries, and localized content.
• Measure page and content performance by language, category, date, and approximate country.
• Detect spam, bots, abuse, fraud, account takeover, and security incidents.
• Respond to support, privacy, legal, and partner requests.
• Comply with applicable law and enforce our Terms of Service.

Where applicable, we process information to perform our agreement with you, with your consent, to comply with legal obligations, and for legitimate interests such as service security, moderation, analytics, and improvement. You may withdraw consent where consent is the applicable basis.

We do not sell your personal information. We may disclose limited information to service providers that process it on our behalf and under appropriate safeguards, including:

• Clerk: account registration, social connections, sessions, and authentication.
• Google or another provider you select: completion and management of social sign-in.
• Cloudflare: website delivery, Workers, D1 database, R2 storage, DNS, security, analytics infrastructure, and Turnstile bot protection.
• Operational vendors: providers used for email, support, translation, monitoring, or other functions necessary to operate the Service.

We may also disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with law, protect users or the Service, investigate abuse, enforce agreements, or complete a merger, financing, reorganization, or transfer of the Service. Public community content is visible to other visitors according to its access settings.

ELK uses essential cookies and similar technologies to maintain secure sessions, remember language and interface preferences, and provide requested features. Local storage may remember that you dismissed a notice for 24 hours. Cloudflare Turnstile may process device, browser, network, and interaction signals to distinguish people from automated traffic. Disabling essential browser storage may prevent sign-in or other features from working correctly.

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary to operate accounts, maintain security, resolve disputes, and meet legal obligations. Account and membership records are generally retained while an account is active. Community content may remain until removed by you or through moderation, and aggregated or de-identified statistics may be retained because they no longer identify you.

You can request account and personal-data deletion at playtech1009@gmail.com. After verifying the request, we will delete or de-identify eligible information without undue delay, ordinarily within 30 days, unless longer retention is required or permitted by law. Residual backup copies may remain for a limited period before routine deletion.

ELK is operated for an international audience. Our providers may process information in Korea, the United States, the European Economic Area, or other countries where they operate. Those countries may have different data-protection laws. Where required, we use appropriate contractual, organizational, or legal safeguards for cross-border processing.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to processing; obtain a portable copy; withdraw consent; and complain to a data-protection authority. To exercise a right, email playtech1009@gmail.com. We may request information necessary to verify your identity and authority.

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards, including encrypted network connections, role-based access controls, server-side authorization, bot protection, and restricted administrative functions. No internet service is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Users below the age of legal majority where they live should use the Service only with permission from a parent or guardian.

The Service may link to maps, videos, booking services, restaurants, social platforms, advertisers, and other third parties. Their privacy practices are governed by their own policies. Review those policies before providing information to them.

We may update this Privacy Policy as the Service, providers, or law changes. We will post the revised policy here, update the "Last updated" date, and provide additional notice when a change materially affects your rights or how we use personal information.

For privacy questions, account deletion, or other requests, contact Explore Local Korea at playtech1009@gmail.com.