Last updated: August 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Ceylon Chat ("we", "us", "our") collects, uses, and protects your information when you use ceylonchat.com and its related apps and services (the "Service").
Account information: when you register, we collect your username, email address, and password (stored in hashed form). You may also verify a phone number, which we store to help secure your account.
Profile information: display name, profile photo, cover photo, bio, occupation, and location, all of which you choose to provide.
Content you create: posts, comments, reactions, messages, Stories, polls, photos and albums, Marketplace listings, and events, and other content you share on the Service.
Location you share on a post or message: separately from the static "location" text field on your profile, you can choose to attach a location to an individual post or message (for example, a check-in). This is opt-in and per-post or per-message only — Ceylon Chat does not run continuous or background location tracking, and we only collect precise location data when you actively choose to add it to something you post or send.
Usage and device data: log data such as IP address, browser type, pages visited, and timestamps, collected automatically to help us operate and secure the Service.
If you choose to sign in with Google or Facebook, we receive basic profile information from that provider (such as your name, email address, and profile picture) to create or link your Ceylon Chat account. We do not receive your password for these services, and you can revoke this access at any time from your Google or Facebook account settings.
If you choose to verify a phone number, we send a one-time verification code to that number via WhatsApp (or SMS if WhatsApp is unavailable), using our messaging provider Twilio. We store the phone number and whether it has been verified, but not the content of the messages beyond the verification code itself.
We use your information to provide and operate the Service, personalize your experience, secure your account, communicate with you (such as verification emails and codes), and improve the Service over time.
Ceylon Chat runs a first-party, self-serve advertising system: businesses and creators fund their own campaigns, and we serve those campaigns to users directly within the Service. We track basic campaign performance (such as how many times an ad was shown, i.e. impression counts, and the resulting spend against an advertiser's budget) so advertisers can see how their campaigns are performing and so we can bill campaigns accurately. As of the date above, Ceylon Chat does not integrate with any third-party ad network or ad-exchange, and we do not share your information with outside advertisers for their own independent use — all ad serving happens using data already described in this Policy.
Business pages carry a visitor counter so the business that owns the page can see how many people found it and whether anyone got in touch. It is built to measure the page, not you. Visiting a business page sets no cookie and writes nothing to your device. We do not store your IP address, your device identifier, or your user agent string.
For each visit we record only: the business page, the date, whether you arrived from a search engine, a social network, another website or directly, the domain name of the referring site where there is one, whether you were on a phone, tablet or computer, how many seconds the page was visible on your screen, and whether you tapped the phone number, directions, website, email, WhatsApp or social links. To count returning visits within a single day without identifying anyone, we compute a one-way hash from your network address, your browser's user agent, the business page and a secret that changes every day; the address and user agent themselves are discarded immediately and never written down. Because the secret rotates daily and includes the page, that value cannot be reversed, cannot be linked to you, cannot be followed from one day to the next, and cannot be matched across two different business pages.
Business owners see totals only — visits, separate visitors per day, typical time on page, sources, device types and action counts. There is no view anywhere in the product that shows an owner an individual visitor, because the information needed to build one is never collected. A page owner's own visits to their page are excluded from their figures. Raw visit records are deleted after 400 days.
We use cookies to keep you logged in, remember your preferences, and understand how the Service is used. See our full Cookie Policy for the specific cookies we set and how to control them.
We do not sell your personal information. We share information with service providers who help us operate the Service, including hosting (Railway), email delivery (Resend), and messaging (Twilio). These providers are only permitted to use your information to perform services on our behalf. We may also disclose information if required by law or to protect the safety of our users.
Stripe and Stripe Connect: if you enable creator monetization payouts, or if you fund an advertiser campaign, that payment activity is handled by Stripe, Inc. and its Stripe Connect platform. For creators, Stripe collects and holds the bank or payout details needed to pay you and verifies your identity as required for payouts. For advertisers, Stripe collects your payment card details to fund a campaign. In both cases, Ceylon Chat does not receive, store, or process your raw bank account or card numbers — that information is handled directly by Stripe under its own privacy policy, and we only receive limited data back from Stripe such as your payout balance, transfer status, and a Stripe account reference id.
We keep different categories of data for different periods, depending on why we collected it and any legal obligations that apply:
If we become aware of a security breach that affects your personal information, we will investigate promptly and notify affected users and any relevant data protection authority without undue delay, consistent with applicable breach-notification laws (such as GDPR-style notification norms), describing what happened, what data was involved, and what steps we and you can take in response.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete your personal information, or to object to certain processing. You can download a copy of your Ceylon Chat data at any time from Settings > “Download my data,” which exports your profile, posts, messages, friends and follows, saved posts, activity log, points and referral history, Marketplace listings, and events into a single file. To exercise any other rights, or if you need help with your export, contact us using the details below.
Ceylon Chat is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your country), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under that age.
We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including password hashing and encrypted connections. However, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure.
This Privacy Policy should be read together with our other policies:
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version on this page with a new "Last updated" date.
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, contact us at ceylonchat.com@gmail.com.