Privacy policy

VietnamOrigin (“we”, “us”) publishes travel guides, destination pages and trip-planning tools for Vietnam at vietnamorigin.com. We are the controller of the personal data described below. You can reach us any time through the contact form.

We collect as little as we can. Browsing the guides needs no account and no details from you. The data below only exists if you use the matching feature.

• Contact form: your name, email address and message, so we can reply.
• Account (optional): your email address, or the basic profile Google shares if you choose “Continue with Google”. We also store the places and trips you save so they follow you across devices. There are no passwords: we email a 6-digit login code.
• Reviews: the rating, text and photos you submit, and the name shown beside them.
• Travel assistant (chat): the questions you type, the page you asked from, and the thumbs up / down you give an answer, with any comment you choose to write (saved with that question and answer). They are stored without your name, and email addresses or phone numbers typed into them are masked before saving.
• Visit statistics: which pages are opened, how long they are read, where you came from (for example Google), your device type and browser language, links you click (including booking links), searches in the site’s own search and places you save. No name, email or IP address is stored with it, and it needs no cookie: it only counts a code made from your connection and browser that changes every day and cannot be traced back to you. Your browser’s “Do Not Track” setting switches it off.
• Technical data: your IP address, browser type and the pages requested, which our server and security tools record automatically. We use the IP address to limit abuse, for example repeated messages.
• On your device: saved places, recently viewed pages and trip drafts are kept in your browser storage. See the Cookies page.

• To answer your messages and requests.
• To run your account, sync Saved places and My trips, and publish reviews you submit.
• To answer travel questions in the chat and to see which topics readers ask about, so we can write better guides.
• To keep the site secure and stop spam and abuse.
• To understand which pages, links and tools are useful, using our own anonymous visit statistics and aggregated statistics from our partners.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not send you marketing email unless you ask for it.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the UK, we rely on: your request (to answer a message or run your account), our legitimate interest (to keep the site secure and improve our guides), and your consent where it is needed, which you can withdraw at any time.

Some links on VietnamOrigin are affiliate links to partners such as travel-booking and tour platforms. If you book through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. When you follow one of these links, the partner receives your visit and may set its own cookies to credit us. What happens after that is covered by the partner’s own privacy policy, and any booking is a contract between you and that partner.

We use a small number of service providers to run the site. They only get the data they need for their job:

• Hosting and email delivery, to serve pages and send login codes and replies.
• Google, if you choose Google sign-in. Google loads its own sign-in script when you pick that option.
• An AI language model provider, which receives the text of your question (not your name or email) to write the chat answer, and, in anonymous summaries (no IP address, emails and phone numbers masked), the questions and statistics we study to improve the site.
• A map tile provider, which receives your IP address when you open a map.
• Affiliate and analytics partners, described above.

We never give these providers permission to use your data for their own marketing.

• Contact messages: up to 12 months after we last wrote to you.
• Chat questions, answer ratings and comments: automatically deleted after 90 days.
• Visit statistics (pages, clicks, searches): automatically deleted after 90 days.
• Account data and reviews: until you delete your account or ask us to remove them.
• Server logs: a few weeks, unless we need them to investigate abuse.

You can ask us to show you the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop using it. You can delete your account yourself from the account menu once you are logged in; that removes your saved places, trips and profile. For anything else, use the contact form and say what you need. We reply within 30 days.

If you think we handled your data wrongly, you may also complain to your local data protection authority.

VietnamOrigin is written for adult travellers and is not aimed at children under 16. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, tell us and we will delete it.

Our providers may process data in countries other than yours. Where the law requires it, we rely on standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision to protect it. We use HTTPS, limit who can see personal data, and keep software updated. No system is perfectly secure, so please do not send us sensitive information such as passport or card numbers.

When we change how we handle data, we update this page and the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will say so on the site.