Privacy Policy

Nothing is tracked. ExpatAlmanac does not run Google Analytics, Meta/Facebook Pixel, ad trackers, or any other analytics or advertising script. There is no third-party tracking of any kind on this site today.

A free account is optional. Everything on the site is readable without one. If you create one, we keep:

• A username you choose.
• Your password — as a one-way hash only. We cannot read it, and nobody here can tell you what it is.
• A recovery code — also as a one-way hash only. It is shown to you once, and we keep no copy we can read.
• An email address, only if you give one. It is optional. It is stored encrypted, and we do not share it. We do not send you marketing without asking you first.
• Your home country, only if you choose to set it. It is optional, stored encrypted, used only to pick the residency news on your dashboard, and deleted with your account.
• What you save. Your shortlist, your saved comparisons, the town you mark as your own and the towns you follow for alerts are stored with your account, used only to show them back to you, and deleted with it.
• A record of your email choices. Each time you tick or untick a box asking whether we may email you — the monthly digest, or alerts about towns you follow — we record which choice you made, the exact wording you were shown, where on the site, and when. The law that governs commercial email (Canada's CASL) makes us able to prove consent, so this record is kept for three years after you last withdraw, even if you delete your account. It is kept without your email address: it holds only a one-way fingerprint of it, which cannot be turned back into the address. Every email we send you carries an unsubscribe link that works without signing in.

Signing in is logged for security. When someone signs in, fails to sign in, or uses a recovery code, we record the event, the time, the IP address and the browser's identification string. That record exists to detect and investigate attempts to break into accounts. It never contains your password, your recovery code, or your email address.

The visa-eligibility calculator does not store your numbers. The residency-check tool asks for an income and savings figure so it can tell you which visa thresholds you clear. Those numbers are used to compute the answer for that one request and are never written to a database or a log.

Public forms use your IP address to prevent abuse. Submitting a form on this site (like the residency-check tool) briefly records your IP address so we can cap how many times the same address can submit in a short window. It's not linked to an account or a personal profile, it isn't kept beyond that abuse-limiting window, and it exists only to stop automated abuse of a public form.

Most pages on this site — including this one — set no cookie at all when you are not signed in. This site can set two cookies:

• A session cookie, set when you sign in or use a submit-and-save form like the residency check. It keeps you signed in and protects forms against forged submissions. It is removed when you sign out or close your browser.
• A device cookie, set when you sign in. It holds a random identifier — we store only a one-way hash of it — so we can recognize a browser you have used before and notice a sign-in from one you have not. It lasts up to two years.

Neither carries any advertising or tracking purpose, and neither is shared with any third party. Sessions are stored on our own database — not with a third-party session or analytics provider.

We do not use any advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

The town figures on this site — population, cost of living, safety, climate, and visa thresholds — come from named public sources, each shown on the page it appears on with the date it was last checked. We don't collect data about you to produce these figures. Read more about how this site is built and who's behind it on the About page.

ExpatAlmanac plans to add subscriptions, personalized reports and a vetted-contact directory. Rather than describe features that don't exist yet, we'll say this plainly: this policy will be rewritten to cover exactly what's collected and why before any payment feature goes live — not after.

The sign-in security log — the time, IP address, browser and outcome of each sign-in — is kept for 90 days and then deleted. Email-confirmation and password-reset links are single-use, expire after 24 hours and 30 minutes respectively, and are deleted once expired.

An account nobody signs in to for 24 months is deleted, together with its email address and everything saved in it. If the account has a confirmed email address, we send one reminder at least 30 days before, and signing in once keeps the account. An account without a confirmed address is deleted without a reminder, because there is nowhere to send one. Our security log keeps that the account's events happened and when, but not your username, IP address or browser. The record of your email consent is the exception described above.

You can delete your account yourself at any time, on your Account page under Delete my account (the button's own words; it asks for your password). It removes, at once, your username, password, email address, home country, shortlist, saved comparisons, the towns you follow and the browsers you signed in from. Two records remain, neither linked to you: the security log keeps that your account's events happened and when, without your username, IP address or browser; and the record of your email consent, described above.

Town search counts how often each place we don't cover is looked for, never the words you typed. To count a visitor once a day we keep a scrambled code made from your IP address and browser, with a key that changes every day, and delete it after a day; your IP address itself is not stored. If you ask to be told when a town is added, we keep that request with your account and delete it with your account.

Our web server's access log — the time, IP address, page and browser of each request — is kept for 10 days and then deleted. To spot automated harvesting we keep a summary of only the busiest visitors (IP address, browser and request counts) for 30 days.All of it is kept on a server we rent from Oracle Cloud, and none of it is passed to an analytics, advertising or data-broker service.

Privacy questions: privacy@expatalmanac.com.

ExpatAlmanac is operated by Ruben Elizondo, an independent publisher in the United States. Mailing address: 1320 Columbia St, Ste 101-A, San Diego, CA 92101, USA.