Privacy Policy
What we collect when you read, comment, sign up or book through the site, and what you can ask us to do with it.
Last updated 26 September 2026
On this page
This policy explains what Creole Mauritius (creolemauritius.com) collects when you use the site, why, who else is involved, and what you can ask us to do with your information. It covers the guides, the Creole lessons, the dictionary, the practice quiz, comments, the contact form and the newsletter.
Who we are
Creole Mauritius is an independent website about life, food, travel and culture in Mauritius, with free lessons in Mauritian Creole. For anything in this policy, write to hello@creolemauritius.com or use the contact form.
What we collect and why
| When you… | We keep | Why | For how long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send a message through the contact form | Your name, email address and message | To reply to you | Up to 12 months, then deleted |
| Join the newsletter | Your email address and the date you signed up | To send the monthly email you asked for | Until you unsubscribe |
| Leave a comment | Your name, email address, comment, IP address and browser type | To show your comment, reply to it and stop spam | As long as the comment is published |
| Create a free account | Username, email address, an encrypted password, completed lessons, saved guides and quiz progress | To unlock lessons 3 to 8 and keep your progress across devices | Until you ask us to delete the account |
| React to a guide | A random token in a cookie, so each browser counts once | To count reactions fairly | 1 year |
Your email address is never shown publicly and we never sell or rent your details.
Comment avatars come from Gravatar: WordPress sends an encoded (hashed) version of your email address to Gravatar to check whether you have a picture there.
Information kept in your browser
Some features work without an account by storing small pieces of data in your own browser (local storage): the guides you save, lessons you have finished, your daily quiz score and streak. This stays on your device. If you sign in, your saved guides and progress are copied to your account so they follow you to other devices. Clearing your browser data removes the local copy.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to see which pages are read, roughly where visitors come from (country and city), which device and browser they use and how they found the site. We use this to decide what to write and fix next. Google Analytics sets its own cookies (named _ga). We do not use it to identify you personally.
Advertising
The site is free to read and is partly paid for by ads from Google AdSense. Google chooses where ads appear on a page (Auto ads). Google and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to show ads, limit how often you see the same one, measure results and, if you allow it, show ads based on your interests.
- Visitors in the UK, the European Economic Area and Switzerland are asked for consent before personalised ads are shown.
- You can turn off personalised ads at any time in Google Ads Settings.
- How Google uses data from sites like this one: policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
We do not show ads on the lessons, the practice quiz, account pages, search results, the contact page, this policy or the terms.
Affiliate links and booking widgets
Some guides link to tours, car hire, eSIMs and other services. If you book or buy through one of these links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Pages with booking widgets or partner boxes carry a short notice.
- Travelpayouts runs our affiliate programme. Its script (called Drive) loads on every page and turns ordinary links to partner websites into tracked affiliate links. It uses cookies to know that a booking came from this site.
- GetYourGuide tour widgets appear on some travel guides and load content and cookies from GetYourGuide.
- Discover Cars, Viator, Klook and Airalo are linked from some guides.
When you click through to a partner, their own privacy policy applies to what you do on their site.
Cookies at a glance
| Cookie or storage | Set by | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| wordpress_logged_in_*, wordpress_sec_* | This site | Keeps you signed in (only if you have an account) |
| comment_author_* | This site | Remembers your name and email for the next comment, only if you tick the box |
| creole_reaction_token | This site | Counts one reaction per browser |
| Local storage (cm-saved, cm-progress, cm-lessons-done, cm-daily-*) | This site | Saved guides, lesson progress and quiz streak |
| _ga, _ga_* | Google Analytics | Counts visits and page views |
| Advertising cookies (for example __gads, __gpi, IDE) | Google AdSense | Shows and measures ads |
| Affiliate cookies | Travelpayouts and its partners | Credits a booking to this site |
| Security check | Cloudflare Turnstile | Checks that forms are sent by a person, not a bot |
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The guides and the dictionary still work; signing in and saving across devices will not.
Security and spam protection
Forms and comments are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which looks at technical signals from your browser (including your IP address) to tell people from bots. A security plugin (Wordfence) logs IP addresses of failed sign-ins and suspicious requests to protect the site. Passwords are stored encrypted and we cannot read them.
Who else handles your data
- Our web host, which stores the site and its database.
- Our email delivery service, which sends replies, account emails and the newsletter.
- Google (Analytics and AdSense), Cloudflare (Turnstile), Gravatar and Travelpayouts, as described above.
Some of these companies are outside Mauritius, so your data may be processed in other countries. We only use well-known providers that protect data under their own published terms.
Your rights
Under the Mauritius Data Protection Act 2017, and the GDPR or UK GDPR if they apply to you, you can ask us to:
- tell you what we hold about you and give you a copy;
- correct it;
- delete it, including your account and comments;
- stop sending the newsletter (every email has an unsubscribe link).
Email hello@creolemauritius.com and we will reply within 30 days. You can also complain to the Data Protection Office of Mauritius or to the data protection authority where you live.
Children
The site is written for a general audience. Accounts, comments and the newsletter are not meant for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their details. If you think a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
When we add a feature or a new partner, we update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects how we use information you have already given us, we will say so on the site or by email.