Privacy Policy

UltraGuest.com is a free guestbook hosting service operated as an independent, privately run project (the "operator"). This policy explains what we store about guestbook owners and about people who read or sign a guestbook, why, for how long, and what you can do about it. Contact for anything in this policy: the support form or support@ultraguest.com.

What we store

Guestbook owners (people who sign up): your e-mail address, a hashed version of your password (we never store the password itself), the settings and texts you enter in the Control Panel, the date you signed up and the date you last used the Control Panel. Visitor-side counters of your guestbook (page views, unique visitors) are stored as totals. Owners who paid to remove advertising before 2026 still have that payment on their record; there is no paid tier today and no advertising is shown to anyone.

Guestbook visitors (people who sign a guestbook): the name, optional e-mail address, optional location flag, message and custom-field texts you enter, the date and time, and the IP address you posted from. Name, message and public fields are shown on the guestbook page to everyone; e-mail address and IP address are shown only to the guestbook owner. A private message is shown to the owner only. People who merely read a guestbook are counted, not identified: we keep a one-way hash of the address and browser for 60 days to tell repeat visits apart.

Abuse prevention: when a post is refused or removed by our content rules we keep the date, the guestbook, the name of the rule and the IP address, never the text, for 400 days. Web-server logs with IP addresses are kept for up to 30 days.

Why we store it and on what basis

To provide the guestbook you signed up for or signed (performance of a contract), to keep the service free of spam, fraud and illegal material and to protect owners, visitors and ourselves (legitimate interest), and to meet legal obligations, in particular the duty under United States law to report child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. We do not sell data and do not profile anyone. We may e-mail owners about their account or changes to the service; any optional newsletter or offer would require a separate opt-in.

How long

Messages stay until the guestbook owner deletes them or the guestbook is deleted. Owners can delete any message and their whole guestbook in the Control Panel at any time. We do not delete guestbooks for inactivity: a guestbook that holds messages stays until its owner deletes it or it is removed under the Acceptable Use Policy. Accounts that never confirmed their e-mail address are deleted after 90 days. Backups are kept for 30 days. Material we are legally required to report is preserved for one year in a separate, access-restricted store and then destroyed.

Who else sees the data

Our servers are hosted by DigitalOcean in New York, USA. Cloudflare (USA) sits in front of the site for security and delivery and handles the human-verification challenge on forms. E-mail is sent through Resend (USA). Support requests arrive by e-mail in our support mailbox at Google Workspace (USA). Every message and guestbook text is checked for illegal and abusive content before it is published, by our own rules and by AI moderation services (OpenAI, USA; if we add a second provider of the same kind we will name it here first), which receive the text only, never e-mail or IP addresses, and do not use it to train their models. These providers process data on our behalf under their standard data-processing terms, including the EU standard contractual clauses for transfers from Europe. Beyond that, data is disclosed only where the law requires it: to law enforcement on a valid request, and to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as described above.

Your choices

Our own pages set only strictly necessary cookies. Visit counting on our pages (Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies) runs only if you allow it in the cookie notice, and you can change your answer any time with "Cookie settings" in the footer. If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal we treat it as "only necessary" automatically and show you a confirmation. We do not sell or share personal data for advertising; should the service ever carry advertising, any related cookies would be off until you allow them. Guestbook owners can switch notification e-mails off in the Control Panel; the only other mail we send concerns your account.

Your data: export it or delete it yourself

Guestbook owners can download everything we hold (account, settings, all messages, banned addresses, notification log) as JSON or CSV under Download My Data in the Control Panel, and can delete a guestbook and everything in it under Delete Guestbook (deleting your last guestbook deletes your login as well). Both work instantly, without asking us. Deletion removes the live data at once; backups expire within 30 days. Visitors who signed a guestbook can ask the guestbook owner to remove the entry, or send us a privacy request; we may ask for the name or e-mail used so we can find the right entries.

Your rights, wherever you live

You can ask what we hold about you, obtain a copy, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to its use, and you will never be treated differently for doing so. We apply these rights to everyone and answer within 30 days. They are guaranteed to you by the GDPR (EU/EEA), the UK GDPR, the Swiss FADP, the CCPA/CPRA in California and similar laws in other US states (we do not sell or share personal information, and we honor Global Privacy Control as a valid opt-out), PIPEDA in Canada, the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles in Australia, the Privacy Act 2020 in New Zealand and the LGPD in Brazil. You may complain to your data-protection authority at any time; for the EU that is the authority of your country of residence. Requests go to the privacy request form.

Children

The service is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly keep data about them. If you believe a child has signed up or posted, tell us and we will remove it.

Cookies and security

We use only the cookies needed to run the site; the details are in our Cookie Policy. All traffic is encrypted (TLS), passwords are stored hashed, and password resets and e-mail verification use single-use links.

This Privacy Policy was created on January 3, 2003 and last updated on September 14, 2026. Changes are announced on this page.