Privacy policy
MyShipDesk is a tool for ship masters to keep ship, crew and certificate records and fill port papers from them. Sarath Sabarish makes and operates it from Chennai, India. Write to [email protected] with any question about your data.
What MyShipDesk keeps
- Your account: your email address, your name if you sign in with Google, a salted hash of your password if you set one (never the password itself), and when the account was created and last used.
- Your records: what you enter or import. That is the ship’s particulars, the crew’s details (names, dates and places of birth, nationality, passport and seaman’s book numbers and expiry dates, ranks and joining ports), certificates and their scans, port calls, the forms you add, and your signature and the ship’s stamp.
Where your records are kept
Your records are kept in your browser on each computer you use, so the app works at sea without a connection. When you are signed in they are also saved to your account on our servers, so they survive a lost computer and open on another one. On our servers they are encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a key kept apart from the stored data. The servers are hosted by Railway in the United States.
A backup file you download is a plain copy on your own computer. It never holds your signature or stamp.
When data goes to another service
Some features need another service to do the work you ask for. Each one receives only what that job needs:
- Reading a passport photo: the image goes from our server to Groq, an AI service in the United States, which reads the details and sends them back. MyShipDesk does not store the image.
- Adding a blank form: the form’s labels, or a picture of the blank form, go to Groq to work out where each detail belongs.
- Reading an agent’s email: when you add an agent’s email to list the papers they need, its text goes to Groq.
- Looking up a ship: only the ship’s name or IMO number goes to Groq, which searches public vessel pages.
- Saving as .xls or Word: the file is converted on our server and the temporary copy is deleted as soon as the conversion finishes.
- Continue with Google: Google tells us your email address and name, and the sign-in page loads Google’s sign-in script.
- Visiting the site: Cloudflare carries the site’s traffic and sees your IP address and the pages you request.
- Sharing a form: a blank form you share with other masters is kept on our server and checked before anyone else can use it. Share blank forms only.
What MyShipDesk does not do
MyShipDesk shows no advertising and has no analytics or tracking scripts. Your records are not sold or shared, and are used only to provide the features you use.
Cookies and browser storage
One cookie keeps you signed in for up to 90 days. Your browser’s storage holds your records so the app works offline. MyShipDesk sets no other cookies.
The free tools
The tools and the notice of arrival calculator work entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter in them, including a crew spreadsheet, is sent to us.
Your choices
- Correct anything in the app at any time.
- Download a backup of your records from Settings, Records and backup.
- Delete your account from Settings, Account. That removes your account, records and scans from our servers at once and clears the computer you delete it from. Another computer you used keeps its own copy until you clear that browser’s data.
- Or write to [email protected] and we will do it for you.
Crew members
A master keeps the details of their crew in MyShipDesk to prepare port papers. If you are a crew member and want to know what is held about you, or want it corrected or removed, write to [email protected] and we will take it up with the master’s account.
Changes
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and account holders are told by email of any change to what is kept or where it goes.