Privacy

Last updated October 2, 2026

Hella Surf respects your privacy. This page explains what information the website collects when you sign a waiver online, the limited analytics used to understand whether the website helps people find and book surf lessons, and how each is kept.

Messages you choose to send

Booking buttons open contact options. The editable message draft stays in your current page; it is not sent to Hella Surf or stored by website analytics. Choosing a channel opens your text messaging app, Instagram, or your email app. Text and email links include your draft; Instagram opens Hella's profile, and you can copy the draft yourself. Your message is handled by the service you choose under its privacy policy. Hella Surf receives only what you send directly.

Signed participant waivers

Before a lesson, each participant (or a parent or guardian for anyone under 18) signs the participant waiver, either online or on paper. Hella Surf uses it to keep you safe during the lesson, to contact your emergency contact if needed, and to handle insurance or legal matters. It is never sold or used for marketing.

What is collected when you sign online

• The signer's full name, date of birth, email, mobile phone and, when signing for children, relationship to them.
• Each child's full name and date of birth (up to 3 per form).
• The lesson date, an emergency contact's name, relationship and phone, and any medical notes you choose to enter.
• Your answers in the waiver: the swimming answer, the health and safety statements, and your photo yes or no.
• Your initials, typed name and drawn signature (saved as an image).
• A signing record, so the signature can be proven: the date and time, the internet (IP) address and browser or device information used to sign, the approximate country, your device's time zone, and a digital fingerprint (SHA-256 hash) of the exact waiver text you signed and of the saved record.

To stop automated spam, the signing page uses Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks browser and device signals to tell people from bots. It does not use advertising cookies. The signing page does not load the website analytics described below, so analytics never see what you type.

Where it is kept and who sees it

• Database: the signed record is stored in a private Cloudflare D1 database in Hella Surf's own Cloudflare account, located in western North America and encrypted at rest. There is no web page or link that shows signed waivers; only the signing service writes to it, and only Hella Surf and the person who maintains this website for Hella Surf can open it, for example to answer a claim or delete a record.
• Email copies: right after you sign, Cloudflare's email service sends one copy to Hella Surf's email inbox (hosted by Google Gmail) and one copy to the email address you entered. The copy includes everything above and your signature.
• Who sees it: Hella Surf and its instructors; Cloudflare and Google only as service providers that store or deliver it; emergency responders when needed; Hella Surf's insurer, lawyer or a court if there is an injury claim; and anyone the law requires. Nobody else.

How long it is kept

In Hawaii, most injury claims can be brought for 2 years, and for a child that time only starts at age 18. The waiver also covers lessons for 12 months after signing. So signed waivers are kept for:

• Adults: 4 years after signing (12 months of lessons, plus 2 years, plus a 1-year margin).
• Forms that include a child: until the youngest child on the form turns 21, if that is later than 4 years after signing.

Database records are deleted automatically when that date passes, unless a claim or legal request is pending, in which case the record is kept only until it is resolved. Hella Surf keeps its emailed copies for the same period and then deletes them; your own copy is yours to keep. Paper waivers are stored securely for the same periods and then shredded.

To get a copy of your signed waiver or to correct a mistake, email hellasurfhawaii@gmail.com. Because a signed waiver is a legal record, it usually cannot be deleted before its keep-until date, but errors will be corrected.

Website analytics

The current site records opening contact options and selecting a contact channel, not your draft message. The retired contact helper recorded which preset question you selected (booking, prices, availability, or a general question) and its contact-channel handoff. Those historical records expire under the same retention period. These are button selections, not a conversation transcript or confirmation that a message was sent.

This site uses first-party analytics. It records a random browser-session identifier, page path, referring website or campaign tag, approximate city, region and country, mobile or desktop category, scroll depth, active time, and meaningful actions such as opening booking options or selecting Text, Email, or Instagram.

It does not record typed text, keystrokes, precise GPS location, advertising identifiers, or your IP address in the analytics record. It does not track you across other websites or use advertising cookies. Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track browser signals disable analytics.

Services and retention

Firebase Hosting serves the website and produces normal security and request logs. Cloudflare runs the waiver signing service, its database and the email copies described above. Cloudflare also processes these analytics events and stores them in an isolated Workers KV database for up to 90 days, after which they automatically expire.

Why this information is used

The information is used to measure where visitors arrive from, which parts of the site they use, and whether booking options are working. It is not sold or used for third-party advertising.

Contact

See also our Terms and the participant waiver.