Privacy Policy
01Overview
The TourGuid app ("the App") is operated by TourGuid LLC ("TourGuid," "we," "us"). The App helps you plan trips, share them with people you invite, talk with other travellers, and book activities from vendors. This policy explains what the App collects, how it is used, who can see it, and the choices you have.
It describes the App as it actually works today. Where a feature is switched off or still being tested, this policy says so rather than describing something you cannot yet use.
02Why we need this, and what we do not do with it
The information the App asks you for is what it needs to work and to stay safe. Your name is how the people on your trip know who added an activity or wrote a message. Your email address is how you sign in, how you recover an account, and how an invitation reaches somebody who is not a member yet. A phone number, where you give one, is used to verify that an account belongs to a real person. Without these the App cannot identify you to the people you are travelling with, cannot let you back in if you forget a password, and cannot tell a genuine account from an abusive one.
Photos and videos you post are attributed to you, by design. A post carries your name so that the people who can see it know who shared it, and so that anyone can report or block an account behaving badly. Treat anything you post as connected to you.
We do not use any of this to track you. We do not follow you across other apps or websites, we do not build an advertising profile from your identity, your photos, your messages or your itinerary, and we do not sell your personal information. Where the Store shows an ad, the only thing sent is the short list of keyword hints described under Advertising below — never your name, email address, phone number, photos or messages.
03Information you give us
Account information — your first and last name, email address, and a hashed password, collected when you create an account. We record your confirmation that you are 18 or older and that you accepted our Terms. If you turn on phone verification where it is offered, we also hold your phone number.
Your profile — an optional nickname, profile photo, short bio, home base, and whether you allow other travellers to find you in search. Profile photos are stored in a public file bucket, so a profile photo should be treated as public.
Trip and itinerary content — trip titles, destinations, dates, notes, itinerary activities (title, type, time, location text, comments), and checklist items you or the people you invite create.
Attachments — photos, documents such as PDFs, and QR or barcode text you attach to an itinerary entry, like boarding passes or reservation confirmations. These sit in a private bucket and are only reachable through short-lived expiring links.
Invitations — when you invite someone to a trip or a Talk, we store the email address or phone number you entered, whether or not that person already has an account.
Posts, comments and Talks — anything you post: titles, text, photos and videos, the comments you write, images and PDFs you attach to a comment, the reactions and saves you leave, the people you tag, the topics you start, and the audience you chose for each post. If you use the option to hide a post from particular Travel Pals, we store that list of people; it is never shown to them.
Contacts — contacts you add by email or name, and which of them you star. Stars and any labels you apply are private to you: they are your own note about another person and are never shown to them or to an administrator.
Messages and calls — direct messages, trip announcements, and voice or video calls you place through the App. Call audio and video are carried live by our calling provider and are not recorded by us; who called whom and when is recorded so the call can be delivered and answered.
Bookings — what you book from a vendor, the party size, the names and ages of participants you enter, the tickets issued to you, and whether a ticket has been redeemed. No card or bank details are handled by the App: it does not process payments.
Vendor accounts — if you register as a vendor, we hold your business name and type, contact details, the activities you list with their photos and video, your availability, licence and insurance documents you upload, and payout settings you enter.
04Information we collect as you use the App
Location text, not GPS — when address autocomplete is on, text you type into a Location, From, or Destination field is sent to a places provider to suggest matches. The App does not read your device's GPS or precise location.
Travel lookups — a flight number or train service you enter is sent to a travel data provider to fetch times and status. Train coverage is currently France only.
Forwarded booking emails — if you turn on email forwarding for a trip, we give you a unique address for that trip. Mail forwarded there is parsed to extract vendor, date, time and location and to create a matching activity. We keep a short log of each message's sender, subject and parse result so you can see what was imported.
Smart Import — when you use Smart Import to fill in an entry from a photo or PDF, that file is sent to Anthropic's Claude API to read the details out of it.
Translation — when you ask to translate someone's post, comment or trip notes, that text is sent to Google Cloud Translation. Translations are cached so the same text is not sent twice. Menus and buttons are translated inside the App and are not sent anywhere.
Notifications — if you allow notifications, we store the push token your device issues so we can deliver them. Turning notifications off in your device settings stops this.
Technical and diagnostic information — for certain actions we record your IP address, an approximate city-level location derived from it (not GPS), and basic device and session information, for support, fraud prevention and abuse investigation. When a flow fails on a real device we may record a short breadcrumb of where it stopped.
Moderation records — reports you submit, accounts you block, and, where an administrator edits or removes someone's post, comment or photo, a record of that action and who took it.
05Advertising
The Store can show ads supplied by Google AdMob. Where it does, the App sends a short list of keyword hints to help choose which ad to show — up to a couple of destinations from your trip, a few category words, and a handful of words taken from the titles of activities you have planned.
We do not send your name, email address, phone number, photos, messages, posts, or any precise location to the ad provider, and we do not send the contents of your itinerary beyond those keyword hints. Google may still use its own identifiers and its own data to choose an ad; how it does that is governed by Google's policies, not ours.
We do not sell your personal information. Sharing keyword hints with an ad provider may count as “sharing” for advertising purposes under California law — the California privacy rights section explains how to opt out.
06How we use it
To run the App: create your account, show you your trips, and let you and the people you invite work on an itinerary together.
To deliver what you asked for: send a message, place a call, show a post to the audience you chose, take a booking to the vendor, issue and check a ticket.
To send notifications you have turned on — an invitation, a join request, a new message, an incoming call.
To keep the App safe: investigate reports, act on blocks, prevent fraud and abuse, and keep a record of administrative actions.
To improve the App, using aggregate counts rather than reading your content.
07Who can see your information
People on your trips — anyone you invite to a trip can see that trip's itinerary, checklist, attachments, and your name. People you have not invited cannot see your trips.
Whoever you addressed a post to — every post carries an audience you choose: only you, your Travel Pals, the people on a trip, one or more Talks, or public. Public posts can be read by anyone signed in, and only an administrator can publish one. If you hide a post from particular Travel Pals, they are not told, and they cannot see that list.
Members of a Talk — a Talk is private by default, meaning only its members can find it or read it. A moderator can make one unlisted (readable with the link) or public (listed and readable by anyone signed in). The Talk's page shows which it is.
Display names during the test period — while the App is in testing, a person's display name resolves for anyone who can see their content, so that you can identify and block someone. This is deliberate and will be narrowed as the community grows.
Administrators and moderators — our administrators can see content in order to review reports and moderate the community, and can edit or remove a post, comment or photo. Those actions are recorded. A Talk's own moderator can pin, close, rename or delete topics in that Talk, and manage its members. Your stars, your private labels on contacts, and posts you addressed only to yourself are not part of that.
Vendors — when you book, the vendor sees what you booked, when, the party size, the participant details you entered, and enough contact information to run the booking.
08Service providers
We use the following to operate the App. Each processes data only as needed to provide its service to us.
Supabase — database, sign-in, and file storage.
Resend — sending account email and receiving forwarded booking mail.
Expo — delivering push notifications.
LiveKit — carrying voice and video calls.
Anthropic — reading the photo or PDF you submit to Smart Import, and helping vendors draft activity descriptions.
Google — Cloud Translation for content you ask to translate, Places for address suggestions, and AdMob where ads are shown.
Geoapify — place and address lookup.
AirLabs and Navitia — flight and train information for a service you enter.
Telnyx — sending a verification code, where phone verification is offered.
09Keeping it, and deleting it
We keep your information for as long as your account exists. Deleting your account — Account, then Delete My Account — permanently removes your profile, the trips you created including their itinerary, checklist and attachments, your membership of other people's trips, and the posts, comments and messages you sent. This cannot be undone. If you can't open the App, you can ask us to delete your account instead: see Delete your account.
You can delete your own posts, comments and photos at any time. A deleted post stops being visible immediately. Records we must keep to run the service or to show what an administrator did are retained separately.
10Your choices
Choose who sees each post, and hold a post back from particular Travel Pals, when you write it.
Block an account, and report a post, comment or account for review.
Turn notifications off in your device settings, and turn address autocomplete and live travel lookups off in the App.
Turn on the biometric lock so the App asks for Face ID or a fingerprint when it reopens. That check happens on your device and we never receive your biometrics.
Choose your language, region, currency and date format at any time under Language & Localization.
Leave a Talk, or delete one you created.
Edit or delete your trips, posts, comments and photos, or delete your account entirely.
Ask us anything about your privacy, or make a request, at admin@tourguid.net.
11Children
The App is for adults. You must confirm you are 18 or older to create an account, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has given us information, write to us and we will remove it.
12California privacy rights (CCPA/CPRA)
TourGuid is operated from California, and if you're a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the CPRA) gives you the right to: know what personal information we've collected about you and how it's used; request a copy of it; request that we delete it; correct inaccurate information; and opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information.
We do not sell personal information. We share the limited keyword hints described under Advertising with our ad provider. To opt out of that sharing, or to make any other request, write to us at admin@tourguid.net. We will not treat you differently for exercising these rights.
13Where your information is held
Our database and files are hosted in the United States, and the providers listed under Service providers may process data in other countries. If you use the App from outside the United States, your information is transferred to and processed there.
14Security
Access to your data is enforced by the database itself, row by row, so that a request can only return what the signed-in account is entitled to see. Private files are served through short-lived expiring links. Passwords are stored hashed and we never see them. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
15Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top and, where the change is significant, tell you in the App. Continuing to use the App after a change means you accept the updated policy.
16Contact
Questions, requests, or concerns: write to TourGuid LLC at admin@tourguid.net.