Privacy policy

Who we are

Tracks is a travel journal app and website run by Tourhub Ltd, trading as Tracks ("we", "us"). We are the controller of the personal data described here. For anything about your data, email privacy@travelwithtracks.com.

What we collect

• Your account. When you sign in with email, Apple, Google or Facebook we receive your email address, whether it is verified, and the name your provider shares. Sign-in is handled by Auth0 (Okta).
• Your profile. Your display name, username, an optional "what should we call you" name, an optional bio and your privacy settings. The name we greet you by is private to you.
• Your trips. Itineraries you create, tours you import, and - if you booked through Tourhub - your confirmed bookings, which we look up using your verified email: the tour, dates, stops, hotels, the operator's itinerary text and links to your travel documents. We never receive payment details.
• Your photos. With your permission the app reads your phone's photo library to file photos on the right day and stop, using each photo's date and location. Photos you add to a trip are uploaded to our storage. The original keeps its metadata and is visible only to you. Every copy shown to anyone else has its metadata - including the location it was taken - removed before it is served.
• Notes and reviews you write about your trips.
• Travel Book orders. When you order a printed book: the book's pages and the photos in it, the delivery name and address you enter, and the order and its status. Card payments are taken by Stripe; we never see or store your card number.
• Gift cards. When someone gives you a gift card from your Family link page: the amount, their message and the name they sign it with. Stripe collects the giver's payment details and email address for their receipt. The giver never sees your delivery address.
• Location, only if you allow it. While you use the app, to show where you are on your trip. If you turn on "Draw my route", in the background during a trip you are on, never inside the home area you set, so your trip's map can show the path you travelled. You can delete a trip's route at any time. Live location on a Family link is off unless you switch it on, and shows a position no older than two hours.
• Your home area, only if you set one. If you tell Tracks where home is, we store it with your account as a town or city area (a point rounded to about a kilometre, a radius and the place's name), never an address, so that photos taken near home aren't suggested as trips, automatic trips start only when you're well away, and your route isn't drawn near home; only you can see it, it is synced to the phones you sign in on, it is never shown to followers, tour companions or anyone viewing your shared trips, and it is deleted with your account. When Tracks suggests your home from your photos, it sends that rounded point to our place-naming service to put a name to it, and saves nothing until you confirm.
• Contacts, only if you allow it. To find friends already on Tracks, the email addresses in your contacts are turned into one-way codes (hashes) on your phone before they are sent. We compare them and do not store them.
• Social activity. Who you follow and who follows you, people you block, your tour group membership and join requests, photos you choose to share with your tourmates, and whether you agree to them appearing in printed books.
• Technical data. Server logs, and crash and diagnostic reports from the app (what went wrong, on which phone model, OS and app version), needed to run and secure the service. We do not use advertising identifiers, and the app contains no advertising or third-party analytics software.
• How you use the app. The app records a small set of actions - opening the app, a step of the welcome screens, sharing a reel or a postcard, opening the Travel Book, the number of photos you keep or leave out - with your account, the time, your phone type and app version, and a few numbers or short labels. They never include your photos, places, names or anything you write. They are stored in our own database, not sent to any analytics company, and are used only to count how Tracks is used so we can improve it. When your account is deleted, they stop being linked to you.

How we use it

• To run Tracks: keep your journal, file your photos, build your Travel Reel and Travel Book, and sync your trips between your devices.
• To match your Tourhub bookings to your account and bring their itinerary and documents into the app.
• To name places and show maps: the coordinates of places you visit are sent to our place-naming provider, and the map areas you view are requested from our map provider.
• To show the weather for your trip: for a trip that starts within 10 days or is under way, your phone asks Open-Meteo for the forecast at each stop on the itinerary, using the stop's coordinates and dates. Your account, your name and your own position are never sent.
• To tell you about the places on your trip: facts about places and the story of the week are fetched from Wikipedia by our servers.
• To keep the service secure and fix problems.

We do not sell your data and we do not use it for advertising.

Who can see your trips

Your trips are private until you share them. You decide, per trip:

• Family link: anyone with the link can see the trip in a browser - the last two days or the whole trip, as you choose. Turning the link off ends access and deletes the public copies of your photos.
• Travel friends: Tracks users who follow you can see trips you share with them. You choose who may follow you: anyone, only people you follow, or nobody.
• Tourmates: other Tracks users on the same departure. Before the tour starts they see only how many tourmates are on Tracks, never names. Your photos reach them only if you choose to share with your tour group; that sharing ends 30 days after the tour, photos you mark private are never included, and photos they add to their own trips carry your name.

Who processes it for us

We use these service providers, each bound to process data only on our instructions:

• Supabase - our database and app servers, hosted in London, UK.
• Cloudflare - photo storage and our websites.
• Auth0 (Okta) - sign-in.
• Render - creating Travel Reel videos, in Frankfurt, Germany.
• Mapbox - maps.
• LocationIQ - turning coordinates into place names.
• Tourhub's booking systems - for your bookings and tour details.
• Sentry - crash and diagnostic reports, in the United States.
• Stripe - payments for Travel Books and gift cards.
• Peecho - printing and delivering Travel Books, in the Netherlands. It receives the book's pages and the delivery name and address.
• Apple, Google or Facebook - only if you choose to sign in with them.

Crash and diagnostic reports describe what went wrong in the app: an error, the screen and step it happened in, counts, your phone's model, operating system and app version. Before a report leaves your phone the app removes anything personal from it, so it contains no photos, no locations and no message content, and never your name, email address or IP address.

Facts about places and the story of the week come from Wikipedia and Wikidata. Our servers fetch them, using only a place's name and location; we send them no personal data.

Weather forecasts come from Open-Meteo (open-meteo.com), an independent weather service. Your phone contacts it directly, and only for the stops of a trip that starts within 10 days or is under way. Each request carries a stop's coordinates and the dates of your trip there and nothing else - no account, no name, and never your own position - but, as with any request over the internet, Open-Meteo receives your phone's IP address with it. Forecasts are kept on your phone and deleted when you sign out.

Where a provider handles data outside the UK, we rely on adequacy decisions or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement and EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

Our legal bases

We process your data to provide the service you asked for (contract); with your consent for location, contacts, live location, sharing photos with tourmates and printed books, which you can withdraw at any time in the app or your phone's settings; and for our legitimate interests in keeping Tracks secure and working.

How long we keep it

We keep your data while your account is open. When you delete your account in Settings, you have 30 days to change your mind; after that your account, trips, photos, notes and location history are permanently deleted. Two things are kept without your name: reviews you wrote about tours, and copies of photos you shared that tourmates added to their own trips, which keep their photo credit. Delivery addresses are deleted 90 days after your book is delivered, or when an order ends without being printed. Order and payment records are kept for six years because tax law requires it. Server logs are kept only as long as needed to run and secure the service. Weather forecasts are kept only on your phone and are deleted when you sign out.

Your rights

You can ask to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your data, object to or restrict how we use it, and withdraw consent. Email privacy@travelwithtracks.com. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or your local data protection authority.

Age

Tracks is for people aged 16 and over.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update this page and the date below, and tell you in the app if the change is significant.