What is collected
Your account. When you sign in with Apple or Google we receive an identifier for you, and an email address if the provider gives us one — Apple only sends it the first time, and may send a relay address instead. We store that, plus the handle, display name, photo, home city and bio you choose.
What you make. Your trips, the places in them, notes you write, hidden gems you add and their photos, the trips and places you save, and who you follow. Also which places you opened, asked for directions to or said are “Not for me”, one note a place a day, so lists learn what is worth going to; never shown to anyone, and never sent outside TripCompanion. Trips are private until you decide otherwise; a gem is yours alone until you choose “Everyone”.
What you ask for. The sentence you type or say on Discover (“a week somewhere warm…”) and the trip ideas it produced, so you can go back to them and start one later.
Your travel style. The kinds of places you like — beaches, hikes, museums, coffee — from the styles you pick when you first open the app and from what you do with places: the ones you put in trips, save, add as gems, ask directions to, open often or say are “Not for me”. It is worked out on our servers from your own activity only, and used only to order your own suggestions and to tell Claude what you tend to like when it suggests places or plans your days; no style is ever about your religion, health, sexuality or politics. Up to three show on your profile, unless you turn that off. It is on until you switch it off (You → Your travel style, or Settings → Privacy), which deletes what was learned and what you picked.
Your language. The app saves the language you use it in (English, Portuguese or Spanish) with your account, so the notifications it sends you are in it. On this website, choosing a language in the footer sets one cookie, tc_lang, that remembers it for a year; it says nothing else about you and is never sent to anyone.
Your location, while you are using it. Discover and Around send a coordinate to show places near you and how far they are. It is used for that request and not stored against your account. Refusing the permission turns those off and nothing else. When you add a gem, its location — from the photo or from where you stand — is what you are saving.
Your voice, only when you tap “Type or talk”. Speech is turned into text on your phone. The app only uses on-device recognition; where your phone has none, it says so and you type instead. No audio is sent to us or to anyone else.
Reports. If you report a person, trip or place, we keep the report and who made it, so a person can review it.
Technical necessities. A push token if you turn on notifications, and a hashed record of sessions so a stolen one can be revoked. Server logs hold IP addresses briefly for abuse handling.
What is not collected
- No advertising identifiers, and no ad networks.
- No third-party analytics or behavioural tracking SDKs.
- No background or continuous location. The app never asks for “always” permission.
- No contacts and no calendar.
- Nothing is sold or shared with data brokers.
Photos and the location in them
The app reads where a photo was taken on your phone, to place the gem you are adding. When the photo is uploaded we re-encode it and drop all of its metadata, location included, so a published photo does not say where you stood. HEIC photos are converted to JPEG on the phone first.
Who else sees your data
A small number of services process data on our behalf, and none of them is permitted to use it for anything else:
- Railway — hosting the API and the database.
- Cloudflare — this website, and storing uploaded photos.
- Anthropic — Claude writes your trip ideas from the sentence you give it, and describes destinations. Your prompt is sent so it can be answered, and is not used to train models. Claude also writes place and destination descriptions in Portuguese and Spanish, and when you tap “Translate” on something a traveller wrote, that text is sent to be translated; the translation is kept so the next reader gets it without asking again.
- Voyage AI — turns place descriptions into search vectors. Place text only, never your prompts or trips.
- Foursquare — photos, ratings, tips, hours and busy times for public places. We send a public place’s name and coordinates to match it; never anything about you, and never a private gem.
- Mapbox — maps in the app, turning place names into coordinates, and travel times between stops.
- Expo — delivering the push notifications you asked for.
Other people see only what you publish. A private trip is visible to you and the people you invite; a link-shared trip is visible to anyone holding the link; a public trip appears on your profile and in your followers’ Discover. Your handle, display name, photo, bio and public trips are visible to anyone unless you make your profile private.
How long it is kept
- Your content — until you delete it, or delete your account.
- Foursquare details — refreshed or removed after 30 days.
- Sessions — refresh tokens expire after 30 days, and sooner if you sign out.
- Server logs — around 30 days.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account in the app (You → Settings). Your handle, display name, email, photo and bio go immediately, every session is revoked, and notifications stop. Thirty days later the rest goes for good: your trips, private gems, saves, what you opened or hid, follows and uploaded photos.
Trips other people copied into their own accounts stay with them — they are that person’s trip now. Gems that went public stay on the map, no longer linked to you.
Your rights
If you are in the UK or the EU you have the right to access, correct, export, and erase your personal data, and to object to processing. Email privacy@tripcompanion.io and we will respond within 30 days.
Children
TripCompanion is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or who receives it, we will say so in the app before it takes effect rather than quietly changing the date at the top.