Privacy Policy

When you create an account we store your email address, a chosen display name (optional), and the plan you signed up on. When you use the app we store the routes you save and your in-app preferences.

If you set up a public profile, we also store the username, short bio and profile picture you choose.

Your device sends GPS coordinates to our servers in real time while you have the app open and have granted location permission, so we can find points of interest near you. We do not keep those coordinates after answering the request.

We record usage and diagnostic events from your sessions: which features you use, playback measurements, and GPS-health statistics, linked to your account, on the basis of our legitimate interest in finding and fixing problems. Some of those events note roughly where a decision was made, rounded to about 100 metres, so we can tell which part of a place a problem happened in. That is deliberately too coarse to be a movement trace. You can turn all of this off at any time under Settings › Privacy › “Help improve Guidacle”, and you can delete everything we have stored with “Delete my usage data” in the same place.

If you photograph a place with the camera feature, the photo is sent to our servers to identify what you are looking at, and it is stored with the place it identified. We also keep the spot you took it from, to the precision your device reported, because that is how we recognise later photographs of the same place. That position stays with the photograph for as long as the photograph does, and the usage-data setting above does not cover it. Once a place has been recognised, the photo you took of it can be shown to other people using Guidacle. Do not photograph anything you would not want others to see.

If you use voice input, your device's own speech service converts what you say into text and only the text reaches us. We never receive or store the recording.

When you use the app we generate an installation identifier for your device, so that a crash report and a session can be matched up. It is created only if you have left the “Help improve Guidacle” setting on, and it is discarded when you turn it off.

We use the data above to operate and improve the Service, deliver the features you ask for, respond to support requests, and meet legal or tax obligations. We do not sell your data.

Our legal bases for processing (GDPR Art. 6) are: your consent for location / GPS processing — which powers nearby narration, is requested when you start a guide session, and which you can decline or withdraw at any time; the performance of our contract with you to run your account and deliver the Service; our legitimate interests in keeping the Service secure and improving it; and legal obligation for tax and fraud-prevention records.

To run the Service we rely on a small set of vendors:

• Supabase for authentication, database hosting and file storage.
• Amazon Web Services (Amazon SES) to deliver account emails — sign-up confirmation, password reset, and sign-in links — from our servers in the EU (Ireland).
• Paddle.com Inc. as Merchant of Record for payments on the web. Card details are entered on Paddle's site and never reach our servers.
• Apple and Google for in-app purchases, and RevenueCat to keep track of which subscription you are entitled to. We store the transaction identifier the store gives us, never your payment details.
• Anthropic for large-language-model inference. Your questions to the assistant are sent there to generate answers, as are photographs you take with the camera feature, so the place in them can be identified. Per their data-handling policy this content is not used to train models. We do not store the questions you type.
• Voyage AI for the visual match behind the camera feature. A photograph you take is sent there to be turned into a numeric fingerprint, which we compare against reference images so the object can be recognised even when no label is readable. The photograph is sent for that comparison and nothing about your account goes with it.
• OpenAI to turn written guide text into the spoken audio you hear. The text sent is the guide narration, not anything about you.
• Sentry for crash and error reports, so we find out when the app breaks. A report carries the device model, the operating system version, the app version and the stack trace of the failure. It does not carry your account. Crash reports are always sent, because we cannot keep the app working without them, and Sentry processes them in the EU. While the “Help improve Guidacle” setting is on, a report also carries the installation identifier described above so it can be matched to a session.
• Wikimedia and OpenStreetMap as public data sources we query for place information.
• OpenFreeMap for the map itself, and Amazon Web Services for the terrain shading on it. Unlike the sources above, which we query from our own servers, these are fetched by your device directly as you move around the map — so your IP address reaches them, the way it does any site you open. No account information is attached.
• Railway and Vercel for infrastructure hosting.

We use first-party cookies and local storage to keep you signed in and remember your in-app preferences. We do not use third-party advertising cookies. No tracking pixels, no behavioural ad networks.

Before you sign in, the web app also stores a random identifier (first-party, one year) so that the free listening allowance is counted per browser rather than being reset by a reload. It is not linked to you as a person and is not shared with anyone. Alongside it we count that allowance against the IP address a request comes from, to stop one person taking it repeatedly by clearing their browser. If you later create an account, the identifier is attached to it so the allowance you already used carries over.

Account data persists for as long as your account exists. Deleted accounts are removed from our active databases within 30 days, subject to limited retention of records required for tax or fraud compliance.

Usage and diagnostic events, including the coarse positions described in section 1, are kept while your account exists. You do not have to wait for that: “Delete my usage data” under Settings › Privacy erases all of it immediately, and turning off “Help improve Guidacle” stops any more being recorded.

Photographs you take with the camera feature are kept with the place they identified, because they are what other people are shown for that place. Deleting your account unlinks your photographs from you, but does not take down one that is already being shown. Email us if you want that done.

If you are based in the EU/EEA, UK, or another jurisdiction with equivalent rights, you have the right to:

• Access — receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected.
• Erasure — have your personal data deleted.
• Restriction — ask us to limit how we process your data.
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Objection — object to processing based on our legitimate interests.
• Withdraw consent — withdraw consent you have given (for example, for location) at any time, without affecting processing carried out beforehand.

To exercise any of these, email support@guidacle.com and we will respond within 30 days. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority — in Norway, the Datatilsynet.

Our vendors operate servers in multiple regions including the European Economic Area and the United States. Data transfers outside your home region rely on standard contractual clauses or equivalent safeguards.

Guidacle is not intended for children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has signed up, contact us and we will remove the account.

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated in-app. The effective date at the top reflects the most recent change.

Privacy questions or data-rights requests: support@guidacle.com.

The data controller for personal data processed in Guidacle is KICODE AS (org.nr 937 901 143), a company registered in Norway. Direct GDPR / data-rights requests to support@guidacle.com.