Privacy Policy

Trailmonger is an outdoor mapping app. To work, it needs to know where you are, and when you record an activity it keeps a record of where you went. This policy explains what we collect, what we do with it, who can see it, and the choices you have. We have tried to write it plainly. If anything is unclear, email us at the address at the bottom.

Three things up front. We do not sell your personal information. We do not run third-party advertising in the app. And we never use your health data for anything but showing it back to you.

Information We Collect

• Account details such as your email address, display name, and sign-in provider (Apple, Google, or email).
• Profile information you choose to add inside the app, such as a photo or favorite activities.
• Precise location from your device's GPS while the app is open, and in the background while you are recording an activity or sharing your live location. Recording stops when you stop it.
• Activity data you create: recorded routes (tracks), waypoints, saved shapes and areas, activity type, distance, duration, and the notes or photos you attach. Tracks are private to you unless you choose to share them. Unless you turn it off, the path of each activity also contributes, anonymously and combined with everyone else's, to the community heatmap described below.
• Trip plans you create: dates, the route, how many people are going, costs and the payment handles you enter so others can pay you back, your check-in plan, and notes. Trip plans are private to you. They are kept on your device and, when you are signed in, in your account so you can open them on another device.
• People you add to a trip: the name, phone number, and email address you enter for each person coming, typed in or picked from your contacts. See People You Add to a Trip below.
• Approximate location derived from your IP address, at the level of a city or region, when you use the website or the app.
• Health and fitness data, only if you connect Apple Health or Health Connect: average and maximum heart rate, calories, and step count for an activity you record. See the Health Data section below.
• Emergency contacts you add to the Location & SOS feature, and the friends you choose to share your location with.
• Contacts matching, optional: if you allow it, the app checks whether people in your address book use Trailmonger. Your address book is not stored on our servers.
• Device and diagnostic data such as device model, operating system, app version, crash reports, and performance measurements. These are linked to your account so we can fix problems you report.
• Purchase information for subscriptions, processed by Apple, Google, or Stripe. We receive the plan, status, and dates. We never see or store your card number.
• Support messages and feedback you send us, which may include your location at the time so we can reproduce a map problem.

How We Use Information

• Provide authentication, onboarding, saved preferences, and account management.
• Deliver maps, overlays, routing, offline downloads, and planning features.
• Run the safety features you turn on: live location sharing with friends, emergency contacts, and the search-and-rescue access described below.
• Maintain security, prevent abuse, and diagnose bugs or service issues.
• Improve product quality, reliability, and feature development.
• Understand where and how Trailmonger is used in aggregate: which regions, trail types, and features are popular. We use this to decide where to expand map coverage, what to build next, and where to market the app. This analysis works on grouped, de-identified data, never on an individual's trips.
• Draw the community heatmap, which shows everyone who uses Trailmonger where people go, from the combined paths of recorded activities, unless you turn it off.
• Send you information about Trailmonger features and offers if you have opted in. You can unsubscribe at any time, and you will still receive essential service messages.
• Email the people you add to a trip about that trip: the plan, the tasks you gave them, reminders before tasks are due, and a check-in before the trip, as described in People You Add to a Trip.
• Respond to support requests and important service communications.

Location Data

Trailmonger uses your precise location to center the map, show nearby trails, plan and navigate routes, record activities, and power the safety features you enable. Background location is requested only for recording and live sharing, and it is used only for those. You can withdraw location permission at any time in your device settings, though recording and navigation will stop working.

We never sell individual location data, we never share it with advertisers or data brokers, and no one at Trailmonger uses it to target you with advertising. The only people who see where you have been are you, the friends you choose to share with, and, in the situations described below, emergency responders. The community heatmap is the one place your activities appear to anyone else without you sharing them, and only combined with other people's, as described below.

Health Data

If you connect Apple Health or Health Connect, Trailmonger saves the heart rate, calorie, and step figures for each activity you record so you can see them alongside your route. This data is private by default and is only ever shown to you. Sharing a route with someone does not share your health metrics.

We do not use health data for advertising, marketing, product research, or any aggregated dataset, and we do not share it with any third party. You can disconnect Apple Health or Health Connect at any time and delete the saved figures by deleting the activity or your account.

Live Sharing, Emergencies, and Search and Rescue

Live sharing. When you record an activity or start a share, your current position is visible to the friends you have connected with in the app for as long as the share or recording lasts. You choose who those friends are and you can stop sharing at any time.

Emergency contacts. The Location & SOS feature lets you text or call the contacts you have added, or emergency services, with your coordinates. Those messages are sent from your own phone, not from our servers.

Search and rescue. We want Trailmonger to help when someone does not come home. We may share a user's most recent known location, recent recorded routes, and emergency contact details with public-safety agencies or organized search-and-rescue teams when you have asked us to, when one of your emergency contacts asks us to on your behalf, or when we believe in good faith that a person's life or safety is at risk. We verify who is asking before we release anything, we share only what is needed to find the person, and we record every such request. We plan to add a setting that lets you authorize this in advance and choose which contacts may request it. Health data is never part of a search-and-rescue release.

People You Add to a Trip

When you plan a trip you can add the people coming and give them tasks. For each person we store the name you give and a phone number, an email address, or both. You can type these in, or pick someone from your phone's contacts. When you pick a contact, the app reads only that one contact; the rest of your address book is not read or stored.

These details are stored with your trip plan and only you can see them. We use them to let you send the plan, and to email the people on your trip about it. When you send the plan through Trailmonger, and as the trip gets close, we email each person who has an email address: the trip's name and dates, the tasks you gave them, and a private link to a page where they can see the trip and tick their tasks off. We also email a reminder the day before and the day a task is due, and a check-in three days before the trip. Texts still go from your own phone. We keep a record of which trip emails went to which person on the trip, without their address, so each reminder goes out once.

Every trip email says who added the person and has a link to stop trip emails. If they use it, we keep that email address on a do-not-email list and never send it trip email again, for any trip, and we keep that list for as long as we send trip email so the request is honored. We do not use the details of people on your trip for marketing, analytics, friend suggestions, or any aggregated dataset, and neither the emails nor the page show anyone's phone number or email address.

Each person's page opens for anyone who has its link, so the link is private to them. The page shows the trip's name, dates, and route name, the first names of the people going, that person's tasks, and the shared trip checklist. It never shows your notes, costs, the route map, or anyone's contact details.

Please add only people who expect to hear from you about the trip. Removing someone from a trip, or deleting the trip, removes their details and their link from our servers the next time the app syncs, and the emails stop. If you do not use Trailmonger and someone added your details to a trip, use the link in any trip email to stop them, or ask us to delete your details by emailing the address at the bottom of this page.

De-identified and Aggregated Data

We create aggregated datasets from activity data: how many people used a trail in a month, which regions are growing, how popular an activity type is. These describe patterns across many people, never an individual trip, and we take reasonable steps to make sure they cannot be linked back to you. We use them internally to analyze trends, plan map coverage, and guide marketing.

If you opt in through the research-consent setting in the app, we may also share or sell aggregated datasets to partners such as outdoor brands and retailers, land managers, and researchers. Your activities are only included in datasets shared outside Trailmonger if you have opted in, and turning the setting off removes you from every future dataset. Aggregates already published cannot be recalled, because they contain no record of you to remove. Your name, email, health data, and the details of people you add to a trip are never included in any dataset, shared or internal. The community heatmap below is not one of these datasets: it is shown to everyone in the app and on our website, and it has its own setting.

Community Heatmap

Trailmonger shows a heatmap: a map layer that highlights where people have walked, ridden, paddled, or skied, and how often, drawn from the activities recorded in the app. It is visible to everyone who uses Trailmonger, in the app and on our website. It helps people find the trails that are actually used and spot routes the map is missing.

Your recorded activities contribute to the heatmap unless you turn it off. We use only the path of each activity and its activity type. The heatmap never shows your name, your profile, when an activity took place, or any single activity on its own, and it never uses health data or anything about the people you add to a trip. To stop the heatmap from pointing back to you, we trim the start and end of every activity, so it does not show where you set off from or finished, and we only show a place once enough different people have been there that no one person's route can be picked out.

You can stop contributing at any time with the heatmap setting in the app. When you do, your activities are left out the next time the heatmap is rebuilt, and that applies to the activities you have already recorded as well as future ones. Deleting an activity or your account removes it the same way. The heatmap setting and the research-consent setting are separate: turning one on or off does not change the other, and heatmap contributions are never shared or sold to partners unless you have also opted in to research.

How We Share Information

• Service providers that run the app on our behalf: hosting and database, authentication, file storage, map tiles and routing, weather and elevation data, crash reporting, analytics, push notifications, email delivery, and payment processing. They process data only as needed to provide their service to us.
• Other users, according to your settings: friends you share your live location with, people you send a route or waypoint to, and anyone who can view content you make public.
• Emergency responders and search-and-rescue teams, as described above.
• Partners, only in aggregated, de-identified form and only for users who have opted in, as described above.
• Legal requirements: when required by law, a valid legal process, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Trailmonger, our users, or the public.
• Business transfers. Trailmonger may be acquired by, merge with, or sell substantially all of its assets to another company, which could be an outdoor retailer, brand, or another mapping business. If that happens, your information will be transferred to the new owner as part of the transaction. It will remain subject to this policy until you are told otherwise, and we will notify you before any material change in how your information is used. Health data and any consent you have given or withheld transfer with the same restrictions.

We do not sell your personal information, we do not share it with data brokers, and we do not use third-party advertising networks or advertising SDKs in the app. Our website uses Google Analytics to measure traffic.

Data Retention

We keep your account and activity data for as long as your account exists. Live location pings are deleted seven days after they are recorded. When you delete your account, we delete your profile, activities, waypoints, trip plans and the details of the people you added to them, devices, contacts, live location pings, and health figures, and the app clears the trip plans stored on that device. Purchase records are kept as long as accounting and tax rules require. We may keep aggregated, de-identified statistics indefinitely.

Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and operational measures to protect information, including encryption in transit, access controls, and two-factor authentication for our own staff tools. No system can guarantee absolute security.

Children

Trailmonger is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Before an account can be created we ask for a birth month and year. We use the answer only to confirm eligibility and do not store it; we keep only the fact that the check was passed and when. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

Your Choices and Rights

• Turn location permission on or off in your device settings.
• Disconnect Apple Health or Health Connect at any time.
• Turn research consent on or off in the app's settings.
• Stop contributing to the community heatmap in the app's settings.
• Unsubscribe from marketing email using the link in any message.
• Control who sees your live location, routes, and waypoints from within the app.
• Remove people from a trip, or delete a trip, at any time.
• Request a copy of your data, correct it, or delete your account. Deletion is available in the app and by email.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional legal rights, including the right to know what personal information we hold, to have it deleted or corrected, to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. We do not sell personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of, but you may still make any of these requests by email and we will verify your identity through your account email before acting. Residents of the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom may also object to processing, request portability, withdraw consent, and complain to their data-protection authority.

Where Data Is Processed

Trailmonger is based in the United States and our servers are in the United States. Our content delivery network may handle information in other countries as it travels to you. If you use the app from elsewhere, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States.

Changes to This Policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top. For material changes, including any change to how location, health, or aggregated data is used or shared, we will notify you in the app or by email before the change takes effect.

Contact

For privacy questions or requests, contact admin@trailmonger.com.