Privacy policy
WhereToWonder is a travel app with a clay globe: you find places, plan trips with friends and keep memories. This policy explains what we collect, why, who helps us run the app, and the choices you have. The short version:
- We don't sell your data and we don't show ads based on it.
- Your location is used on your device during a trip. We don't store your location history.
- Comfort & Safety answers (allergies, mobility, things you'd rather avoid) are optional and private to you.
- You can delete your account and its data from inside the app at any time.
What we collect
Your account
- Email address and password (the password is stored only as a secure hash by our sign-in provider), or the basic profile from Google or Apple if you sign in with them.
- Username, bio, avatar and banner, and whether your profile is public or private.
- Birthday, used to confirm you're 13 or older. It is never shown to anyone else.
What you add
- Trips, saved places, countries you've visited or dream of, and your travel preferences (the kinds of activities you like, who you travel with, your budget level, travel radius).
- Comfort & Safety (optional): allergies, dietary needs, mobility needs and things you'd rather avoid. It's used to point out things to check at a place. Only you can read it. It's never shown on your profile, never used for advertising, never included in analytics and never sent to AI providers.
- Memories: photos you add to a trip. They're stored privately in your account.
- Community posts: photos, videos, spots and reviews you choose to share publicly, with the place they're about.
- Friends and group trips: who you're friends with, friend requests, invite codes and the trips you share.
- Messages to Venture, the in-app travel buddy, and video links you ask us to locate.
Collected automatically
- Location (only with your permission): during an active trip the app uses your device's location to tell you when you reach a stop. This happens on your device; we don't upload or keep your location history. The area of the map you're looking at is sent to place providers (see below) to find places nearby.
- How you use the app: simple events such as opening a place, saving it or adding it to a trip, linked to your account, so we can improve recommendations.
- Crash reports: technical details when the app crashes (device model, OS version, the error). They don't include your name, email or content.
- Server logs: when the app talks to our server we briefly keep technical request details such as IP address and time, for security and abuse prevention.
We don't collect your contacts, and we don't use advertising identifiers or track you across other companies' apps and websites.
How we use it
- To run the app: your account, syncing your trips between devices, friends and shared trips.
- To personalize suggestions, including "why this fits you" notes and Comfort & Safety reminders.
- To keep the community safe: shared photos, videos and text are checked automatically before they appear publicly, and repeated rule-breaking limits an account.
- To keep the service secure, prevent abuse, fix bugs and understand which features help people.
- To contact you about your account (for example sign-in codes and important changes).
Who sees your information
Other people
- Public profile: anyone can find you by username and see your username, avatar, banner, bio, visited and dream countries and travel preferences.
- Private profile (the default): only your friends see those details. Others can find your username to send a friend request.
- Friends can also see the trips you mark as saved and your saved places. People in a group trip see that trip and who's in it.
- Community posts you share are public once approved.
Services that help us run WhereToWonder
We share only what each one needs to do its job:
| Service | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Accounts, database and file storage | Your account and everything you save in the app |
| Cloudflare | Website hosting and secure connection to our server | Network traffic, including IP address |
| Google (Gemini API) | Venture's replies, locating places in video links, and checking community posts before they go public | Your Venture messages and the preferences you've chosen to share with it; video links and captions; shared photos, videos and text |
| Foursquare and Google Places | Finding places, ratings and opening hours | The map location being searched |
| Wikipedia, Wikivoyage and Wikimedia Commons | Place descriptions and photos | The map location or place being looked up |
| Open-Meteo, ExchangeRate-API and the U.S. Department of State | Weather, currency rates and travel advisories | The place or country being looked up |
| YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest and Meta | Reading the title and thumbnail of a video link you paste | The link |
| Pexels | Stock travel videos in the Explore feed | Nothing about you |
| Sentry | Crash reports | Technical crash details |
| Resend | Sending account emails | Your email address |
| Apple and Google | Sign in with Apple or Google, app delivery and purchases | What you agree to share with them |
We may also share information if the law requires it, to protect people's safety, or as part of a merger or sale of the service (you'd be told first, and this policy would still apply).
How long we keep it
- Your account data stays until you delete it or your account.
- When you delete your account we delete your profile, trips, saved places, Comfort & Safety answers, memories, community posts, reviews and friendships straight away. Copies in our backups are gone within 30 days.
- Usage events are kept to improve recommendations. When you delete your account they're unlinked from you.
- Server logs are kept for up to 30 days.
Your choices and rights
- Change or remove your profile details, preferences, Comfort & Safety answers, trips and saved places in the app at any time.
- Make your profile private (it is by default) in Account settings.
- Location: turn it off in your device settings. The app keeps working; you just won't get arrival alerts.
- Delete your account: Account → Delete account. See how deletion works.
- Get a copy of your data, correct it, or ask a question: email hello@wheretowonder.com. We reply within 30 days.
Depending on where you live (for example the EU, UK or California), you may have further rights, such as objecting to some uses or complaining to a data protection authority. We honor these requests wherever you live. We rely on providing the service you asked for, our legitimate interest in keeping it safe and useful, and your consent (for location and Comfort & Safety) as our legal bases.
Children
WhereToWonder is for people 13 and older, and the app asks for your birthday to check. If you think a child under 13 has created an account, email us and we'll delete it.
Security
Connections to the app and our services are encrypted (HTTPS), data is encrypted at rest by our database provider, and database rules make sure people can only read what they're allowed to. No system is perfect; if something goes wrong that affects your data, we'll tell you.
Where data is processed
We and the services above are based mainly in the United States. If you use WhereToWonder from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States and other countries where those services operate, with appropriate safeguards.
Changes
If we change this policy we'll update the date at the top, and for important changes we'll tell you in the app before they take effect.
Contact
Questions or requests: hello@wheretowonder.com