Privacy Policy

Introduction

RouteWhiz ("we," "our," or "us") provides trip planning, route optimization, travel collaboration, AI-assisted planning, and related travel tools. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, when we share it, and the choices available to you when you use the RouteWhiz mobile app and related services.

Information We Collect

1. Account and Profile Information

• Account data: name, email address, authentication identifiers, and sign-in method when you create or access an account.
• Social sign-in data: limited profile information provided through Apple Sign-In or Google Sign-In, depending on the permissions you grant.
• Profile data: username, avatar, bio, and profile visibility settings you choose to add or change.
• Compliance records: timestamps and records showing when you accepted our terms or granted AI-related consent.

2. Trip, Route, and Planning Data

• Trip content: trip names, destinations, dates, notes, days, activities, routes, stops, and planning preferences.
• Travel preferences: onboarding answers, pace, budget, interests, language, and other personalization settings.
• Travel tools data: reservations, accommodations, budget items, expense splits, virtual travel members, travel phrases, and city information requests.
• Discovery activity: cities, places, and routes you search, open, save, like, duplicate, or share.

3. Files and Travel Documents

• If you upload files to a trip, we collect the file itself together with related metadata such as file type, filename, size, MIME type, storage path, and upload timestamps.
• These uploads may include travel-related documents such as passports, hotel bookings, flight tickets, activity tickets, car rental documents, or other trip files you choose to store.

4. Location and Device Information

• Location data: precise or approximate device location when you grant permission and use features that depend on your current position.
• Device data: device type, operating system, app version, language, and related technical identifiers needed to operate the service.
• Diagnostic data: crash, error, and performance information used to keep the app stable and secure.

5. Notifications and Local Device Storage

• Push notification data: if you allow notifications, we may store a push token associated with your account so we can send trip invites, friend activity, and other service notifications.
• On-device storage: RouteWhiz stores certain data locally on your device, including chat history, offline trip content, notifications, and app caches used to improve speed and offline access.

6. Collaboration, Social, and Sharing Data

• Collaboration data: trip invitations, membership records, collaborator roles, and activity within shared trips.
• Friend and social data: friend requests, blocked-user relationships, public or friends-only profile data, travel summary data, badges, passport information, and scratch map visibility according to your settings.
• Public sharing data: routes, profile details, passport achievements, or scratch map information that you explicitly choose to make available to others.

7. AI Interaction Data

• When you use AI-powered features, we collect the prompts, trip context, preferences, and other content you submit to generate responses, themed plans, route insights, hidden gems, city answers, travel phrases, or similar outputs.
• AI chat history is also stored locally on your device and automatically cleaned up after 30 days.

How We Use Your Information

• Provide core app features, including trip planning, route optimization, collaboration, budgeting, reservations, file storage, and social travel features.
• Generate AI-assisted planning outputs and travel recommendations when you choose to use AI features.
• Show maps, directions, nearby content, weather, and destination context.
• Manage subscriptions, restore purchases, and provide premium feature access.
• Send service-related messages such as trip invites, activity updates, and account or subscription notices.
• Protect the app, prevent abuse, investigate issues, and improve reliability, performance, and product quality.
• Analyze aggregated or account-linked usage patterns to understand how features are used and what needs improvement.

AI Features and Consent

• Consent first: certain AI features require your explicit in-app consent before your trip data is sent for AI processing.
• What may be shared: depending on the feature, this can include your prompt, trip destination, dates, route structure, travel preferences, notes, and related planning context.
• How long local history remains: chat history stored on your device is automatically cleaned up after 30 days.
• Revoking consent: you can revoke AI consent in the app settings. Revoking consent will disable AI features that depend on that consent.

When We Share Information

• With service providers: we use third-party providers for hosting, authentication, subscriptions, analytics, crash reporting, maps, notifications, travel content, and AI processing.
• With collaborators: if you invite others to a trip, shared trip content may be visible to and editable by those collaborators according to their role.
• With other users: if you make a route or profile element public or friends-only, the relevant information may be visible to users allowed by those settings.
• For legal or safety reasons: we may disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with law, enforce our terms, or protect users, RouteWhiz, or the public.

Third-Party Services We Use

Depending on the feature you use, RouteWhiz may rely on the following categories of third-party services:

• Supabase: authentication, database, APIs, and secure file storage.
• OpenAI: AI-generated planning, chat, and travel assistance features.
• Google services: maps, places, directions, and optional Google account sign-in.
• RevenueCat and app stores: subscription and in-app purchase management.
• Mixpanel: product analytics and feature usage measurement.
• Sentry: crash reporting and diagnostics.
• Expo notification services: push notification delivery support.
• Open-Meteo: weather and geocoding support for destination context.
• Wikipedia, Wikimedia, OpenStreetMap-based services, Photon, Nominatim, and Unsplash: destination imagery, public geographic data, search, and travel context where applicable.
• Apple Sign-In: optional authentication and related account services.

Data Retention

• Account and profile data: retained until you delete your account or ask us to remove it, unless longer retention is required by law or legitimate operational needs.
• Trip and planning data: retained until you delete the relevant content or your account.
• Uploaded trip files: retained until you delete them, the trip is deleted, or your account is removed.
• Local AI chat history: automatically cleaned up after 30 days on your device.
• Offline and cached data: may remain on your device until you clear offline content, sign out, reinstall the app, or remove the underlying content.
• Diagnostics and analytics: retained according to our operational needs and the retention rules of the providers we use.

Security

• We use technical and organizational measures designed to protect your information, including encrypted connections, access controls, and signed access patterns for private files where applicable.
• Access to account, trip, and file data is limited through app permissions, database rules, and sharing controls.
• No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, so you should also use strong device and account security practices.

Your Choices and Rights

• Account management: you can update certain account and profile details from within the app.
• Permissions: you can disable location, notification, photo library, camera, or file access through your device settings.
• AI consent: you can withdraw AI consent in the app settings.
• Deletion: you can request or initiate account deletion, which removes your account data subject to legal and operational retention requirements.
• Access and correction: you may contact us to request access to or correction of personal data we maintain about you.

Children's Privacy

RouteWhiz is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information to us, contact us and we will investigate and take appropriate action.

International Data Transfers

Your information may be processed in countries other than the one where you live, depending on the infrastructure and service providers used to operate RouteWhiz. Where applicable, we use reasonable safeguards designed to support those transfers.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect product changes, legal requirements, or operational updates. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date above. Continued use of RouteWhiz after an update means the updated policy applies to your future use of the service.

Contact Us

If you have privacy questions or requests, contact us at:

• Support: support@routewhiz.com
• Privacy: privacy@routewhiz.com