Privacy Policy

TrekAhead · last updated 1 October 2026

What stays on your device

These are stored only in the app's own storage on your phone. They are not transmitted, backed up to us, or shared:

• Notes you write about a hut
• Routes and trips you plan or save — unless you choose to share one, which is covered below
• Your settings, such as your chosen region and difficulty ceiling
• Hut photographs the app has downloaded so they work without a signal

Deleting the app removes all of it. There is no copy anywhere else — unless you have chosen to send something in, which is covered next.

If you add a photo, leave a review or report something

This is entirely optional — the rest of the app works exactly the same if you never do.

Adding a photo to a hut shares it. There is no private-only option: every photo you add is sent to be checked and then shown to other walkers. A copy is also kept on your phone so you can see it straight away, and you can delete it at any time. If you would rather keep a photo to yourself, keep it in your own photo library rather than adding it here.

Reports are different: they are never shown to anyone else. If you tell us a hut has closed, that a photograph is wrong, or that a hut is missing from the map, that goes to one person who checks it. It is not published, and no other walker sees it.

Reporting a hut that is missing

There are two ways to do this, and they differ in exactly one respect, so both are set out here.

Pressing and holding the map sends the point you pressed — a place you chose. It is not your own position, and the app does not read your location to do it.

The button on the Account tab is for when you are standing at the hut, and it does read your position — that is the whole point of it. It asks for permission first, takes one reading, and sends that single point with the report. Nothing is tracked, nothing is kept, and refusing simply sends you to the press-and-hold method instead.

You can add a photograph, and it helps. If you do, the location recorded inside that photograph is removed on your phone before it is sent. Phone cameras store where a picture was taken to within a few metres; you are offering a picture of a hut, not a record of where you stood. Removing it after it arrived would still mean it had arrived — so it is removed first. Photographs in a format we cannot do this to are refused rather than sent.

What is sent

• The photograph itself, and any caption you write with it
• Your star rating and any comment you write
• Which hut it is about, and the date and time you sent it
• For a report: what you are reporting and anything you write about it
• For a missing hut: its name, the point you marked on the map, and the type if you chose one
• For a shared route: the huts on it, their order, and the trail between them
• The identifier of your account — see below. Your email address is not attached to the contribution itself and is never shown to other walkers

Your account

You do not need an account to use the app. The map, every hut, every trail and every photograph are there the moment you open it, with nothing asked for.

You do need one to save a trip, to share a route, and to send in a photo, a review or a report. An account is an email address and a password. No name, no telephone number, no date of birth, and nothing is ever asked of your contacts or your calendar.

Your address is used to let you sign in on a new phone, to send a password reset if you ask for one, and to reach you if there is a question about something you shared. It is never shown to other walkers, never attached to a photograph or a review, never sold, and never used to send you anything you did not ask for.

Accounts are handled by Supabase, which stores the address and a secure hash of your password — we never see the password itself.

Deleting your account removes it, your email address and everything it holds, including any route you have shared. Account → Delete my data or my account, in the app. You can also delete only what you have sent in and keep the account.

The identifier behind it

The app creates a random identifier for your device before you have an account, so that it can talk to the server at all. Adding an email address attaches it to that same identifier rather than starting a new one — which is what keeps anything you had already sent. Under data-protection law the identifier counts as personal data, which is why it is described here.

Where it is stored

Contributions are stored by Supabase, which hosts the database and the photographs on our behalf. They process the data only to provide that service, and do not use it for anything else.

The servers are in Ireland, within the European Union. Your contributions are not transferred outside the EU or the UK.

Nothing appears until it has been checked

Every photograph and review is read by a person before anyone else can see it. Until then it is visible only to you. Something that is not approved is never published.

How long it is kept

Until you delete it, or until the app stops being published — at which point everything is deleted. Something you submitted that was rejected is removed once it has been dealt with.

Why we are allowed to hold it

Because you chose to send it — consent, under Article 6(1)(a) of the UK and EU GDPR. You can withdraw that at any time by deleting what you sent, and doing so does not affect anything else in the app.

Sharing a route with someone

A saved trip stays on your phone unless you choose to share it. Sharing one uploads the route itself — the huts you picked, the order you walk them in, and the trail between them — and gives you an eight-character code.

Anyone you give that code to can open the route and keep their own copy. What they see is the walk and nothing else: not your email address, not your name, and nothing about any other trip you have saved. The code is the only way in; a route cannot be found by searching, and the list of shared routes is not public.

You can stop sharing at any time, from the trip in your Saved trips, and the code stops working for everyone. A copy someone already saved to their own phone is theirs and stays with them — the same as if you had told them which huts to book.

Opening a route someone shared with you needs no account and tells them nothing about you.

Your location

If you allow it, the app asks for your location so the map can show where you are and you can check you are on the right trail. This is foreground only — the app does not track you in the background.

Your position is handed straight to the map to draw on screen. It is not sent to us or to anyone else, and it is not stored. You can refuse the permission and the rest of the app works normally.

There is one deliberate exception, and you start it yourself: reporting a missing hut from the Account tab takes a single reading of where you are and sends that one point with the report, because you are telling us a hut is where you are standing. Reporting by pressing and holding the map does not read your position at all. Nothing else in the app ever sends your location anywhere.

What the app connects to

TrekAhead ships with its hut data and photo list built in, so most of it works offline. Some features do reach the internet, and when they do, the service on the other end necessarily sees your device's IP address and what was requested — as with any app or web page. We receive none of this.

Apple Maps or Google Maps draws the base map, under the policy of whichever your phone uses.

What we do not do

• No account needed to look at anything — the map, the huts and the trails are open to everyone
• No name, telephone number, date of birth, contacts or calendar — an account is an email address and a password, and that is all we ever ask for
• No analytics, crash reporting, advertising or tracking of any kind
• No third-party software development kits that collect data
• No selling or sharing of personal information, ever
• No profiling, and no automated decisions about you
• No reading of your photo library — the app sees only the picture you pick

Children

TrekAhead is suitable for all ages. Nothing is collected from anyone who simply uses the app. Because anyone who sends in a photograph or review is sharing it publicly, we ask that people under 16 do so only with a parent's agreement.

Your rights

If you have never sent anything in, we hold no personal data about you and there is nothing to look up or erase. The data on your phone is yours: delete individual photos and notes in the app, or remove everything by deleting the app.

If you have sent something in, you have the following rights over it:

• See it — your contributions are shown to you in the app, including any still being checked
• Correct it — edit your review at any time; an edited review is checked again before it reappears
• Erase it — Account → Delete my data or my account. The first removes your photographs, reviews, reports and shared routes permanently; the second removes the account and your email address with them
• Take back a shared route — Saved trips → share → Stop sharing, and the code stops working
• Object, or withdraw consent — deleting your contributions does exactly that
• Take it with you — ask at the address below and we will send you what we hold, which will be the photographs and text you sent, any point you marked on the map, and their dates

You do not have to ask us to exercise any of these — they are all in the app. If you would rather write to us, or if something is not working, use the contact address below and we will act within one month.

If you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to your national data-protection authority. In the Netherlands that is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the updated version appears here before the app release it applies to.

Contact

Questions about this policy or the app: trekaheadapp@gmail.com