In short: Traveltips has no analytics and no advertising. What you save, pin and plan stays on your own iPhone. You can sign in to write and share, or look around as a guest without signing in at all. The only things that leave your phone are the tips and routes you choose to share — and those are meant to be public, so think of them as something you are publishing rather than something you are storing.
Who I am
Traveltips is made by Angelica Brenden, an independent app developer in Norway. If you have any questions about this policy, or you want something removed, email Angelicabrenden@gmail.com.
Signing in, or not
You can use the app without an account. Choosing “Just have a look” lets you read every tip, search, browse the map and see what is near you. As a guest you cannot save a tip, write one, or plan a trip — and nothing about you is collected.
Signing in with Apple gives the app your name, and your email address if you choose to share it rather than hide it. Signing in with Google gives it the name and email on that account. Both are kept on your phone and used for one thing: to suggest the nickname that goes on your tips. Neither is sent to me, and neither is shared with anyone.
Signing in is not what identifies you in the shared database. That is still the anonymous iCloud identifier described below.
What stays on your phone
These never leave your device, and I cannot see them:
- Tips you have saved with the bookmark
- Trips you have made, with their names and dates
- Places you have pinned on a trip, and the notes you wrote on them — unless you publish that trip as a travel route
- The destinations you have looked at, and anything you have searched for
- People you have blocked, and tips you have reported and hidden
- Your nickname, and whether you prefer light or dark mode
- Your profile picture and cover photo, if you set them
- The countries, regions and places you have ticked off as visited, and the world map built from them
- Which stops on a trip you have crossed off, and when
All of it is stored inside the app on your phone. Delete the app and it is gone.
What becomes public when you share a tip
Sharing a tip is publishing. When you add one, this is sent to the app's shared database and becomes readable by everyone using Traveltips:
- The title and text you wrote
- The category you chose
- The place it belongs to, and the point on the map if you set one
- Any photos you attached
- The nickname you chose
Use a first name or something made up as your nickname. It is shown on every tip you share, and changing it later only affects new tips — the ones already published keep the name they went out with.
Nothing is visible to anyone else until I have read it and approved it. Until then only you can see it, marked as waiting.
What becomes public when you publish a travel route
A trip is private until you publish it. If you do, the name, your description, the dates, and every pinned place with its note and its position become public, under your nickname. The same approval step applies: I read the whole route before it goes out.
You can take a published route back down at any time, from the trip itself. It stays on your phone either way.
Travelling with other people
Inviting someone to a trip is a different thing from publishing it. An invitation sends them a link to a private copy of that one trip, held in your own iCloud rather than in the public database. Only the people you invite can open it, and you can withdraw their access at any time from the trip.
Inside a shared trip, everyone invited can see the trip's name and dates, its places and notes, who added each place, and who crossed one off and when. The nicknames of the people on the trip are visible to each other. Nothing from a shared trip is public, and nothing from it reaches me.
This part of the app runs on Apple's iCloud sharing. Apple handles the invitation link itself and can therefore see that a share exists; its privacy policy covers that.
How many people saved a tip
When you bookmark a tip, that is recorded so the person who wrote it can see how many people found it useful. They are only ever shown a number. Neither they nor I can see who saved what.
Where the shared content is kept
Shared tips and routes live in Apple's CloudKit, in a database belonging to this app. There is no server of my own: the app identifies you through an anonymous identifier that Apple generates for this app alone. It is not your Apple Account, not your email address and not your name, and it cannot be used to recognise you in any other app.
That identifier is what makes it possible to show you your own tips, let you delete them, and keep one person from reporting the same tip over and over. Apple's own privacy policy covers how they handle the data they store on my behalf.
Location
If you allow it, the app uses your location for two things: to show where you are on the map, and to list tips near you. It is used while you have the app open, it is accurate to about a kilometre, and it is never sent anywhere or written down. Say no and the rest of the app works exactly as before.
One thing does leave the phone: if a trip you have planned has dates and places, the app asks Apple's weather service what the forecast is for those places. The coordinates of the places go to Apple for that lookup. Your own position is not sent, and the request is not tied to you.
Notifications
Notifications are used for two things. I am told when a tip is waiting for approval, and — only if you switch it on under Settings — you are told the evening before a wet day on one of your trips. The weather warning is worked out on your phone from a forecast fetched earlier, so nothing is sent to you from outside. The app never sends you marketing.
What the app does not do
- No analytics, tracking or usage statistics
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers
- No third-party software collecting anything in the background
- No selling or sharing of data with anyone
- No behavioural profile of you, anywhere. The profile page in the app is yours, it lives on your phone, and it is not visible to anyone else
- No password to pick, and none stored
The maps come from Apple Maps and the forecasts from Apple Weather, both part of iOS. The photos of destinations are from Wikimedia Commons under free licences, and the photographer and licence for each one are named in the app under Settings → Photo credits.
Removing what you have shared
You are in control of your own content:
- A single tip can be deleted from the tip itself
- Settings → Delete all my tips removes everything you have shared, for everyone, in one go
- A published route can be taken down from the trip
- A shared trip stops being shared the moment you remove the people you invited, or delete the trip
- Signing out from Settings removes your name and email from the phone. Deleting the app removes everything held on the phone at once
If something is already gone from the app but you believe a copy is still out there, email me and I will remove it.
Reporting and blocking
Every shared tip and route can be reported, and every contributor can be blocked. Reporting hides it from you straight away. Blocking is yours alone, stays on your phone, and the other person is never told. I read what is reported and remove anything that should not be there.
Children
Traveltips is not aimed at children, and I do not knowingly collect anything from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has shared something through the app, email me and I will remove it.
Changes
If what the app stores changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top is updated.