Privacy

TrailAlong is run by Steven Le. Questions and deletion requests: le.steven88@gmail.com.

What a link holder sees. Anyone with the outing link sees the planned route and can add a track. They can also copy the route and the points marked on it into an outing of their own — never the recordings — and taking yours down does not remove their copy. Every track that is uploaded is visible to everyone who has the link, immediately, on the map and in the replay — you are told this when you upload. Some replay features may become paid later; whether a track is visible does not depend on that.

What we store. For an outing: its name, date, route and the points marked on it. For a recording you add: the name you give it, the line itself, and when it started and how long it took. Your file is read on your phone and never reaches us, and by default the first and last few hundred metres are cut off on the phone before anything is sent. For each browser that opens a link: a random ID and when it opened it, and the name you type into “Who is this?”, if you do. For rate limits: a hashed form of your IP address, deleted once its hour is up. When a page fails: the address, the error and the time, keeping the latest 1,000. Nothing else is deleted on a timer.

Cookies. Opening an outing sets one first-party cookie holding that random ID, so we can count distinct people; adding a recording sets one holding its delete link. Both expire on your device after 90 days. Your phone also keeps your name, your delete links and your list of outings in its own storage; that never leaves it.

Accounts are optional. Every link works without one. If you sign in, we store your email address and, when you use Google, your name and the address of your profile picture. We use them only to sign you in and to remember which outings are yours on every device. We never read or post anything in your Google account. Signing in sets cookies that keep you signed in on that device.

Who handles it. Supabase stores everything above, in Tokyo. Vercel serves the pages and runs the server, also in Tokyo. Google, only if you sign in with it. Through our server, so they see the request but not your IP address: OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim gets the text of a place search, BRouter the points of a route being planned, and the Hong Kong Government’s Lands Department elevation model (via the CSDI Portal), Mapzen’s elevation tiles on AWS and Waymarked Trails get which map tiles are needed. Your browser loads the map itself straight from OpenFreeMap, OpenTopoMap or Esri, depending on the map chosen; they see your IP address and which part of the map you are looking at, including in follow mode.

Getting things deleted. Taking an outing down deletes its route and every recording on it immediately. Your recording’s delete link removes just that one; without it, the outing’s owner can remove it. For anything else — your account, or a name you typed — email the address above.