Your photos stay on your iPhone.

On your iPhone only

Your guest, its visit, its diary, your keepsake cut-outs and your settings are stored in the app's own storage on your iPhone. They are not sent to us or to anyone else. Deleting the app deletes them.

Camera photos and library photos are used only to cut out the object you pick. The original photo is not saved by Hitchling. The diary is written on your iPhone, using Apple's on-device model when available.

The passport (Apple iCloud)

So a traveler can move between phones, Hitchling saves a few records in Apple's CloudKit public database for this app:

• Traveler: a random ID, the traveler's name, look and personality, a birth date, and the birthplace city and country of its first host (if shared). These birth details stay in this record whatever the first host chooses about the world map. The first name comes from our list. The family name is made up on the first host's iPhone by Apple's on-device model; when that model is not available, fails, is too slow, or gives a name we do not accept, the family name comes from our list instead. Nothing leaves the iPhone to make the name.
• Stamps: for each host, the host number, the arrival date, and the city and country if that host allowed it. Otherwise the stamp says "Somewhere quiet". When the city is found in our built-in list of cities, the stamp also carries its region and the center point of that city from the list, once the world map is live. A stamp also records whether its host chose to show it on the world map.
• Invitations: a random invitation code, an expiry date, and who opened it first, stored as a random ID created for this install.
• Souvenirs: when a host passes a guest on, the souvenir they chose and the guest's scarf and its colour, if any, are saved as a contribution record with the traveler's ID and the host number, so the next host sees them. These are IDs from the app's own catalog only: no photos and no text. Once the world map is live, a souvenir from a stop its host shows on the map also names that stop's city.

These records contain no personal names, email addresses, phone numbers, photos or text you write. Anyone holding a traveler's ID can read its passport, which is how friends further along the journey see where it has been. Apple stores these records; we do not run servers. Creating records requires being signed in to iCloud; Apple associates them with an anonymous identifier, not with your Apple Account details.

These records (the traveler, its stamps with their city, country and dates, invitations and who opened them, and souvenirs) stay in the public database for as long as the traveler's passport exists, so later hosts can read where it has been. You can ask for your stamps and souvenirs to be deleted: write to support@noworrieslifestyle.com with the traveler's name and your host number, and we will delete them from the public database. What is kept only on your iPhone is deleted when you delete the app.

Location

If you allow it, Hitchling asks for your approximate location once when a guest arrives, turns it into a city and country on your iPhone, and puts that on the passport stamp. Once the world map is live, it then looks the city up in a list of cities built into the app, for the city's region and center point. Precise coordinates are never stored or sent: a stamp's map point is the center of its city, the same for everyone in that city, never where your iPhone was. You can turn this off in Settings; stamps then say "Somewhere quiet".

The world map

The world map is not live yet: no stop is published, and Settings has no World map switch, until we turn both on. This section describes how it will work from that point on.

The Hitchling world map is a public website that shows where travelers have been. A stop is on it only when the host of that stop chose to show it. When a guest arrives, Hitchling asks you once whether to show your stop. If you do not answer, or your stop was made before this choice existed, it stays off the map. You choose for your own stops only: nobody can show your stop for you, and you cannot show anyone else's.

For a stop you show, the map shows the traveler's name and look, the city, region and country of your stop with the center point of that city, the date the traveler arrived, and your host number. If you were the traveler's first host, it also shows when and where the traveler was born. It never shows your name, your photos, your keepsakes, your diary or where your iPhone was. A stop whose city is not in our list shows as a stop somewhere, with no city.

To take a stop off the map, open Hitchling on the iPhone that made the stop, signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID as when the stop was made, tap Settings, and switch it off under World map. The map catches up within about half an hour. Hitchling knows which stops are yours only from its data on that iPhone, and only that Apple ID can change them. Deleting the app does not take stops already shown off the map, and after the app is deleted, or on a new iPhone set up without a backup, your stops can no longer be switched off from a phone. Switch a stop off before you delete Hitchling. If you no longer have the iPhone that made a stop, write to support@noworrieslifestyle.com with the traveler's world map page and your host number, and we will take the stop off the map.

The world map is only a view of the passport. Choosing to hide a stop keeps it off our website; it does not make the passport private. Passport records stay in Apple's CloudKit public database, where anyone who knows a traveler's ID can read them, whatever each host chose about the world map.

City names, regions and center points come from GeoNames, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, Apple's push service tells your iPhone when a guest you hosted reaches a new home. No personal information is included.

Purchases

Lantern Club memberships are handled by Apple. We never see your payment details.

Children

Hitchling does not collect personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date. Questions: support@noworrieslifestyle.com.