Privacy policy

This policy covers the Trailbuddy iPhone app, its Apple Watch companion and the website at trailbuddy.run. Trailbuddy collects what it needs to record, analyse and share your running. It shows no ads, sells no data and runs no advertising trackers, analytics or crash-reporting services in the app.

Who we are

Trailbuddy is made by Kaine Ventures, LLC, a limited liability company registered in Texas, USA. Kaine Ventures, LLC decides how and why your personal data is processed (it is the "controller"), and "we" in this policy means Kaine Ventures, LLC. Questions and requests go to hello@trailbuddy.run.

What Trailbuddy collects and why

Your account

Trailbuddy signs you in through Clerk, with the methods the sign-in screen offers (Sign in with Apple or your email address). It stores your email address, your name and the username you choose, and uses them to sign you in, show your profile to the people you connect with and reach you about your account. If you hide your email with Sign in with Apple, Trailbuddy receives Apple's relay address instead of your own. When you sign up you confirm that you are 16 or older and accept the terms; Trailbuddy stores the terms version and the time you accepted it.

Your profile

Everything beyond your name and username is optional: bio, location, birthday, gender, weight, height, maximum and resting heart rate, and a profile and cover image. Trailbuddy uses your heart rates to set your heart-rate zones and shows your profile to the people described under who can see what. Your coach sees your birthday, gender, weight, height and heart rates only if you allow it for that coach.

Your runs

For every run you record, Trailbuddy stores the GPS route, laps and times, distance, elevation and its source (the phone's barometer or GPS), elevation gain and loss, heart rate from a Bluetooth heart-rate strap, cadence, which stretches you ran and which you hiked, the temperature and weather at your start, and what you add: the shoes you ran in, the trail surface, notes, how the run felt, and photos and videos. From these Trailbuddy computes your laps, routes, climbs and descents, grade-adjusted pace, progress and shoe mileage, and shares the run with the people you choose.

Your shoes

The shoes you add (their name, the distance already on them and the retirement distance you set) are stored with your account so Trailbuddy can count each pair's kilometers from your runs and remind you when a pair reaches its retirement distance.

Coaches, clubs and the feed

Trailbuddy stores the comments and likes you leave, the clubs you create or join, your coach and athlete connections with the permissions you set for each coach, and the runs a coach plans for you. These exist so you can train with your coach and club.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, Trailbuddy stores your device's push token, your app language and your time zone. Apple Push Notification service uses the token to deliver notifications, and Trailbuddy uses the language and time zone to write them in your language with the right days. Trailbuddy also keeps your notification inbox and the notification types you switch on or off.

Safety and moderation

Trailbuddy stores the reports you file, the reports filed about your content and the people you block. The person you report doesn't see who reported them. When you post a comment, a run note or other text that others see, Trailbuddy checks it against a list of objectionable words and rejects it if it matches. These records let us review reports, remove content and suspend accounts that break the terms.

Problems you report

The app sends no crash reports or diagnostics to us. If you write to us about a problem, we see what you include in your message.

Location

Trailbuddy asks for location access "While Using the App" and uses your location while you record a run, to draw the route, time laps, climbs and descents and measure distance. While a run is recording, Trailbuddy keeps using your location with the screen locked until you finish the run. When you open the Trails tab and location access is already allowed, Trailbuddy sends your current position to its server once to list the trail areas within 25 km; the position is used for that search and not stored. Trailbuddy doesn't track your location outside a run and never asks for "Always" access. A run's route shows where you ran, including where you started and finished, to everyone who can see that run.

Weather

When you finish a run, Trailbuddy sends the coordinates and the time of the run's start to Apple WeatherKit once and saves the temperature and conditions it returns with the run. Apple processes the request to provide the weather service, under Apple's own privacy policy. Trailbuddy shows the weather next to your times and never uses it for anything else.

Motion and barometer data

During a run Trailbuddy reads your phone's motion sensors and barometer. It calculates your cadence, whether you are running, hiking or walking, and your elevation on the phone, and saves only those results with the run. The raw sensor readings stay on your phone.

Apple Health

With your permission, Trailbuddy writes each finished run to Apple Health as a running workout with its route, distance, heart rate, elevation gain and loss, and pauses. It reads your resting heart rate to fill in your profile; once you save the profile, Trailbuddy stores that value with your profile like any other profile field. While a run records, the Apple Watch app reads your live heart rate to show it on the watch when no chest strap is connected; that reading is neither saved nor sent anywhere. Trailbuddy reads nothing else from Apple Health.

Trailbuddy never uses data from Apple Health for advertising or marketing, never sells it, never shares it with data brokers and never stores it in iCloud. You can change or withdraw Apple Health access at any time in the Health app or in iOS Settings.

Who can see what

You choose a visibility for every run:

• Private: only you.
• Connections & Clubs: you, your coaches, the athletes you coach and the members of your clubs.
• Public: every signed-in Trailbuddy user. Trailbuddy doesn't publish runs on the open web.

Other signed-in Trailbuddy users can see your public profile: name, username, profile and cover images, bio, location, club and, if you coach, your coach profile. Your email address stays visible only to you. For each coach, you decide whether that coach can plan runs for you and see your health profile. A coach who can plan runs can create, edit and delete only the planned runs that coach created, never your recorded runs. When you block someone, Trailbuddy hides your content from them and theirs from you.

Trailbuddy stores photos, videos and route files at long, random web addresses and gives those addresses only to people who can see the run or profile they belong to. Anyone who obtains an exact address can open that file, so share it with care.

The website

If you join the waitlist, we store the email address you give us, with the page language and the country your connection comes from (worked out from your IP address, which we don't keep), in PostHog and in our waitlist records on Convex, and use it only to tell you about Trailbuddy: a confirmation email, an invitation to the beta when a place opens, and, once you confirm, occasional updates. These emails go out through our email provider Resend, and every one has an unsubscribe link. If you apply to the TestFlight cohort, we store your application (name, email, role, club, country, home trail, group size, focus and notes) in PostHog and use it to select and contact cohort members. No sharing, no selling.

We use PostHog to understand how the site is used: which pages are read, which buttons are clicked and which errors the site hits. Requests go through our own domain. PostHog tells page views apart with a random identifier that lives only in the open page: the site sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. No ad networks, no social media pixels and no third-party fonts or content delivery networks at runtime.

Service providers

Trailbuddy runs on these providers. Each processes your data only to provide its service to us:

• Clerk (USA): sign-in and account identity.
• Convex (USA): the database and server functions that store and serve your account, profile, runs, shoes and social content, and our waitlist records.
• Cloudflare R2 (global network): file storage for run routes, photos and videos, profile and cover images, and club logos and banners.
• Apple: Sign in with Apple, Apple Push Notification service, WeatherKit for the weather at your start, and Apple Health on your device.
• PostHog (USA): website analytics, the waitlist and cohort applications. PostHog is used on the website only, not in the app.
• Resend (USA): waitlist emails (confirmation, beta invitation and updates).
• Vercel (USA): hosting for the website.

We may also disclose data when the law requires it, to protect people's safety, or as part of a sale or reorganization of the business, in which case this policy continues to apply to your data.

International transfers

Kaine Ventures, LLC is based in the USA, and the app's and the website's data is stored and processed in the USA and on Cloudflare's global network. If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, your data is transferred to the USA. For these transfers we rely on the safeguards our providers offer, such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses in their data processing terms and, where a provider is certified, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK and Swiss extensions.

How long we keep data

• Account, profile, runs, shoes and social content: as long as your account exists, or until you delete them.
• After you delete your account: Trailbuddy deletes your data from the database and file storage, and your sign-in identity, within 30 days. Our providers delete the remaining copies in their backups and logs on their standard schedules.
• Waitlist emails and cohort applications: until Trailbuddy no longer needs them for the launch and the cohort, or until you ask us to delete them.
• We keep data longer only where the law requires it or to handle a dispute or a moderation appeal.

Your rights and choices

In the app you can:

• Edit or clear your profile fields and change each run's visibility.
• Set each coach's permissions or remove a coach.
• Switch each notification type on or off.
• Change location, Apple Health and notification access in iOS Settings.
• Delete your account and all its data in Settings > Delete Account.

By email to hello@trailbuddy.run you can ask for a copy of your data in a machine-readable format, ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it. We answer within one month and may ask you to confirm the request from the email address on your account.

EEA, UK and Switzerland. You have the rights of access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability and objection, and you can withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing before the withdrawal. We process your data to provide the service you signed up for (contract), including the weather lookup for your runs; with your consent for Apple Health, location, the health details in your profile and the waitlist; and in our legitimate interests for security, abuse prevention, moderation and understanding how the website is used. You can complain to the data protection authority where you live.

California and other US states. You can ask to know, correct and delete the personal information we hold about you, and we won't treat you differently for asking. We don't sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we use sensitive personal information only to provide the service.

Children

Trailbuddy is for people aged 16 and over, and every account confirms this at signup. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe a child under 16 has an account, email hello@trailbuddy.run and we will delete it.

Security

Trailbuddy uses TLS for all traffic between the app, the website and our providers, and our providers encrypt stored data at rest. The app uploads files through short-lived upload links and never holds storage credentials. Access to production data is limited to what running and supporting Trailbuddy requires. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes. We announce material changes in the app before they take effect.

Contact

Kaine Ventures, LLC, Texas, USA. Privacy questions and requests: hello@trailbuddy.run. Help with the app is on the support page.