Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

The Service is operated by Ryan Wing Fung Cheng, an individual based in Hong Kong SAR, who is responsible for the personal information described in this Privacy Policy. Ryan Wing Fung Cheng is also our privacy officer: the person in charge of protecting personal information and of handling privacy questions, requests and complaints. You may contact us at any time at support@trippeers.com, or at privacy@trippeers.com for privacy matters. Our postal address is available on request.

2. Information We Collect

Information you provide to us:

• Account information: your first and last name, email address and password. Passwords are processed by our authentication provider and stored only in hashed form; we do not have access to them.
• Date of birth: the month and year of birth you enter when creating an account. This information is processed solely on your device to confirm that you meet our minimum age requirement, and it is never transmitted to us or stored. Your device retains only the result of this check.
• Trip content: information that you and other members add to a trip, including trip names, destinations and dates; ideas, votes and comments; itineraries; expenses, cost allocations and settlements between members; travel details such as flight or train numbers, airports, routes and times; accommodation details, Wi-Fi credentials, booking confirmation numbers and notes; and checklist items.
• Private reactions: when you choose Pass or Later on an idea, that choice is saved to your account so the app can show it to you again. It is visible only to you.
• Mentions and notifications: when you tag someone in a comment by typing @ and their name, we save which members were tagged, and create a notification for each of them that records who tagged them, in which comment and trip, and whether they have opened it or marked it as unread.
• Profile information: we keep your Trip Recap title for each finished trip, and the country of each trip, which the app works out from the trip's destination. We use these, together with the month your account was created, to show the profile described in section 4.
• Information about others: the names of guests (people without an account) you add to a trip, any emergency contact (a name and phone number) you add to Trip Info, and any links or addresses you share.
• Communications and safety information: content reports you submit (including a copy of the reported idea or comment, the reason and any details you add), the users you block, and any correspondence you send us.

Information collected automatically:

• Technical information: our hosting providers process limited technical data necessary to operate and secure the Service, such as IP address, device and browser type, and the date and time of requests, which may be recorded in server logs.
• Security records: to stop invite codes from being guessed, we keep the IP address used each time an invite is previewed, and a record each time an account enters a wrong invite code. These records are deleted within two days.
• On-device preferences: settings such as your display theme and layout preferences are stored locally on your device and are not transmitted to us.
• Passport and Trip Recap pictures: these images are created on your device from your trip information. They are not uploaded to us, and they leave your device only if you choose to save or share them.
• Visit statistics: we use Vercel Web Analytics to count visits and see which pages are used, so we can improve the Service. It does not use cookies, cannot identify you, and does not link visits together for more than 24 hours. It receives the page address (with invite codes and sign-in details removed), the referring site, your approximate location (country, region and city) and your device, operating system and browser type.
• Crash reports: if part of the app stops working, it sends us a short error report so we can fix it. It contains the error message, the technical location in our code where it happened and the page address (with invite codes and sign-in details removed), and, if you are signed in, your account ID. It is not designed to contain your trip contents, name, email or password, although an error message can occasionally include a few words that were on the screen. Crash reports are deleted after 90 days.
• Bot protection: to stop automated abuse, signing up, signing in and requesting account emails may be checked by Cloudflare Turnstile, which looks at technical signals from your browser to tell people and bots apart. It does not use advertising cookies.
• Notification token: if you allow notifications in the iPhone app, Apple gives your device an address for notifications (a "device token"). We save it to your account, together with your notification setting, the sign-in it was saved from and when the app last saved it, so we can send you notifications, such as when someone tags you in a comment. It is not used for advertising or tracking.

We do not use advertising or third-party tracking technologies, and our visit statistics do not identify you. We do not track you across other companies' apps or websites, and we do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising. Because the Service does not track users, it does not respond differently to browser "Do Not Track" signals.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use personal information only to:

• provide and maintain the Service, including creating and authenticating your account and displaying trip content to the members of each trip;
• send service communications, such as email verification and password reset messages, and respond to your inquiries;
• protect the safety and integrity of the Service, including preventing abuse, reviewing reports of objectionable content and enforcing our Terms of Use;
• diagnose problems and improve the Service; and
• comply with applicable law and respond to lawful requests.

At the end of a trip, the Trip Recap automatically gives members playful titles (for example, "The Ghost" or "The Bank") based on activity within that trip. These titles are visible to the trip's members. Your most frequent title may also appear on your profile (see section 4), except teasing titles such as "The Ghost", which never appear there. Titles have no effect outside the Service, and you can hide your own title in the Trip Recap, which also removes it from your profile. Apart from this, we do not use personal information for automated decision-making or profiling.

4. How Information Is Shared Within the Service

Trip members: your name and all content added to a trip, including Wi-Fi credentials and booking confirmation numbers, are visible to every member of that trip. Your votes on ideas show your name to the other members. Your Pass and Later choices are the exception: they are visible only to you. Please share only information you are comfortable disclosing to all members.

Profiles: people who are on a trip with you can open your profile, which shows your name, the month you joined, how many finished trips you have been on, how many countries and days they covered, your most frequent Trip Recap title (unless it is a teasing title or you have hidden your title) and the trips you have shared with that person. It shows only these totals: it never shows the names, destinations or dates of trips that person was not on. Your profile is never shown to someone you have blocked or who has blocked you.

Mentions: when someone tags you in a comment, you receive a notification in the app and, if you have allowed notifications in the iPhone app, on your device. A notification on your device shows who tagged you, the idea, the trip and the comment, and depending on your device settings it may appear on your lock screen. Only you can see your notifications. Other members of the trip can see who was tagged in a comment, just as they can see the comment itself. If either of you has blocked the other, tagging does not send a notification. You can turn device notifications off at any time in Settings in the app or in your device's settings.

Invite codes and links: anyone with a trip's invite code or link can view a preview of the trip (its name, destination, dates and members' first names), join the trip and view its content. Please share invite codes only with people you trust. Each trip's Organizer may remove members, hosts may remove guests, and you may leave a trip at any time.

Reports and blocks: reports are visible only to us. We do not disclose a reporter's identity to the reported user, and blocked users are not notified.

5. Service Providers and Other Disclosures

We engage the following service providers to operate the Service. They process personal information only on our behalf, and we rely on them to provide the same or equal protection of your information as described in this Privacy Policy:

• Supabase Pte. Ltd. (Supabase): database hosting, account authentication and data storage.
• Vercel Inc.: website and application hosting, and anonymous visit statistics (Vercel Web Analytics).
• Cloudflare, Inc.: bot protection (Cloudflare Turnstile) when signing up, signing in and requesting account emails.
• GitHub, Inc.: private storage of a nightly backup copy of our database, so information can be restored if something goes wrong. Each copy is deleted automatically after 14 days.
• Apple Inc.: delivery of notifications to your device through the Apple Push Notification service. Each notification includes your device token, the text shown on your device (who tagged you, the idea, the trip and the comment), internal reference numbers that let the app open the right comment, and your number of unread notifications. Apple may hold a notification for a short time if your device is off.
• Plus Five Five, Inc. (Resend): delivery of account emails (such as email confirmations and password resets) and of content report alerts to us, which include the reported content, the name of the person who posted it, the trip's name, the reason given and any details the reporter added.
• Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft 365, provided through GoDaddy): our email inbox, for support, privacy and legal correspondence.
• AYR Tech (Pty) Ltd (ExchangeRate-API): currency exchange rates. Your device asks for the rates directly, so the provider receives the currency code along with your IP address and browser type, as with any website request; no account information is sent.

Third-party services: when you choose to open a link to Apple Maps, Google Maps, Google Calendar or a booking website, you leave the Service, and that provider's own privacy policy applies.

Legal and business transfers: we may disclose information where required by law or legal process, to protect the rights, property or safety of our users or others, or in connection with a transfer of the Service to a new operator, in which case this Privacy Policy will continue to govern your information.

6. International Transfers

We operate the Service from Hong Kong, and our service providers (section 5) store and process personal information outside Hong Kong and outside your country of residence, mainly in the United States:

• Supabase Pte. Ltd. (a Singapore company): our database, including your account and trip content, stored on servers in the United States. Privacy contact: privacy@supabase.com.
• Vercel Inc. (United States): the website and app pages, and visit statistics, from servers in the United States (pages may also be delivered from Vercel servers closer to you). Privacy contact: privacy@vercel.com.
• Cloudflare, Inc. (United States): bot protection, processed in Cloudflare's data centers around the world. Privacy contact: privacyquestions@cloudflare.com.
• GitHub, Inc. (United States): the nightly backup copy of our database, stored in the United States. Privacy contact: privacy@github.com.
• Apple Inc. (United States): delivery of notifications to your device. Privacy contact: apple.com/legal/privacy/contact.
• Plus Five Five, Inc. (Resend, United States): account emails and report alerts, sent from the United States. Privacy contact: support@resend.com.
• Microsoft Corporation (United States): our email inbox (Microsoft 365). Privacy contact: through Microsoft's privacy statement at microsoft.com/privacy.
• AYR Tech (Pty) Ltd (ExchangeRate-API, South Africa): receives your IP address and browser type when your device asks it for exchange rates. Privacy contact: support@exchangerate-api.com.

Each provider is bound by its agreement with us (a data processing agreement or equivalent terms) to keep personal information secure and to use it only to provide its service to us. We choose providers that do so and check their terms when they change. While your information is in another country, it may also be accessible to that country's courts, law enforcement and national security authorities under its laws.

7. Data Retention and Deletion

We retain personal information for as long as your account remains active or as needed to provide the Service.

Account deletion: you may delete your account at any time within the app by going to Settings, selecting your name and choosing Delete Account. Deletion permanently removes your login credentials and profile, together with the ideas, comments, votes and checklist items you contributed, and the travel plans you added that nobody else is on (you are removed from the others, which stay for the people on them). To preserve the accuracy of shared balances, expenses you paid or took part in remain with the relevant trip, but your name is removed and they are attributed to a "Former member".

Trip deletion: when a trip's Organizer deletes the trip, all of its content is permanently deleted for every member.

Notifications: notifications are deleted after 90 days, when you clear them, and immediately when the comment they refer to, the trip or your account is deleted. To stop anyone tagging the same person too often, we also keep a record of who tagged whom and when; it is used for one hour and deleted within a day after that, or as soon as either account is deleted.

Reports: we keep each content report, including its copy of the reported idea or comment, for 12 months, even if the content, the trip or an account is deleted in the meantime, so we can deal with repeated abuse. A copy of each report alert also stays in our support inbox.

Notification tokens: we delete a device token when the sign-in it was saved from ends (for example when you log out, which signs you out on every device, or when you change your password, which signs out your other devices), when Apple tells us it is no longer valid, when the app has not saved it for 90 days (the app saves it each time it starts and at least once a day while you use it), and when you delete your account. Records that are due to be deleted are removed by an automatic clean-up that runs every night.

We keep a nightly backup copy of our database for 14 days, after which each copy is deleted automatically. Information you delete may remain in these backups, and in our service providers' backup systems, for that limited period before being removed. We may retain limited information for longer where required by law, or where necessary to resolve disputes or enforce our agreements.

8. Your Rights

Subject to applicable law, you may request to:

• access a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• correct personal information that is inaccurate;
• delete your personal information; and
• make an inquiry or complaint about how your personal information is handled.

You can view and correct most of your information directly within the app. To make any other request, contact us at privacy@trippeers.com. We will respond within 40 days, in accordance with the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) of Hong Kong, and we may need to verify your identity first. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Hong Kong.

Residents of certain jurisdictions, including some US states, Japan, South Korea and Canada, may have additional rights under local law (see sections 10 to 13). We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights.

9. Cookies, Local Storage and Do Not Track

The Service does not use advertising or analytics cookies, tracking pixels or similar technologies, and we do not track you across other apps or websites. We store only what is strictly necessary on your device: a sign-in token that keeps you signed in, a copy of the trips on your account so you can view them without an internet connection (it stays on your device and is deleted when you sign out), the name and email address of the account last signed in on the device so the Service can open those trips without an internet connection (also deleted when you sign out), in the iPhone app, your device's notification token, when it was last saved, and whether you have answered the notification prompt, a copy of the Service's own program files (no personal information) so it can open without an internet connection, your appearance setting (light, dark or matching your device; the iPhone app also remembers it so its opening screen matches), whether haptics (small taps) are switched on in the iPhone app, and small reminders, such as whether you have seen the welcome tour or a one-time prompt, the Trip Recap titles you have already saved, an invite code you opened before signing in, which sections you have collapsed, items you have already reported, which help tips you have seen, recently downloaded exchange rates, the sample trip and any changes you make to it (it is made up and never sent to us), and whether this device did not pass the age check at sign-up. Signing out deletes the sign-in token, the copy of your trips, the remembered name and email address, and the notification token. The other items stay on the device until you clear Trippeers' website data in your browser or, in the iPhone app, delete the app.

Do Not Track: some browsers can send a "Do Not Track" signal. Because we do not track you across third-party websites or services, and do not allow third parties to do so through the Service, the Service works the same way whether or not a Do Not Track signal is sent.

10. Additional Information for United States Residents

This section applies to residents of the United States, including California, and supplements the rest of this Privacy Policy.

In the past 12 months we have collected the following categories of personal information, from you and from other members of your trips, for the purposes described in Section 3: identifiers (such as your name, email address, IP address in security records and, if you allow notifications, your device's notification token); content you and others add to trips; financial information you log, such as expenses and who owes whom; approximate location (city level) from our visit statistics; and internet or device activity, such as crash reports and limited technical data recorded in our hosting providers' server logs.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We have not done so in the past 12 months, and we do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information other than as needed to provide the Service.

Depending on your state of residence, you may have the right to know what personal information we have collected about you and to receive a copy of it, to correct it, and to delete it, and the right not to receive discriminatory treatment for exercising these rights. You can delete your account directly within the app. For any other request, email us at privacy@trippeers.com from the address linked to your account. We may need to verify your identity, and an authorized agent may submit a request on your behalf with your written permission. We will respond within 45 days, or sooner where another law in this Privacy Policy requires it. If we deny your request, you may appeal by replying to our response.

11. Additional Information for Users in Japan

This section applies to users in Japan, under the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI), and supplements the rest of this Privacy Policy.

Operator: Ryan Wing Fung Cheng, an individual in Hong Kong SAR (there is no company or representative). Our postal address is available on request. Contact for requests and complaints: privacy@trippeers.com.

Purposes: we use personal information only for the purposes in section 3. We do not provide it to third parties, except to the service providers listed in sections 5 and 6, which process it on our behalf.

Your requests: you may ask us to tell you our purposes of use; to disclose the personal information we hold about you (including electronically, and including records of any provision to third parties); to correct, add to or delete it; to stop using or erase it; or to stop providing it to third parties. Email privacy@trippeers.com from the address linked to your account. We respond without undue delay and charge no fee. We may need to verify your identity first.

Providers in foreign countries: our service providers are third parties in foreign countries (mainly the United States; see section 6 for each one and its country). Each has established a system, through its agreement with us, to continuously take measures equivalent to those required of businesses under the APPI. We check this periodically, will stop providing information to a provider if it can no longer meet this standard, and will give you information about these measures on request.

Our security control measures:

• Basic policy and rules: we handle personal information only as described in this Privacy Policy, and keep written rules for how it is collected, used, stored, deleted and backed up.
• Organization: the operator is responsible for all handling of personal information, reviews it regularly, and follows a written procedure for responding to a data breach.
• People: only the operator has administrative access to our database and service provider accounts. We have no employees or contractors with access to personal information.
• Physical: we keep no personal information on paper, and the devices used to run the Service are locked when not in use.
• Technical: encryption in transit (HTTPS), access controls that restrict each trip's content to its members, hashed passwords, bot protection, and automatic deletion of security records, crash reports, notifications and backups after the periods in section 7.
• Understanding the external environment: we handle personal information in Hong Kong, and our service providers store it in the United States and the other countries listed in section 6. We take these measures after understanding the personal information protection systems of Hong Kong and the United States.

Information sent from your device to other companies: when you use the Service, your device sends the following to these companies: to Vercel Inc., the address of the page you are on, the referring site, your device, operating system and browser type, and an approximate location worked out from your IP address, so we can count visits; to AYR Tech (Pty) Ltd (ExchangeRate-API), the currency code along with your IP address and browser type, to get exchange rates; to Cloudflare, Inc., technical signals from your browser, to tell people and bots apart when you sign up or sign in; and to Supabase Pte. Ltd., error reports if part of the app stops working (described in section 2), so we can fix problems.

（日本語）本サービスでは、ご利用の端末から次の情報が外部の事業者に送信されます。Vercel Inc.：閲覧中のページのアドレス、参照元のサイト、端末・OS・ブラウザの種類、IPアドレスから推定されるおおよその地域（利用状況の集計のため）。AYR Tech (Pty) Ltd（ExchangeRate-API）：通貨コード、IPアドレス、ブラウザの種類（為替レートの取得のため）。Cloudflare, Inc.：ブラウザの技術的な情報（新規登録・ログイン時に人とボットを見分けるため）。Supabase Pte. Ltd.：アプリの一部が正常に動作しなかった場合のエラー報告（不具合の修正のため）。

12. Additional Information for Users in South Korea

This section applies to users in South Korea, under the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), and supplements the rest of this Privacy Policy.

Personal information we process, its purposes and how long we keep it: the items in section 2, for the purposes in section 3, kept for the periods in section 7. When a period ends, or you delete your account, the information is deleted from our database so that it cannot be restored; backup copies are deleted automatically after 14 days. We do not process sensitive information or unique identifiers on purpose, and ask you not to add them to the Service.

Third parties: we do not provide your personal information to third parties. Other members of your trips see what you add to them, as described in section 4.

Entrusted processing and overseas transfer: we collect your information directly through the Service and process it in Hong Kong. To provide the Service to you under our Terms of Use, we entrust its processing and storage to the service providers in section 6, and transfer it to them outside Korea. For each provider, section 6 gives its name, country and privacy contact. In summary:

• Supabase Pte. Ltd. (United States): all of the information in section 2 that is sent to us, to store it and run your account; kept for the periods in section 7.
• Vercel Inc. (United States): page address, referring site, approximate location, device and browser type, and server logs, to host the Service and count visits; kept for Vercel's periods (visit statistics are not linked together for more than 24 hours).
• Cloudflare, Inc. (United States and other countries): technical signals from your browser, to check for bots; kept only as long as needed for that check.
• GitHub, Inc. (United States): a copy of our database, for backups; each copy is deleted after 14 days.
• Apple Inc. (United States): your device token and the text of each notification, to deliver it; kept only as long as needed to deliver it.
• Plus Five Five, Inc. (Resend, United States): your email address and the content of account emails and report alerts, to deliver them; kept for Resend's limited logging period.
• Microsoft Corporation (United States): emails you send us, to answer them; kept as long as needed to handle your request.
• AYR Tech (Pty) Ltd (South Africa): your IP address and browser type when your device asks for exchange rates; kept only as needed for that request.

The information is sent over the internet, encrypted, as you use the Service. You can refuse this transfer by not creating an account, or by deleting your account at any time in the app; because the Service cannot work without these providers, refusing means you cannot use the Service.

Your rights: you, or your legal representative, may ask to access, correct or delete your personal information, to suspend its processing, or to withdraw your consent, by emailing privacy@trippeers.com. We will respond within 10 days.

Automatic collection: we do not use cookies. The Service stores a few items on your device (section 9) and uses cookie-free visit statistics (section 2). You can stop the visit statistics with your browser's content blocker, and delete the items on your device as described in section 9.

Safety measures: we take the measures described in sections 11 and 15, including access controls, encryption in transit, hashed passwords, and deleting records after fixed periods.

Data breaches: if your personal information is leaked, we will tell you within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and report it to the Personal Information Protection Commission or the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) where required.

Privacy officer: Ryan Wing Fung Cheng, privacy@trippeers.com. You can also contact KISA's Personal Information Infringement Report Center (privacy.kisa.or.kr, phone 118).

We do not make automated decisions that significantly affect you, and we have not appointed a domestic agent in Korea because we are not required to.

13. Additional Information for Users in Canada (Including Québec)

This section applies to users in Canada, under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and, in Québec, the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, and supplements the rest of this Privacy Policy.

Accountability: Ryan Wing Fung Cheng is accountable for our handling of personal information and is the person in charge of the protection of personal information. Contact: privacy@trippeers.com. Our postal address is available on request.

What we collect and why: we collect the information in section 2 directly from you (and from other members of your trips) through the app and website, for the purposes in section 3. We tell you about any new purpose before using your information for it.

Your rights: you may ask to access or correct your personal information by emailing privacy@trippeers.com; we respond within 30 days. You may withdraw your consent at any time by deleting your account in the app; the Service cannot be used without it.

Outside Canada and Québec: your information is processed and stored outside Canada and outside Québec, mainly in the United States and Hong Kong, by the service providers in sections 5 and 6, under written agreements that require them to protect it. Before using these providers, we assessed the privacy risks, including the sensitivity of the information, the purposes, the protection measures and the legal framework of the countries involved. While your information is outside Canada, it may be accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of those countries.

Location: our visit statistics estimate an approximate location (city level) from your connection, only to count visits by area. It is never used to identify, locate or profile you, and the Service has no other location features.

Governance: we keep personal information only for the periods in section 7 and then delete it; the operator is responsible for all handling of personal information, and handles complaints sent to the address above. We keep a record of every data breach, report breaches that create a real risk of significant harm (in Québec, a risk of serious injury) to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, and notify the people affected.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) or, in Québec, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca).

14. Children's Privacy

The Service is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children. You must be at least 14 years of age to create an account, and we request your month and year of birth at registration to confirm this. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 14. If we learn that we have done so, we will promptly delete it. If you believe a child under 14 has created an account, please contact us at privacy@trippeers.com.

15. Security

We maintain reasonable administrative, technical and organizational measures to protect personal information, including encryption in transit (HTTPS), access controls that restrict each trip's content to its members, hashed password storage, administrative access limited to the operator, and deleting records after the periods in section 7. However, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. We recommend using a strong, unique password and not storing highly sensitive information, such as payment card or passport numbers, in the Service.

16. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the revised version with a new "Last updated" date and, where changes are material, notify you within the app before they take effect. Your continued use of the Service after the revised Privacy Policy takes effect constitutes your acceptance of it.

17. Contact Us

If you have any questions, requests or complaints about this Privacy Policy or our handling of personal information, please contact Ryan Wing Fung Cheng at privacy@trippeers.com. Trippeers is operated from Hong Kong SAR.