Privacy Policy
Last updated 18 August 2026
This is a draft, written for an early-stage product with a small number of users. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer. It describes what the software actually does today, which is the part that matters most.
1. Who runs this
Wayfare is an independent project operated by one person, based in British Columbia, Canada. There is no company behind it.
Questions, complaints, or requests about your data: hello@thewayfare.app
2. The short version
Wayfare is built so that most of it works without an account and without sending anything to a server. If you never sign in, your trips stay in your own browser and we have no copy of them.
An account exists so that some things can work — syncing between devices, storing photos, publishing a trip, and receiving forwarded booking emails. Those, by their nature, involve sending data to servers.
We do not sell data. We do not run advertising. We do not track you across other websites.
3. What stays on your device
When you use Wayfare without signing in, everything you create is stored in your browser's own storage (IndexedDB):
- Trips, destinations, days and stops
- Notes, ratings, arrival times
- Budgets and expenses
- Checklists
- Imported itinerary text
None of this reaches us. You can export it to a file at any time, and clearing your browser's data will delete it — permanently, because there is no copy.
4. What we store when you sign in
Signing in creates an account and enables syncing. From that point, the data listed above is also stored on our servers, in a Postgres database hosted by Supabase, so that it is available on your other devices.
We also store:
Account data — your email address, and if you sign in with Google, the name and profile image Google provides. Handled by Supabase Auth.
Photos — images you attach to a trip, in private object storage. Before upload, your browser strips all EXIF metadata from the file, including GPS coordinates. Coordinates are kept in our database in a separate field, associated with your account, and are removed from anything published.
Reservations — when you upload or forward a booking confirmation, we store what was extracted: carrier or property name, confirmation number, PIN where present, passenger or guest names, dates, times, and addresses.
Forwarded email text — the text of messages you forward to your trip address is retained for 30 days so that you can check what was extracted, then deleted automatically. We do not keep the raw message beyond that.
Location, when you offer it — if you use the "log where I am" feature, the coordinates you capture are stored with that stop. This only happens when you explicitly ask for it, and the browser asks your permission first. Declining changes nothing else.
5. Third-party services
Wayfare depends on services run by others. Here is what goes to each and why.
Supabase — database, authentication and file storage. Holds everything in section 4. Hosted in the United States.
Vercel — hosting. Processes requests and keeps standard server logs, which include IP addresses.
Google Gemini — used to read the text of an itinerary you paste or a booking confirmation you send, and to suggest places when you ask it to. The text of those documents is sent to Google for processing. Photos are never sent. Your notes are never sent. We do not use your data to train any model, and Google's API terms state that data sent through the paid API is not used to train their models.
Resend — sends account emails and receives the booking confirmations you forward.
OpenStreetMap, Photon, OpenRouteService, Wikimedia — place search, routing and place photographs. These receive place names and coordinates, never your personal data.
Google Maps — only if you click a directions link. That opens Google's site with the two coordinates in the URL. Nothing else is shared, and their privacy policy applies from that point.
6. What we do not do
- No advertising, and no advertising trackers.
- No selling or renting of data.
- No analytics that follow you across other sites.
- No profiling and no automated decisions with legal effect.
- No use of your trips to train machine-learning models.
7. Publishing
A trip is private until you publish it. Publishing makes a page anyone can read at a public address.
When you publish, these are excluded by default:
- Your notes on stops, unless you opt in per stop
- Accommodation stops, unless you opt in
- Every expense and budget figure
- Every photograph
- Booking confirmation numbers and PINs
- GPS coordinates recorded during your trip
- The original text of anything you imported or forwarded
Unpublishing removes the page immediately and takes it out of the sitemap. Search engines may keep a cached copy for a while; that is outside our control.
8. How long we keep things
- Trip data — until you delete it, or delete your account.
- Forwarded email text — 30 days, then deleted automatically.
- Deleted photos — removed from storage within 30 days.
- Deleting your trip — removes its data, its photos, its forwarding address and its queued messages.
- Deleting your account — email hello@thewayfare.app and we will delete everything associated with it. There is no self-service button yet; there will be.
Your local browser data is not affected by any of this. It is yours and it stays until you clear it.
9. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or give it to you in a portable form. Email hello@thewayfare.app.
The export feature already gives you your own data as a file, without asking anyone.
If you are in the EEA or UK, the GDPR applies. Our legal bases are: performing the service you asked for (your trips), your consent (location, sending documents for processing, publishing), and legitimate interest (keeping the service running and preventing abuse). You may complain to your national data protection authority.
If you are in California, the CCPA applies. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined there.
If you are in Canada, PIPEDA applies, and you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
10. Where your data is
Servers are in the United States. If you are outside the US, using Wayfare means your data is transferred there. Our providers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses for such transfers.
11. Cookies
We use one thing, and it is not for tracking: a session cookie that keeps you signed in. There are no advertising cookies and no third-party trackers.
Your browser also stores your trips locally, which is not a cookie but is worth knowing about — it is described in section 3.
12. Children
Wayfare is not intended for people under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will remove it.
13. Security
Access to your data is enforced at the database level, so one account cannot read another's rows. Photos live in private storage reachable only through short-lived signed links. Secrets stay on the server. Traffic is encrypted.
We are honest about the limits: this is a small project without a security team. If you find a problem, please tell us at hello@thewayfare.app rather than publishing it, and we will fix it.
14. Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top is always the date of the last change.