Location Data Policy

Finding Horizons never requires you to share your location. All core features — saving places, managing trips, browsing collections — work without location access.

We never request location permission on app launch or page load. Permission is only requested at the moment you trigger a feature that benefits from it, and the "Always" upgrade (Section 4) is only ever offered in context — never during onboarding.

Location access is requested only when you explicitly trigger one of the following:

• Nearby places: Viewing saved points close to your current position on the map
• Nearby events: Finding live events happening near you
• Free Roam & side quests: Location-based suggestions and quests built around where you are
• Hidden Gem discovery: Scanning the spot you are standing on to match or create a place
• Smart notifications: Nearby-place, community-gem, quest-stop, and event alerts (see Section 4)
• Visa & stay tracking: Detecting which country you are in, so day-counts and visa countdowns stay accurate
• Navigation handoff: Opening a saved place in Google Maps or Apple Maps from within the app

In all cases, you will see a standard OS permission dialog before any location data is accessed.

• A single coarse "last known position": your most recent location rounded to two decimal places (~1 km) plus a timestamp. This one row — not a trail — powers nearby suggestions, smart notifications, and stay tracking. Each update overwrites the last.
• Country-level stay records: when stay tracking is active, we record which country you entered and when (e.g. "entered Japan on March 3"), to compute visa day-counts. City/country only — never coordinates.
• Places you deliberately save: a Hidden Gem you create obviously stores that place's coordinates — that is the feature.

We do not store a continuous location history, a movement trail, or precise coordinates of where you have been.

Some features work best when the app can notice where you are even while closed: passing near a place you saved, a community gem worth a detour, a side-quest stop, or crossing a border for visa tracking. For these, iOS offers an "Always Allow" level of access.

• Strictly opt-in: we only offer the upgrade when you start Free Roam — the feature it exists for — and iOS shows its own confirmation sheet. Declining changes nothing else.
• Low-power by design: background access uses iOS "significant-change" updates — the system wakes the app only when you move roughly 500 m or more (cell-tower grade). We never run continuous GPS in the background.
• Same coarse storage: a background update stores exactly what a foreground one does — the single ~1 km-rounded last known position described in Section 3.
• Reversible any time: switch back to "While Using" or "Never" in iOS Settings → Finding Horizons → Location. Everything else keeps working.

• Track your location in the background without your explicit, informed opt-in
• Run continuous GPS tracking in the background — ever, at any permission level
• Share your precise location with other users without your explicit consent
• Sell or share your location data with advertisers or data brokers
• Store a continuous location history or movement trail
• Request location permission before you trigger a relevant feature

Nomad meetup features let you optionally broadcast your presence to other travellers. This is separate from — and never derived from — the private last-known position in Section 3:

• Sharing is off by default and requires an explicit, time-limited opt-in ("I'm around this area today")
• Followers may be notified you are nearby only while such a broadcast is active — never from your private heartbeat
• Other users see area-level presence, not your exact coordinates
• You can end a broadcast at any time, and broadcasts expire on their own

When you use map features, the app sends place queries (search terms, place IDs) to Google Maps/Places API. These queries are routed through our server to protect API keys — your location coordinates are included only when you have enabled location and triggered a nearby search or Hidden Gem scan.

Navigation handoffs (opening a place in Google Maps or Apple Maps) open a third-party app, which then operates under that app's own location and privacy policies.

You can change or revoke location permission at any time from your device's settings (iOS: Settings → Finding Horizons → Location — choose Never, Ask, While Using, or Always). Revoking location access does not affect your saved places, trips, or other app data.

Location data questions: privacy@findinghorizons.ca