Privacy Policy

At Journeys and Pals, we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting the personal information you share with us. This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, store, and share your information when you use our mobile application and related web services.

1. Information We Collect

To provide a seamless, offline-first planning experience, we collect the following categories of information:

• Account Information: When you register an account, we collect credentials powered by our cloud authentication (such as your email address, username, profile name, and avatar image).
• Travel Data: We store the itineraries you build, including dates, activities, notes, expenses, and photos added to your journeys. This data resides on your device in a local SQLite database and is synced securely to our cloud.
• Location Information: If you grant foreground location permissions, we access coordinates to assist in placing pins on your interactive planning map. We do not track your location in the background.
• Media & Receipts: Photos you select to attach to activities or expense receipts are uploaded to private, secure cloud storage buckets.
• AI Import Text: Unstructured travel text or itinerary notes you paste into the AI Itinerary Importer are processed strictly to parse and structure your itinerary.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the collected information for the following core purposes:

• To sync and back up your travel data bidirectionally between your local SQLite database and the cloud.
• To enable real-time collaboration so that your travel "pals" can view and edit the same itineraries simultaneously.
• To calculate group expense splits, display route tracking on maps, and deliver local activity notifications.
• To continuously troubleshoot, maintain, and optimize application performance.

3. AI Processing & Third-Party Services

Journeys and Pals integrates AI assistance to parse and structure itinerary notes:

• Text submitted for AI Itinerary Import is processed solely to extract dates, activities, and locations.
• We do not sell your travel itineraries or use your private trip data to train public artificial intelligence or machine learning models.

4. Data Sharing and Collaboration

Journeys and Pals is collaborative by design. Please be aware of the following sharing behaviors:

• Invite Codes: Anyone with whom you share a journey's unique 6-character invite code will gain access to view, edit, and contribute comments, activities, or expenses within that journey based on their assigned role.
• Third-Party Infrastructure: All cloud storage, database hosting, and authentication services are securely operated on enterprise cloud infrastructure. We do not sell or rent your personal data to external advertisers.

5. Data Storage and Security

We implement standard, modern security measures to safeguard your credentials and travel logs:

• Offline Data: Your data is stored locally on your device using SQLite and is fully isolated using operating system sandbox mechanisms.
• Encryption: Data synced to the cloud is transmitted over HTTPS/TLS and stored using industry-standard database encryption protocols.
• Authentication Security: Password hashing and JWT token handling are managed under robust cloud authentication architecture.

6. Your Rights & Data Deletion

You maintain full control over your data. You may request access to, correction of, or permanent deletion of your account and travel logs at any time. To completely wipe your data from our servers, you can initiate account deletion inside the application profile settings, or by reaching out to our support team.

7. Updates to this Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the updated policy within the app or on this website and updating the "Last updated" date above.

8. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your data, please contact us at:

Email: privacy@journeysandpals.com