Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

CaminoGO ("the App", "we", "us") is operated by:

• Operator: DANSHAN CO., LTD. (丹山有限公司), incorporated in Taiwan, Unified Business No. 62050237
• Registered address: 11F., No. 14, Aly. 4, Ln. 284, Zhongzheng Rd., Xindian Dist., New Taipei City 231009, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
• Contact (privacy): [email protected]
• Contact (general support): [email protected]

EU Representative (Art. 27 GDPR): Data Protection Representative Limited (trading as DataRep), 77 Camden Street Lower, Dublin, D02 XE80, Ireland. You can contact DataRep about our processing of your personal data by email at [email protected] (please quote “CaminoGO” in the subject line), through the form at www.datarep.com/data-request, or by post to the DataRep location most convenient for you. Letters must be addressed to “DataRep”, not to CaminoGO, or they may not reach them.

UK Representative (Art. 27 UK GDPR): Data Protection Representative Limited (trading as DataRep), 107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB, United Kingdom, reachable in the same ways.

For questions about the App or your account, please contact us directly at [email protected].

We act as the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.

2. Scope

This policy covers the CaminoGO mobile application, related backend services, and the caminogo.app website. It does not cover third-party websites or services we link to (e.g., an accommodation's own booking page).

Users in the United Kingdom. The UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 apply to personal data of users in the UK. For those users, references in this policy to the GDPR, the EU/EEA, supervisory authorities, adequacy decisions and transfer safeguards also mean their UK equivalents, such as UK adequacy regulations, the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the Standard Contractual Clauses.

3. What data we collect

3.1 Account data

• Email address, display name, profile photo (optional)
• Authentication identifiers from your sign-in provider (Apple, Google, or email) via Firebase Authentication
• Account settings (language, preferences)

3.2 Location and activity data

• Precise location (GPS) — when you enable location features: live map position, route tracking, daily route briefing, weather for your position, and location context for AI questions. Active walk tracking may continue in the background when you grant the necessary permission. You can stop tracking or revoke permission in your device settings.
• Walking records — daily distance, step counts, elevation gain, and recorded track points for trips you track. Step counts are read from your device's motion sensors (Core Motion on iOS, the step counter sensor on Android), with your operating-system permission. We do not access HealthKit or Google Fit.
• Track history is stored so you can review your journey; see §7 for retention and §8 for deletion.

3.3 AI questions, photos, search and voice

• Text, photos and relevant conversation context you submit to Camino AI, including translation and photo questions. Route assistance can include your location, nearby places and trip context when that feature uses them.
• General food preferences: optional choices such as vegetarian or avoiding pork are saved on your device and sent with a menu-analysis request when selected. They are not a medical or allergy profile. Menu explanations and recommendations cannot determine allergy safety.
• When you explicitly request AI-assisted map search, the search text is sent for interpretation. Ordinary name matching and category filtering do not require an AI request. A place name or other personal information you type may be included in the text.
• Cloud speech recognition: recordings you submit are sent through our server to OpenAI for transcription. Audio is handled for the transcription request and is not stored as a permanent recording by our application server. The resulting text can be sent to an AI provider when you submit your question.
• Read aloud: when you tap read aloud on a Camino AI answer or translation, that text and its language are sent through our server to Google Cloud Text-to-Speech to generate audio. Our server keeps the generated audio in memory for up to about 30 minutes to avoid repeat requests, and your device keeps a limited cache of recent audio.
• Face-to-face translation: speech recognition is handled by your phone's operating-system speech service; Camino sends the recognized text for translation. System speech processing is subject to Apple or Google's settings and terms and is not necessarily entirely on-device.
• AI session data on our server, copies in your device's history and copies processed by AI providers have different retention rules; see §5 and §7.

3.4 User-generated content (UGC)

• Chat messages, announcements/forum posts, diary entries, photos you upload, accommodation/POI reports and community data edits.
• Diary entries are private in the current App — they are stored on our servers to sync across your devices and are not shown to other users through the current diary feature.
• Family groups: you can create or join a family group by invitation or join request. Members see each other's display name, profile photo and status, and can chat in the group. Family groups do not share members' locations.
• Trip sharing and companions: you can create a link that shares a snapshot of your trip plan; anyone with the link can view and copy the plan. You can also invite companions to a shared trip plan; its members see the plan and each other's display names.

3.5 Purchases

Purchase entitlements (Trip Pass validity, AI-use balances and cloud speech allowances), platform transaction identifiers and purchase history. We use RevenueCat to validate and restore purchases and manage entitlements; its SDK associates purchase information with your Camino account identifier and receives relevant app/device information. Payment is processed entirely by Apple App Store / Google Play; we never receive your card details.

3.6 Technical data

• Device model, OS version, app version, language
• Push notification token (if you enable notifications)
• Server logs (IP address, request metadata, error logs) for security and reliability
• Optional diagnostic reports: local diagnostic logs are uploaded when you choose to send a report. Reports may include device/app details, error information and precise route or location details relevant to the problem. These reports are not an automatic upload of all your local logs.
• Automatic crash and error reports: when the App or our servers encounter an error, a technical report is sent to Sentry (EU data region, Germany). It contains the error type and message, stack trace, app and operating-system versions, device model and release information. We configure Sentry not to receive your account identifier, request contents, screenshots, activity breadcrumbs or session replays, and not to store IP addresses. An error message can occasionally contain a fragment of the data being processed when the error occurred.

3.7 Website visitors (caminogo.app)

• Launch notification list — if you submit your email address on our website, we store the address, signup time and verification status, solely to send you one launch announcement. You can withdraw at any time by emailing [email protected].
• Privacy-first analytics (no cookies) — the website uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, a cookieless tool that sets no cookies and does no cross-site tracking or fingerprinting. It records aggregate, non-identifying statistics (page views, referrers, country, device/browser type) via a lightweight beacon; no individual profile is created and we cannot identify you from it.
• Search performance — we use Google Search Console, a Google webmaster tool that reports how our pages appear in Google Search results. It does not run code, set cookies, or track visitors on our website; the data comes from Google's own search infrastructure.
• Standard CDN server logs (Cloudflare) for security and abuse prevention. Our signup endpoint also temporarily stores a hash derived from the IP address to limit repeated submissions, with a two-hour expiry. Where an anti-bot challenge is enabled, Cloudflare processes the challenge response and request information for verification.

4. Why we process it (purposes and legal bases)

We do not sell personal data or use it for third-party advertising. An operating-system permission controls access to a device feature; it is not blanket consent to every form of processing. This release does not offer personalized allergy or intolerance analysis and does not ask you to enter those details in a dedicated field. Menu assistance uses general food preferences and cannot assess whether food is safe for a medical condition. Please do not submit unnecessary health or other sensitive information in free-text questions, photos or voice recordings. If you include such information yourself, it may be present in the content sent to AI providers and in their responses, subject to the AI history, temporary-context and provider rules below. You can disable AI in Settings and clear local AI history. Contact [email protected] for data-rights requests.

5. AI processing — what you should know

• Google Gemini and OpenAI: the configured provider processes the text, images and relevant context needed for the AI feature you request. The current setup uses Gemini for general assistance and OpenAI for AI-assisted search interpretation and cloud transcription; OpenAI can also serve assistant features when configured.
• Safety screening: public content and profile information, including display names and avatars, may be screened using OpenAI's moderation API. AI requests are also subject to the AI provider's own safety checks and our assistant safety instructions. Content may be blocked or restricted. Contact [email protected] to contest a decision and request human review.
• Model training: we do not use your submissions to train our own AI models. OpenAI's API does not use API content to train its models by default. Google's paid Gemini API terms do not use prompts or responses to improve its general models. Safety processing is separate: Google may use logged content for models specifically used to enforce its policies. See OpenAI API data controls and Gemini API terms.
• Provider retention: our short-lived server session does not determine how long a provider retains data. OpenAI generally retains abuse-monitoring logs for up to 30 days, subject to applicable exceptions; its published endpoint table lists no abuse-monitoring or application-state retention for the moderation and audio-transcription endpoints. Gemini's published abuse-monitoring policy describes 55-day retention of prompts, context and outputs and possible authorized human review. These are provider policies, not a claim that our account has Zero Data Retention.
• Global processing: the current AI connections use global services. We do not promise that AI input, output or service metadata remains within the EU/EEA. See §6.
• You can use ordinary map browsing and name/category search without submitting an AI question. Microphone permission can be revoked independently. AI output may be inaccurate; see the Terms of Service.

6. Service providers and international transfers

The following providers receive data for the services described. Provider contracts and service configurations determine the precise processing locations; a European application server does not make all downstream processing European.

Data may be processed outside the EEA, including in the United States and by the operator in Taiwan. Where GDPR transfer rules apply, transfers require an applicable adequacy decision or appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, with any required transfer assessment and supplementary measures. The EU–US Data Privacy Framework applies only where the receiving entity and transfer are actually covered by a valid certification.

We have reviewed or concluded the data-processing terms of the providers listed above, including Hetzner, Firebase, the Gemini API, Google Cloud, OpenAI, RevenueCat, Sentry and Infomaniak.

Access from Taiwan. Our application servers and database are hosted in Germany. Our team in Taiwan administers the service remotely, for example for maintenance, support and troubleshooting, and may view personal data where a task requires it. Taiwan is not covered by an EU adequacy decision. We are directly subject to the GDPR for this processing (Article 3(2)) and apply its obligations to this access. Our safeguards include:

• Our servers accept no inbound connections from the internet; the App and website reach our service only through encrypted (TLS) connections via Cloudflare.
• Remote administration goes through Cloudflare Access and SSH keys. SSH password and root logins are disabled.
• Our servers communicate with each other over a private network, and database connections use certificate-verified TLS.
• Our hosting, Cloudflare and code-hosting accounts use two-factor authentication.
• Access is limited to what the task requires.

You can contact [email protected] for more information about these safeguards and how to obtain a copy of the relevant terms, subject to legitimate redactions.

7. Retention

These rules distinguish our application storage from provider processing. We may retain specific records where required by law or necessary for a documented dispute; retention is limited to the relevant purpose.

8. Your rights

Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR (and, where applicable, Taiwan's PDPA and other local laws) you have the right to: access, rectify, erase, port, restrict, and object to processing of your personal data, and to withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal. These rights apply subject to their statutory conditions.

• Account deletion is available directly in the App (Settings → Delete account) and by emailing [email protected]. Deletion permanently removes your profile, avatar, diaries, trips, GPS tracks, direct messages, and friendships through the account-deletion process. External authentication and image-storage cleanup may finish asynchronously and is retried if it fails. Limited accounting, security and legal records may remain as described in §7.
• Account deletion removes the content of your forum topics and discussion comments, including topic titles, bodies, attached images, location details, and poll options. Only deleted-content placeholders remain so replies written by other people stay readable. Other public contributions, such as town bulletins, events and point-of-interest or accommodation information and photographs, may remain attributed to a deleted user; you can request removal at [email protected].
• Your map messages are deleted. Numeric point-of-interest and accommodation star ratings remain and continue to contribute to rating counts and averages. Your review text and associated moderation notes are erased, and the written review is no longer displayed.
• Camino Guide daily usage counters and request/retry records are deleted. Point-transaction and purchase records are retained separately for the accounting and refund purposes described in §7.
• A deleted-account record and its internal identifier remain linked to retained records and discussion relationships. These links are not fully severed; account deletion does not mean that all retained records become anonymous.
• We respond to rights requests within the applicable legal deadlines, normally one month under GDPR; if a permitted extension is necessary, we explain it within that period. You may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority; in the UK, this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk). You can also contact our EU and UK representative, DataRep (see §1).

9. Security

Data in transit is encrypted (TLS). Access to production systems is restricted and logged. AI photo sessions are short-lived by design. No system is perfectly secure; we will notify affected users and authorities of personal data breaches as required by Art. 33/34 GDPR.

10. Children

CaminoGO is not directed at children. You must be at least 16 years old (or the digital consent age in your country, if higher) to create an account.

11. Offline data

Route data, maps and settings may be cached on your device for offline use. AI history and unsynced walking recovery records follow the distinct rules in §7; signing out does not erase every local record. Local diagnostic and account-specific location caches are cleared on sign-out or account deletion. Device backups and their restore behavior are controlled by your operating system and backup settings.

12. Changes

We will notify you of material changes in-app before they take effect. Where a change requires consent, we will request it separately. Continuing to use the App is not a substitute for any consent required by law.

13. Contact

Privacy requests: [email protected]
General support: [email protected]
EU and UK representative: DataRep, [email protected] — see §1