audiotour.io

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 24, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what information the AudioTour apps for Android and iOS (the "Apps") and the website audiotour.io(the "Website", together the "Service") collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and how you can have it deleted.

In short

  • There are no user accounts. We never ask for your name, email address or phone number.
  • The Apps identify your installation with a random Device ID, not your advertising ID or any hardware identifier.
  • Your location is used to show places near you. It is not saved in our database, except an approximate area (rounded to about 1 km) that you can choose to share with the chat assistant.
  • The Apps' chat assistant keeps your conversations for 90 days, and AI providers process them to answer you.
  • There are no ads and no in-app purchases. We do not sell your data or share it for advertising.
  • You can ask us to delete your data at any time. See Delete Your Data.

Who we are

The Service is operated by Denis Sokolov, an individual based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as a personal project ("we", "us"). For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we are the data controller. You can reach us at support@audiotour.io.

What we collect

Device ID (Apps)

When you first open an App, it creates a random identifier (a UUID) and stores it on your device. The App sends it with its requests to our servers. We use it to count plays and app activity, to link the feedback you send to the same installation, to keep your chat conversations and the custom guides and routes made for you, and to limit how many requests one device can make. It is not your device's advertising ID (we do not use the advertising ID, and the Android App does not request the advertising ID permission) and it is not a hardware identifier. Uninstalling the App or clearing its storage deletes it, and a reinstall gets a new one. You can see and copy your Device ID in the App under Settings → About.

Location

  • Precise or approximate location from your device, only if you grant the location permission and only while you use the App. Whenever the map follows your location (when you tap the locate button, and when the App opens if you have already granted the permission), the App sends your coordinates to our server to find places near you. On Android you can grant approximate location only; on iOS you can turn off Precise Location for the App in your device settings. The Apps never use location in the background.
  • Map area. As you move the map, the App or Website sends the coordinates of the visible area to our server to load the places in it. If the map is centred on you, this reveals roughly where you are.
  • Approximate location from your IP address.When the Service starts, our server looks up the city your IP address belongs to (using MaxMind's GeoLite2 database, which runs on our own server) to open the map near you.
  • On the Website, your browser's location is only requested when you click a button that asks for it.

We do not store coordinates or the IP-based location in our database. Map-area and location requests can, however, appear in our server traces and in error reports for a limited time (see How long we keep data), because the coordinates are part of the request address. The one exception is the approximate area you can choose to share with the chat assistant (see Chat assistant).

Listening history and app activity

  • Plays: which guide you played, in which language, how long you listened and how long the guide is.
  • App activity: app opens, the places and pages you viewed and the guides you requested. For the Website, this can include the domain of the site that referred you.

Chat assistant (Apps)

The Apps have a chat assistant that answers questions about places, finds places and guides, plans routes and writes custom guides. When you use it:

  • Messages: what you write, the assistant's answers, and the places, guides and routes it shows you are stored on our server with your Device ID for 90 days. To answer you, your messages are processed by AI model providers, which we reach through an AI gateway (see Service providers). We may review conversations to fix problems with the assistant. Deleting a conversation in the App deletes its messages. Please don't put personal information in your messages.
  • Your activity today: the plays and app activity recorded for your device today (see above), such as the guides you heard and the places you opened, are also used to personalise the assistant's answers. With each message the App also sends what you have open, such as the place you are viewing and the guide that is playing, and your city.
  • Neighbourhood name: when the App has the location permission, it looks up the name of your district or neighbourhood on your device and sends only that name, with no coordinates, with each message. It is stored with the message for 90 days.
  • Approximate area: only if you turn on Use my approximate area in chatin the App's Settings (it is off by default). The App rounds your position to about 1 km on your device before sending it, so your precise coordinates never leave the device. It is stored only with the chat message and is used to find places near you.
  • Searches: when the assistant searches the web, the search query goes to the AI model provider's own web search (Anthropic or OpenAI), or to Perplexity for other models. When it searches for places, the query and the area to search go to Google.
  • Custom guides and routes: guides the assistant writes for you and routes it plans for you (or that you edit) are kept with your Device ID. They are not listed anywhere on the Service, but anyone with the link to one can open it.

The neighbourhood name and the approximate area are used only to answer you. They are never used for analytics. If you ask the assistant to report a problem, it sends it to us as feedback (see below).

Feedback

When you rate a guide (thumbs up or down), report a problem, or write a comment, we receive your rating, your comment (if you write one), and technical details that help us investigate it: app version, device model, operating system version and the player's state at that moment (playback position and speed). Please don't put personal information in comments.

Technical and request data

  • IP address and User-Agent (the browser or app version string). Like any online service, our servers and service providers receive your IP address with every request. When a request makes us call a paid Google service, we record the IP address, User-Agent and (for the Apps) Device ID with it, to detect abuse and attribute costs.
  • Crash reports and diagnostics: when the App or Website hits an error, a report with the error, device and operating system details, app version and the address of the failing request is sent to our error-monitoring provider.
  • Usage analyticsin the Apps (Google Analytics for Firebase): screens viewed, places opened, guides requested, played and completed, guide loading time and errors, feedback type and settings changed. These events are sent from release versions of the Apps only and identify your installation with Firebase's own app instance identifier (and, on iOS, the vendor identifier), not with our Device ID.

Website

The Website has no Device ID, and our server stores no identifier from your browser. Plays, feedback and page views from the Website are counted with an identifier our server derives from your IP address and User-Agent with a secret that changes every week. After the week ends, it cannot be linked to you or to your other weeks. The Website stores these items in your browser:

  • A cookie with your chosen language (i18next).
  • Local storage: a random browser identifier, the last map position, and cached feature settings. The Website sends the identifier with map and audio requests; our server uses it only to limit how many map requests one browser can make, holds it for one minute for that, and never saves it.

We do not use cookies for advertising or for tracking you across other sites. Our website analytics (Vercel Web Analytics) does not use cookies.

Emails you send us

If you email us, we receive your email address and whatever you write, and use them to answer you.

What we don't collect

We don't collect your name, email address (unless you email us), phone number, contacts, photos, microphone or camera input, payment information, or your advertising ID. The Apps have no sign-in and no purchases.

How we use your information

  • To provide the Service: show places near you or in the map area you are looking at, play guides, and open the map in your city. Legal basis (GDPR): performance of our agreement with you, and your consent for device location, which you give and withdraw through the location permission.
  • To run the chat assistant: answer your messages, use today's plays and app activity on your device to personalise the answers, and fix problems with the assistant. Legal basis: performance of our agreement with you, and your consent for the neighbourhood name and the approximate area, which you give and withdraw through the location permission and the setting in the App.
  • To understand and improve the Service: count plays and visits, see which guides people finish, and act on feedback. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running and improving a free service.
  • To keep the Service working and safe: fix crashes and errors, limit request rates, detect abuse and control the cost of paid services. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a secure, working service.
  • To answer you when you contact us or ask us to delete your data. Legal basis: our legal obligations and legitimate interest.

We do not use your information for advertising or for automated decisions that affect you. The only personalisation is the chat assistant using today's activity on your device to tailor its answers; we do not build a profile of you.

Service providers

We do not sell your data and do not share it with anyone for their own purposes. We use the following providers, who process data on our behalf to run the Service:

  • Heroku (Salesforce): hosts our server and database, which hold the data described above. https://www.salesforce.com/company/privacy/
  • Google Cloud: stores audio and photos (in the EU). No personal data is stored there. https://policies.google.com/privacy
  • Vercel: hosts the Website and provides Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights (aggregate page views and performance, no cookies). Its AI Gateway forwards the chat assistant's requests to the AI model providers. https://vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy
  • AI model providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google): generate the chat assistant's answers and the custom guides it writes, depending on the model we use. They receive your messages and the context sent with them (see Chat assistant). Anthropic and OpenAI also run the assistant's web searches. https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy, https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy/, https://policies.google.com/privacy
  • Perplexity: runs the chat assistant's web searches when the model in use has no search of its own. It receives the search query. https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/legal/privacy-policy
  • Google Analytics for Firebase: usage analytics in the Apps, as described above. Advertising-ID collection is turned off. https://policies.google.com/privacy
  • Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.): crash and error reports from the Apps and the Website. Website reports include your IP address; App reports can include the address of the failing request, which may contain map or location coordinates. https://sentry.io/privacy/
  • Pydantic Logfire: our server's logs and request traces, which can include IP addresses, User-Agents and request addresses with map or location coordinates. https://pydantic.dev/legal/privacy-policy
  • LaunchDarkly: turns features on and off. The Apps and the Website send only an anonymous context that is the same for every user of a platform (for example, every iOS user sends the same one), with no Device ID and no device details. LaunchDarkly receives your IP address with these requests. https://launchdarkly.com/policies/privacy/
  • Discord: delivers internal notifications to our team: the text of feedback you send (with the place, language and app version, but no Device ID), play events (no Device ID), and the IP address and User-Agent of callers that send unusually many requests. https://discord.com/privacy
  • Google Maps Platform (Places API): our server asks Google for places in the map area you are viewing, sending the area's centre and radius. For the chat assistant, it sends the search text and the place, district, city or approximate area to search around. It sends no Device ID or IP address. Some place photos are loaded by your device directly from Google, so Google receives your IP address with those requests. https://policies.google.com/privacy
  • Unsplash: some place photos are loaded by your device directly from Unsplash, which receives your IP address. https://unsplash.com/privacy
  • Mapbox: provides the maps. Your device loads map tiles from Mapbox, which receives your IP address and records map loads for billing. Mapbox's optional usage telemetry is turned off in the Apps. https://www.mapbox.com/legal/privacy

After you give a guide a thumbs up, the App may show the App Store or Google Play rating prompt. A rating you leave there is handled by Apple or Google under their own privacy policies; we don't receive it.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, for example in response to a valid court order, or to protect the Service and its users against fraud or abuse.

International transfers

Some of our providers process data outside the European Economic Area, mainly in the United States. Where they do, the transfer relies on the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework or on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses in the provider's data processing terms.

How long we keep data

  • IP address, User-Agent and Device ID recorded with paid Google requests: 30 days. After that, only daily totals without any identifier are kept.
  • Plays and feedback: until you ask us to delete them, or until the place or guide they relate to is removed from the Service.
  • App activity: until you ask us to delete it. It is kept even if the place it relates to is removed.
  • Chat messages, with the neighbourhood name and approximate area sent with them: 90 days, then deleted automatically. Deleting a conversation in the App deletes its messages.
  • Custom guides and routes made for you: until you ask us to delete them, because your bookmarks link to them.
  • Website weekly identifier: the secret used to derive it is deleted after 8 days, after which the identifiers can no longer be linked to an IP address or User-Agent.
  • Rate-limit counters: 1 minute. Abuse-monitoring counters: 1 hour.
  • Server logs and traces, crash reports, analytics, and Discord notifications: kept by each provider for the retention period of our plan with them, after which they are deleted automatically.
  • Emails with us: as long as needed to handle your request, and as a record that we handled it.
  • Aggregated statistics that cannot identify you (for example, total plays of a guide) may be kept indefinitely.

Your choices and rights

  • Location: you can deny or revoke the location permission at any time in your device settings. The App still works; you just won't be able to centre the map on yourself.
  • Chat assistant: you can delete any conversation in the App, which deletes its messages. The approximate area is shared only while Use my approximate area in chat is on in Settings, and you can turn it off at any time.
  • Delete your data: follow the steps on our Delete Your Data page. We delete the data stored under your Device ID within 30 days.
  • Reset your identifier: uninstalling the App or clearing its storage creates a new Device ID on reinstall. Clearing the site data for audiotour.io in your browser does the same for the Website.

If you are in the EU or EEA (or another place with similar laws), you also have the right to access your data, have it corrected or erased, restrict or object to its processing, receive it in a portable format, and withdraw consent at any time. To exercise these rights, email support@audiotour.iowith your Device ID. Because we don't know who you are, we can only find data linked to a Device ID you give us. You can also complain to a data protection authority, such as the Dutch Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens or the authority in your own country.

California residents

In the last 12 months we have collected these categories of personal information, as defined by the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the CPRA), from the sources and for the purposes described above:

  • Identifiers: Device ID, IP address.
  • Internet or other electronic network activity: plays, app activity, chat messages, feedback, diagnostics.
  • Geolocation data, including precise geolocation when you grant the location permission. We use it only to provide the Service you ask for, so it is not used to infer characteristics about you.

We disclose this information only to the service providers listed above, for the business purposes described in this policy. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and have not done so in the last 12 months. You have the right to know what personal information we hold about you, to have it deleted or corrected, and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. To make a request, email support@audiotour.io with your Device ID. We respond within 45 days. Our Service does not respond to Do Not Track signals; it does not track you across other sites.

Children

The Service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has sent us personal information (for example, in a feedback comment or a chat message), contact us and we will delete it.

Security

All data between the Apps or Website and our servers is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Access to our database and providers is restricted to us. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, but we work to protect the data we hold.

Links to other websites

Guides and place pages can link to other websites, such as sources and photo credits. Those sites have their own privacy policies, and we are not responsible for them.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update it on this page and change the "Last updated" date above. If a change materially affects how we use data we already hold, we will tell you in the Apps or on the Website before it takes effect.

Contact us

Questions about this policy or your data: support@audiotour.io.