Privacy Policy
Last updated
This policy covers the SpotJar app for iOS and Android and the website spotjar.app. You need no account to use SpotJar, and your spots, notes and trips stay on your device. Only if you share a trip with others (group trips, section 11) do you sign in and is that trip's plan stored online. This policy explains the cases in which the app or website contacts another service and why that happens. A short summary is also in the app itself: in Settings, tap the info button next to the privacy note.
1. Controller
The controller responsible for data processing under the GDPR is:
Elias Rist
Email: app.spotjar@gmail.com
SpotJar is run by a private individual, which is why no postal address is published here. Every request sent to the email address above is answered within one month.
2. Who this app is for
SpotJar is meant for people aged 16 and over, or the age of digital consent in your country if that is higher. Most of the app needs no account, and signing in for group trips only uses your name and email address from Google or Apple, so SpotJar cannot verify anyone's age.
3. Why we process data
| Purpose | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|
| Storing your spots, notes, photos, trips and packing lists on your device | Art. 6(1)(b), providing the app you use |
| Looking up places and addresses, following short map links, drawing the map | Art. 6(1)(b), as requested when you save, search or open the map |
| Reading public Instagram and TikTok post links to find place names | Art. 6(1)(b) and (f), a function you trigger |
| Automatic photo of a saved place from Wikimedia | Art. 6(1)(f), legitimate interest in showing a picture of the place you saved |
| Your location, to sort spots by distance and show you on a trip's map | Art. 6(1)(a), your consent given through the system permission |
| Group trips: your SpotJar account and sharing and planning a trip with others | Art. 6(1)(b), you ask for the trip to be shared and planned together |
| Crash reports | Art. 6(1)(f), legitimate interest in a stable, working app |
| Delivering this website, server logs | Art. 6(1)(f), legitimate interest in a secure, working website |
4. Website hosting
This website is a static site hosted on GitHub Pages, a service of GitHub, Inc., 88 Colin P. Kelly Jr. Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA. When you visit it, GitHub processes technical data needed to deliver the pages and keep the service secure: your IP address, the requested page, date and time of access, browser and operating system information sent by your browser, and security logs.
We have no access to these logs and receive no visitor statistics. See GitHub's privacy statement and section 13 on transfers to the USA.
6. Fonts
The typefaces Fredoka and Inter are hosted on this website itself. Your browser does not contact Google Fonts or any other font service when you visit spotjar.app.
7. External links
This website links to other services, for example the App Store, Google Play and your email program. Nothing is transmitted to them until you follow such a link. After that, the privacy policy of the respective provider applies.
8. App data on your device
Everything you put into SpotJar is stored in the app's private storage on your device: spots with their name, address, coordinates and the link they came from, notes, categories (built-in and your own), photos, status such as experienced, must-see or favorite, trips with their day plans, packing lists and templates, and your settings.
- No account needed. We operate no server of our own and never receive this data. The only exception is a trip you share with others as a group trip: its plan is stored online, as described in section 11.
- Sharing into SpotJar. When you share a place from a map app to SpotJar, the link is handed to the app through a shared folder on your device. It does not pass through any server of ours.
- Trip from photos (iOS only). If you create a trip from photos of a travel plan, text recognition (Apple Vision) and the analysis of that text (Apple Foundation Models) run entirely on your device. The photos and their text are not uploaded. The camera is only used for this, and only after you allow it.
- Export. If you export your data, the app creates a file and you decide where it goes. Photos are only included if you choose so.
- Device backups. Like most apps, SpotJar's data can be part of the backup your device makes to iCloud or Google, depending on your device settings. That backup is between you and Apple or Google.
You delete data by deleting it in the app, or all of it by uninstalling the app.
9. Map and location services
A spots app needs a map and needs to know where a place is. SpotJar uses the map services built for your platform. Each of these requests carries your IP address, as any internet request does. None of them includes your notes, your categories or your other spots.
Showing the map
- iOS: Apple MapKit (Apple Inc. / Apple Distribution International Ltd.). To draw the map, your device loads map data from Apple for the area you look at.
- Android: Google Maps SDK for Android (Google Ireland Ltd. / Google LLC). To draw the map, your device loads map data from Google for the area you look at. The SDK also sends technical usage data to Google under Google's privacy policy.
Finding a place and its address
When you save a spot, search for one by name, type an address, or pick a place on the map, the app looks it up to fill in name, address, coordinates and type:
- iOS: through Apple MapKit search. Apple receives the search text and, if known, the approximate area to search in (the spot's or the trip region's coordinates).
- Android: through the Google Places API. Google receives the search text or place identifier, if known the area to search in (the spot's or the trip region's coordinates), and the app's identifier and API key.
Short links. Links like maps.app.goo.gl/... or
maps.apple/p/... contain no place until they are opened. To find out which
place such a link stands for, the app asks the link's own server (Google or Apple) where
it leads, on both iOS and Android. That provider receives the link itself.
Sharing from Instagram and TikTok
When you share a public post link from Instagram or TikTok to SpotJar, the link is saved immediately, only on your device. After that, the app makes requests from your device: for TikTok, if needed, the short-link redirect and the public oEmbed service; for Instagram, the public post page. TikTok or Instagram/Meta thereby learn the post URL and your IP address. There is no login, no cookies, no Meta or TikTok token and no unofficial APIs.
The app works out place names from the public description or location tag locally on your device. Only these names, not the post, are sent to the place search: Apple MapKit (iOS) or Photon/OpenStreetMap (Android). Images, videos, preview images and screenshots are neither stored nor transmitted. Description texts are not logged and not sent to crash reports. If nothing is found or you are offline, the spot stays saved with its link and you add the place manually. No server of the developer is involved.
Your location
Access to your location is optional and only requested "while using the app" on Android, only your approximate location. SpotJar asks for it when you sort spots by distance or open the map of a trip. Your position is used on your device to calculate distances and to show you on the map. It is not stored in your spots and not sent to us. it is also not used as the search area for place lookups. You can withdraw the permission at any time in your device's settings. Everything else keeps working.
Opening a spot or a route in Maps
When you open a spot, or a trip or day as a route, SpotJar hands the coordinates, and where available the name or address, of those spots to Apple Maps or Google Maps as an app or on the web, whichever you choose. That happens only when you tap it, and from then on the privacy policy of Apple or Google applies.
10. Automatic photos from Wikimedia
When you add a spot from a link (for example from Google Maps or Apple Maps, or through the share menu), SpotJar looks for a freely licensed photo on Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. In the app, the lookup starts once the link has been read; otherwise, it starts after saving. You can cancel it or choose your own photo. If you do not save the spot, a photo already found is discarded. No lookup happens for spots created by hand, placed on the map, imported from a backup or already given your own photo.
For this, the app sends the spot's coordinates (latitude and longitude) and, as with any internet request, your IP address and an identifier of the app (name and version) to the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA. Requests also include the search radius and language codes, followed by IDs of matching public Wikidata entries, Wikipedia article titles and image file names to retrieve photos and licence details. Matching happens on your device; the spot's name as you stored it and your notes are not sent. The chosen photo is downloaded from the Wikimedia Foundation's servers.
SpotJar looks up a cover for a trip the same way, once you create it or change its region and the region has been located. For this, the coordinates of the region go to the Wikimedia Foundation, or for a whole country its country code (such as "AT") instead, never the name of the trip or the region. Nothing is looked up for a trip with a photo of its own. A cover you removed only comes back if you search again yourself.
The photo and its author and licence information are stored only on your device. If the spot is in a group trip, only the link to the photo's public Wikimedia page is shared with the group (section 11). You can remove such a photo or replace it with your own at any time in the spot's edit screen. Deleting the spot deletes it as well. The Wikimedia Foundation processes this data under its own privacy policy. The photos belong to their authors and are published under free licences (public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA). Author, licence and source are shown directly below the photo.
The lookup is switched on by default. You can turn it off at any time in the app under Settings, then Find photos on Wikimedia. From then on, the app sends nothing to Wikimedia, and a lookup that is still running does not save its result. Spots saved while it is off are not looked up later. You can also object to this lookup at any time (Art. 21 GDPR) by writing to the address in section 1.
11. Group trips and the SpotJar account
You can share a trip with others and plan it together: everyone in the group sees and
edits the same days, order, breaks and backup list. To do so, you sign in with Google
(iOS and Android) or Apple (iOS). For this we use Firebase Authentication and Cloud
Firestore by Google Ireland Ltd., Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland, and
Google LLC, USA. The data is stored in the EU (Firestore multi-region eur3).
Nobody needs an account who does not use group trips, and nothing is uploaded for a trip
that is not shared.
What is stored
- Your account (when you sign in): user ID, name and email address from Google or Apple (Apple may give a relay address instead of your real one), and the sign-in provider.
- The name other members see (when you share or join a trip). You can change it.
- Your Google account picture (when you share or join a trip, and when the picture changes): only the web address Google gives for it. Other members' phones then load the picture themselves from Google's servers. Apple provides no picture.
- The shared trip: its name, region (name, coordinates, radius), number of days, start and end date, owner, members' IDs and names, and the invite code.
- The plan: for each entry its day, order, break label, approximate duration, done marker, trip note, who added it and which members ticked it as seen.
- Each spot in the shared trip: name, coordinates, address, city, country, category, source link (for example the Maps link) and provider ID.
- The trip's accommodation: check-in and check-out, assigned nights, booking code, booking link, provider, phone, email, booking notes, and the accommodation's name, coordinates, address, city, country, category, source link and provider ID. A booking's documents are never uploaded.
- Photos of the spots and accommodations in the trip, and its cover: a photo you took or picked only as a small preview (JPEG, at most 800 pixels, re-encoded on your device, so no camera or location metadata travels); a free Wikimedia photo only as the link to its public Wikimedia file page. Who shared each photo is stored with it. A replaced photo is deleted at once; a spot's photo is deleted when the spot leaves the trip.
With every request, Google also processes your IP address and the technical data needed for the connection.
Wikimedia photos of other members. When a member shared a Wikimedia photo, every other member's phone loads that photo and its licence information directly from the Wikimedia Foundation (servers in the USA), named by its public file page. This is the same kind of request a browser makes to show the page. No coordinates and no spot name are sent, and nothing about you beyond your IP address and the app's identifier. Received photos are stored on your device, so each one is loaded only once.
Never uploaded: the rest of your spot list, spots that are not in a shared trip, photos of spots that are not in a shared trip, the original files of your photos (only previews), a spot's own note, favorite, must-see and visited markers, the documents attached to an accommodation, packing lists, settings and your location.
Who can see it
Only the trip's members, meaning people who entered its invite code, or opened its invite link, while signed in. Anyone who has the link or the code can join. The invite link (https://spotjar.app/j/#…) carries the code after the “#”, which browsers never send, so this website never learns which trip it opens. Before joining, whoever opens the link or enters the code while signed in sees a preview stored with the invite: the trip's name, region, length and dates and the name of the member who shared it – nothing of the plan, the members or the stays. Firebase Security Rules enforce this on the server. Organizers (whoever shared the trip, and anyone they make one) can remove members and give the roles organizer, planner or viewer; each member's role is stored with the trip. Google processes the data as our processor for Firebase.
Leaving a group and deleting your account
- Leave a group: your name and ID are removed from the trip, and you keep a private copy on your phone. When the last member leaves, the trip is deleted from the server.
- Delete your account at any time under Settings > Account: the app leaves every group trip as above and then deletes your Firebase account. Entries you added stay in trips that others still plan, without your name.
- Signing out removes nothing from the server.
The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR: you ask for the trip to be shared and planned with others. See Google's Firebase privacy information and section 13 on transfers to the USA.
12. Crash reports and diagnostics
To find and fix errors, the app can send crash and error reports to Sentry, a service of Functional Software, Inc., 45 Fremont Street, 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA. SpotJar's Sentry project is set up in Sentry's EU region.
Each report contains the following information:
- the error and the technical stack trace.
- the app's recent technical log messages leading up to it (internal identifiers of spots or trips, not their names or notes). An error message can occasionally contain a technical detail such as a map link that could not be processed.
- device model, operating system and version, app version, and whether it is a test build.
- your IP address, as with any internet request.
By default, the app does not send personal information or screenshots, and performance tracing is disabled. Reports are not linked to your SpotJar account.
Crash reports are switched on by default. You can turn them off at any time in the app under Settings, then Send error reports. From then on, the app sends nothing to Sentry, including reports that were still waiting to be sent, and Sentry is not even started the next time you open the app. You can turn them back on the same way.
You can also object to crash reporting at any time (Art. 21 GDPR) by writing to the address in section 1. See also Sentry's privacy policy.
13. International data transfers
Some of the providers named above are based in the USA or may process data there: GitHub (website hosting), Apple (maps on iOS), Google (maps and place search on Android, short links, Firebase for group trips), TikTok and Meta (shared post links), the Wikimedia Foundation (photos) and Functional Software / Sentry (crash reports). Where a provider is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the transfer is based on the European Commission's adequacy decision of 10 July 2023 (Art. 45 GDPR). Otherwise it is based on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR).
15. Data retention
- App data stays on your device until you delete it in the app or uninstall the app.
- Location is used while the app runs and not stored.
- Your SpotJar account is kept until you delete it under Settings > Account.
- A shared trip is kept until its last member leaves or the owner deletes it. Your name and ID are removed from it as soon as you leave. A replaced photo is deleted at once; a spot's photo is deleted when the spot leaves the trip.
- Crash reports are deleted by Sentry after the retention period of the project. TODO: confirm the period in Sentry, for example 90 days.
- Website logs, map and photo requests are kept by GitHub, Apple, Google and the Wikimedia Foundation according to their own policies. We have no access to them.
16. AI notice
SpotJar uses AI to generate suggestions and ideas within the app, for example route proposals and tour plans worked out from your pictures, such as a photo of a tour plan. All content generated this way is marked with this label:
Please treat AI-generated content with caution. It has not been reviewed by anyone. It consists of suggestions and ideas only and must not be taken as fact or as professional advice. AI can make mistakes and can produce inaccurate, misleading, or outright nonsensical statements. This applies in particular to opening hours, distances, travel times, prices, availability, safety and access conditions of places and routes. Do not blindly trust it; consider it critically and check it yourself before you travel.
SpotJar does not use AI to make decisions about you or to make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects. AI-generated content is no substitute for official information, local advice or the judgement of qualified professionals.
You choose the photos yourself. Text recognition (Apple Vision) and the language model (Apple Foundation Models) run entirely on your device. Photos and texts are not sent to us, to third parties or to a cloud AI. The result is only saved after you confirm it. You can turn the feature off in Settings under AI features; it is then no longer visible and does not run. It is not available on devices without this capability or on Android.
17. Security measures
App data lives in the app's private storage, which the operating system shields from other apps. The app talks to the services named above over encrypted HTTPS connections, and this website is only served over HTTPS. Data outside shared trips is in no database of ours. Shared trips and accounts are stored in Firebase, where Security Rules allow only a trip's members to read or change it.
18. Your rights
The GDPR gives you these rights:
- access the personal data we process about you (Art. 15).
- have it corrected (Art. 16) or erased (Art. 17).
- restrict its processing (Art. 18).
- receive it in a portable format (Art. 20).
- object to processing based on legitimate interest (Art. 21).
- withdraw a consent you gave, with effect for the future (Art. 7(3)). For location access, change the permission in your device's settings.
Since most of your app data never reaches us, you exercise most of these rights directly in the app; this includes leaving group trips and deleting your account under Settings > Account. For everything else, write to the address in section 1. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EU member state where you live or work.
19. Changes to this policy
We update this policy when the app or the website changes in a way that affects your data. The current version is always available at this address, with its date at the top.
20. Support
For questions, feedback or privacy requests, email app.spotjar@gmail.com.