Privacy Policy

At a glance

• Wayfound is a social travel app: you share where you've stayed, see where people you follow have stayed, and book with the hotel, Booking.com or the airline through a link. We don't take bookings or payments.
• If you join the waitlist, we keep your email address to send your beta invite and launch news. See §2.
• We don't sell your personal information. See §6.
• We record how you use the app (screens, taps, scrolling and the choices you make) to fix bugs and improve it. Other text you type (anything but your name, username and airport codes) is recorded only as its length, never the words. See §1.
• Stay detection matches your location to hotels on your phone. For Around me, we send only your approximate area (rounded to about 1 km) to our server and a places provider to find places nearby, and don't keep it. See §15.
• Some features use Anthropic's Claude AI model, acting for us. See §14.
• You can download your data or delete your account in Settings → Privacy.

1. What we collect

We collect what we need to run Wayfound. The headings follow the categories in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Identifiers (CCPA Cat. A)

• Your email address, name, username and, if you add them, a profile photo, bio and home airport.
• If you sign in with Apple: Apple's user ID for Wayfound and the email Apple shares (which may be a private relay address).
• Passkeys: only the public key and an ID. The private key stays on your device or in your password manager.
• A one-way code (SHA-256 hash) of your email address, used only for contacts matching (§16).
• For each signed-in session: your IP address and browser or device type. A random device ID the app creates, and your platform (iPhone, Android or web).
• Push notification tokens for devices where you turn notifications on.

We don't use passwords. You sign in with Apple, a passkey, or a 6-digit code we email you.

Customer records (CCPA Cat. B)

• Age check: you enter your date of birth to confirm you're 16 or older. We keep only the result and when you confirmed it, never the date. If the date shows you're under 16, we keep a flag that blocks sign-in.

Commercial information (CCPA Cat. D)

• Trips you tell us about: when you answer "Did you book?" after visiting a provider, or forward a confirmation email to your personal Wayfound address (hotel or flight, dates, confirmation number, price as written, the sender's domain and the subject line). We never keep the email body.
• Which booking links you open (provider, hotel or flight, dates), so we can ask whether you booked.
• Trip drafts, booking plans, wishlists and other things you save in the app.

App activity (CCPA Cat. F)

• Session activity: each session (from opening the app to signing out or 30 minutes idle) is recorded as a sequence of the screens you open, the buttons and links you tap, the choices you make (such as dates, filters, airport codes and your name and username), how far you scroll, errors, and a snapshot of the app's saved settings when the session starts. Sessions before you sign in are recorded too and are linked to your account once you sign in. We use this to fix bugs, help you when you contact support, and improve the product.
• Any other text you type is recorded only as its length, never the words: searches, Where to next?, captions and notes, comments, your bio, email, phone, verification codes and date of birth. We never record the content of your messages.
• When turned on: error reports (Sentry) and product analytics (PostHog). See §5.
• Feedback you send from the app.

Precise location: sensitive personal information

• Stay detection (off unless you turn it on, Settings → Stay detection): your phone watches the hotels you've booked or saved and tells the app when you arrive at one. Matching happens on your device. We record only which hotel and when, and only after you confirm. Your coordinates are never sent to us.
• Around me (only when you use it and allow location): see §15.

What you share on Wayfound (user content)

• Stays you post (hotel, city, dates, how it was, note, photo), your rankings of your stays, likes, comments, who you follow, and who you choose to share each stay with.
• Direct messages. Only you and the other person can read them, except that a message someone reports is shown to our moderators.
• Your flight log: flights you import from a file or forwarded email (date, airports, airline, flight number, and seat or cabin when the file has them). It is private to you. We don't keep the file.
• Links you save: we open the page once to find the hotel or places it names, and don't keep the page.
• Reports and blocks you make, and moderation actions on your account or content.

What we do not collect

• Payment card or bank details. You pay on the provider's site.
• Biometrics. Face ID and Touch ID happen on your device and are never sent to us.
• Your date of birth (only the 16+ result), or health, religious or political information.
• Your phone contacts' names, numbers or readable email addresses (§16).

Some suggestions (for example, places that match your taste) are worked out on your device from what you open and save, and aren't sent to us.

2. The waitlist

If you join the waitlist on wayfoundsocial.com, we store:

• your email address;
• which sign-up form you used;
• when you joined, and when we invite you;
• a scrambled code (salted SHA-256 hash) of your IP address, used only to stop too many sign-ups from one place. We don't store your IP address itself.

Why: to send your private-beta invite and news about Wayfound's launch. We send one confirmation email when you join, through our email provider, Resend. The list is stored in our database (Neon Postgres, hosted through Vercel).

How long: until you ask us to remove you, or until we no longer need it for the beta and launch. We plan to delete waitlist entries no later than 12 months after public launch.

To be removed: email legal@wayfoundsocial.com from the address you signed up with, subject "Remove me from the waitlist." We'll delete your entry and confirm. Any launch-news email we send will include a way to unsubscribe.

3. Why we use it

4. Who we share it with

• Hotels, Booking.com and airlines when you tap a booking link. The link carries your search (hotel or flight, dates, guests). You book, sign in and pay on the provider's site under its own privacy policy. We don't send it your name or contact details.
• Affiliate networks (for example Impact.com, once we use one). Booking links may carry a tracking ID so the provider can pay us a commission. When you open a link, the provider or network may set its own cookies and later tell us that a booking happened and its value, not your name or email.
• Other Wayfound members: only what you post or add to your profile, as your settings allow. Profiles start as Public; you can change this in Settings → Privacy, and choose an audience for each stay.
• Service providers that run parts of Wayfound for us (§5).
• Authorities when the law requires it (for example a valid subpoena or court order), or to protect people's safety or our legal rights.
• A buyer or successor if Wayfound is sold, merged or reorganized. We'll tell you before your data becomes subject to a different policy.

5. Service providers

These companies process data for us to provide Wayfound. Ones marked "when turned on" are built into the app but only receive data when we enable them.

We don't currently use any advertising, attribution or customer-support chat services. If we add a provider that changes how your data is used, we'll update this list first.

6. We don't sell your data

• We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We have not done either in the past 12 months, including for anyone under 16.
• Booking links may let a provider or affiliate network set cookies when you leave Wayfound to book (§4). That happens on their site, under their policy.
• You can record a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" preference in Settings → Privacy. If we ever start an activity that counts as selling or sharing, we'll honor it and browser Global Privacy Control signals.

7. Sensitive personal information

For Wayfound, this is precise location. We use it only for what you turned it on for (stay detection and Around me), never to infer things about you, target ads, or train AI models.

8. How long we keep it

9. How we protect it

• Encryption in transit (HTTPS) for every connection, and encryption at rest by our hosting and database providers.
• Sign-in session tokens are stored only as one-way hashes. No passwords exist to steal.
• Access to member data by our staff is limited and logged.
• We never handle payment card numbers.

No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data and fix problems quickly.

10. Your rights

Every member, whatever state you live in, can:

• Access and take your data: Settings → Privacy → "Download my data" gives you a file (JSON) with your profile, posts, comments, likes, follows, blocks, bookings and saved app data. For your full session activity record, email us.
• Correct it: most details are editable in the app.
• Delete your account: Settings → Privacy → "Delete account". Sign back in within 30 days to cancel; after that it's permanent. You can delete any post at any time.
• Opt out of sale or sharing (see §6) and of any marketing email.
• Use an authorized agent. We'll verify their authority before acting.
• Appeal a decision on your request: email us with the subject "Appeal". We respond within 60 days.
• Not be treated differently for using these rights.

To make a request, use Settings → Privacy or email legal@wayfoundsocial.com. We respond within 45 days and may ask you to confirm your identity first. People on the waitlist can make the same requests by email.

11. US state rights

• California (CCPA/CPRA): the rights in §10, plus the right to know the specific pieces and categories of personal information we collected and disclosed in the last 12 months. The categories, sources (you, your device, and emails you forward), purposes and recipients are in §1–5, and retention in §8; this is our notice at collection. Under "Shine the Light" (Civ. Code §1798.83), we don't disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing.
• Other states with privacy laws (including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Florida, Montana, Iowa, Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nebraska, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky and Rhode Island): rights to access, correct, delete, take your data, opt out of targeted advertising, sale and profiling, and appeal. We handle every request the same way, whichever state you live in.
• Nevada: you can ask us not to sell covered information. We don't sell it.
• Washington (My Health My Data Act): we don't collect consumer health data.

12. Outside the US

Wayfound is for people in the United States only. We don't target or knowingly accept members in the EU, UK or elsewhere. If you're outside the US, please don't join the waitlist or create an account. If you already have, email legal@wayfoundsocial.com and we'll delete your data.

13. Age requirement

Wayfound is for people 16 and older. We ask for your date of birth during sign-up, keep only whether you're 16 or older, and block sign-in for anyone younger. When the app reaches the App Store it will be rated 17+, because Apple has no 16+ rating.

If we learn an account belongs to someone under 16, we'll delete it. Parents or guardians can contact legal@wayfoundsocial.com.

14. AI and automated decisions

We use Anthropic's Claude model through Anthropic's business API, which, under Anthropic's terms, doesn't use what we send to train its models. We use it to:

• Read confirmation emails you forward (and attached files) when the booking can't be read directly, to pull out the trip.
• Read flight history files you import, when they aren't in a format we recognize.
• Read links you save, to find the hotel or places the page names.
• Where to next? (destination ideas): we send what you type and the options you pick, your home airport, the hotels and cities you've shared with how you rated them, and how many people you follow stayed in each city (no names). Not your name, email or contacts.
• Sort travel articles for Explore (no personal data).
• Investigate bugs: the record of a session where an error happened, with your name, email, account and device IDs removed.

AI answers can be wrong; check details before you book. We don't use automated decision-making that has legal or similarly significant effects on you, and we don't use your data to train AI models.

15. Location

• Location is off until you allow it, and we ask in context, not on first launch.
• Stay detection: your phone's own geofencing watches small areas (about 100–150 m) around hotels you've booked or saved. We learn only that you arrived at a given hotel, and record it only after you confirm. Coordinates never leave your device.
• Around me: when you open it, your phone rounds your location to two decimal places (an area about 1 km across) before anything leaves it, and sends that approximate area to our server, which asks a places provider (Google Places or OpenStreetMap) for places nearby. On iPhone, the search may run through Apple Maps on your device instead. We don't store the location, and the providers don't receive your name or account. Your exact position stays on your phone and is used there only to show walking distances. You can pick a city instead of sharing location.
• We never use location for advertising, never sell it, and never track your movements over time.
• Turn stay detection off in Settings → Stay detection, or turn off location for Wayfound in your phone's settings. Stays already confirmed stay in your Passport until you delete them.

16. Contacts matching and what you share

• If you tap "Check my contacts" in the iPhone or Android app, your phone turns each email address in your contacts into a one-way code (SHA-256 hash) before anything is sent. We compare those codes with the same codes for members' email addresses and show you the members who match. We don't store your codes after the check.
• We never receive names, phone numbers or readable email addresses from your contacts.
• A member with a Private profile may still appear as a match by name and username, but their stays stay hidden unless they let you see them. Blocked members never appear.
• Your stays, likes and comments are visible according to your settings (Settings → Privacy). You can edit or delete any post at any time; deleting removes it from every feed.

17. Emails and notifications

• Account emails (sign-in codes, notices about your account or this policy) are part of the service.
• Waitlist emails: a confirmation when you join, your invite, and launch news. See §2 to be removed.
• Marketing email: we don't send any to members today. Any we send will include a working unsubscribe link.
• Text messages: we don't send any.
• Push notifications: only if you allow them. We send them for activity on your account (new followers, comments, messages, imported trips and flights) and reminders before trips you've booked. Turn them off in Settings → Notifications or in your phone's settings.

18. Cookies and similar technologies

When you're signed in, the app (on the web and inside the iPhone and Android apps) uses one essential cookie to keep you signed in, and stores your settings and a random device ID in your device's local storage. We don't use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. Our pages load fonts from Google, which receives your IP address. Booking providers and affiliate networks may set their own cookies once you open their sites. Details are in our Cookie Notice.

19. Where your data is stored

Wayfound Social, Inc. is a Delaware corporation. Our servers and database run with Vercel and Neon in the United States. Some service providers may process data in other countries under their own safeguards.

20. Security incidents

If a security incident affects your personal information, we'll tell you as the law requires, without unreasonable delay. We'll explain what happened, what information was involved, what we're doing, and what you can do.

21. Changes to this policy

We'll update this policy as Wayfound changes. The date at the top shows the current version. For a material change (new kinds of data, new uses, or changes to your rights), we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

22. Contact

Questions, requests, authorized agents, appeals and waitlist removal:
legal@wayfoundsocial.com