Privacy

Your account

• An account id: a random string with no meaning.
• Your display name and handle, shown on your hiker page. You can change both on your account page.
• A profile photo and a cover photo, if you add them, shown on your profile to anyone who can see it. Before we keep one, everything in the file besides the picture is taken off, including where and when it was taken. Remove them on your account page at any time.
• Passkeys: only each passkey's id, its public key, a counter and which site it was made on. The private part never leaves your device. There are no passwords.
• Google sign-in, if you use it: Google's id for your account and the verified email Google gives us. That email is only used to contact you if you turn that on (it starts off), and you can turn it off or unlink Google on your account page. We never keep your Google access token.
• Sign in with Apple, if you use it: Apple's id for your account, the name Apple sends the first time (if you share it), and the email Apple gives us, which may be a private relay address that forwards to you. The email is used only as for Google above. We never keep an Apple token.
• A sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in (only its hash is stored), and a short-lived one during a Google sign-in. Nothing else is set.

Your hikes

• GPX files you upload, kept privately: only you can download them. The track drawn for anyone else has every point inside your privacy zones removed, and a circle around each track's start and end too.
• Privacy zones you draw (home and the like), which only you see.
• Whether each hike is private, for followers or public, who you follow and who follows you.

Plans and alerts

A trip plan you make is saved under a random link with no name or email in it. If you ask to be told when bookings open for a hike, we keep that email for that alert only, and every alert has a link to delete it. We email you about an alert only after you confirm it from a first email, and then just once, when bookings open; every email has a one-click unsubscribe. We keep a log of what we sent with the address scrambled (a one-way hash), and the scrambled addresses of people who unsubscribed, so they're never emailed again. Emails go out through Cloudflare.

Following a creator by email, emailing yourself a plan's link, or asking for a creator page works the same way: we keep the email (and for a creator request, the name, channel and note you give) for that purpose only, with a link to delete it where there's something to delete. A creator request is read by Kraig; nothing is sent to you automatically. Saving a plan to your account links the two until you remove it or delete your account.

Feedback you send with the "Send feedback" form is kept for Kraig to read: your words, the page it's about, the email if you give one, your account if you're signed in, and a salted hash used only to stop floods (never your address). Nothing is emailed automatically.

Counting visits

The site counts its own visits, with no cookies and nothing from anyone else. When a page opens it tells the site which page it was and where you came from (the site that linked here, or a tag in the link), and it says so again once if you stay about 15 seconds or scroll halfway down, and when you tap things like Plan this hike, a film or a gear link. We keep only totals: how many times each page was opened per day, and from where.

To tell people from programs (search engines, AI crawlers, link previews and scripts running in data centres), the site looks at the browser's name and the name of the network a visit comes from, and counts those programs separately, by kind and network. To count how many people came each day without counting the same person twice, it mixes your IP address and browser name with a random value that changes every day and keeps only the scrambled result (a one-way hash), apart from the counts; once the day is over, the hashes and that day's random value are deleted and only the number of people is kept. Your IP address itself is never stored.

When a link tagged with where it was posted (for example a YouTube description) brings you here, this browser tab remembers that tag until the tab closes (in the tab's own storage, not a cookie). If you make an account in that tab, your account keeps where you came from (for example "YouTube, a video's description"), and the site counts how many accounts each kind of link brought.

Likes and comments

You can like a hike page or a creator's version without an account. The first time you tap the heart, the site sets one cookie (__Host-fthv, a random value, kept a year) so the same browser can't like a page twice and can take its like back; we keep only a one-way hash of it next to the pages you liked. Signed in, a like belongs to your account instead. Likes from search engines, crawlers and scripts aren't counted.

Comments need an account. A comment shows your display name, a link to your profile and the date. Plain text only; links aren't clickable. Comments with slurs, spam or (from accounts under a week old) links wait for review and only you see them until then; anyone signed in can report a comment, and one reported by three people waits for review too. You can delete your own comments at any time; Kraig can delete any comment. Nothing is emailed about likes or comments.

Rate limits

To stop abuse we count requests by a hash of your IP address mixed with a secret, never the address itself, and clear the counts when their window ends.

Where it lives

Everything is stored on Cloudflare (its Workers, D1 database and R2 storage). Google only learns that you signed in to Follow the Hiker, as with any sign-in button. Films and photos on hike pages are the creators' own, shown from YouTube and their sites.

Deleting your account

On your account page, type your handle under "Delete your account". That deletes your account, every hike you've logged and its files, your profile and cover photos, your privacy zones, who you follow and who follows you, your likes and comments, your passkeys, your Google sign-in and your sessions, at once. If you can't sign in, email kraig@kraigadams.com and we'll do it for you.

Contact

Questions about your data: kraig@kraigadams.com.