Privacy Policy

Who we are

This site is operated by CustomWalkingTours.com. For anything in this policy — including a request to see or delete your data — write to info@customwalkingtours.com.

What we collect, and why

Only what a tour needs, plus what a payment needs.

Your email address and password

Only if you create an account. The password is never seen by us: it is hashed by our authentication provider before it is stored. You can use the whole site without an account — an anonymous identity is created in your browser instead, and it holds your tours and any pass just the same.

Your location

Only if you tap "Use my location", and only while you have the page open. It is used to place the start of your route, to draw the route between stops, and to know when you have reached the next stop. It is sent to our routing and geocoding providers to do that. We do not store a location history and we cannot see where you have been.

Your answers on the tour form

The city, the time you have, how you are getting around, your interests and anything you type in the free-text boxes. These are sent to the model that writes the tour. If you save a tour, they are stored with it so it can be reused.

Tours you save and walks you host or join

The route, the stops, the share code, and who joined. Stored so a tour survives closing the tab and so a group can walk the same route together.

Your passes and code redemptions

Which pass you hold, when it expires, and where it came from. This is what the site checks before it will start a tour.

A one-way hash of your IP address

Used to limit how many tours can be planned for free from one connection. It is hashed with a secret key before it is written, so the stored value cannot be turned back into an address, and we never keep the address itself.

A count of what each tour cost us

Which third-party services a request used and how much of each allowance it spent, so we can see when we are about to run out. Attributed to an account id where there is one.

The country you are in

A two-letter country code, and nothing finer — not your city, not your region. It is worked out from your network connection by the service that hosts our API, so nothing is looked up about you and no address is kept in order to get it. We use it to see which countries the site is reaching. It is stored on the usage record above and is deleted with it after about a month.

We do not collect card numbers. We never see them — see Payments below.

Payments

Card payments are processed entirely by Stripe. Your card details are entered on Stripe’s own page, go to Stripe, and are never sent to us or stored by us. What comes back to us is whether the payment succeeded, the email address you gave Stripe for the receipt, and a session identifier we record so the same payment cannot be redeemed twice.

Stripe processes that information as its own controller under its privacy policy at stripe.com/privacy.

Who else sees any of it

Building a tour means asking several outside services for parts of it. Here is every one, and what it receives.

Supabase

Our database and sign-in. Holds your account, your saved tours, your walks and your passes.

Cloudflare

Runs our API. Sees the requests your browser makes to it, including your connecting IP address, as any web host does, and tells us which country that address is in.

Hostinger

Hosts this website’s files.

Stripe

Payments. See above.

Groq

Writes the tour. Receives your form answers and the name of the city — not your account, and not your email.

Microsoft Azure AI Speech

Reads the narration aloud. Receives the narration text.

OpenStreetMap, Nominatim and Photon

Map tiles, place search and turning a place name into coordinates. Receive the place names you type or that appear in your route, and the map area you are looking at.

FOSSGIS routing services

Draw the actual walking, cycling, driving or step-free line between stops. Receive the coordinates of the stops.

Unsplash and Mapillary

Photographs of stops. Receive the stop name or its coordinates.

Wikipedia and Wikimedia

Used to judge how well known a place is, so the better-known stops are chosen. Receive the stop name.

Each of these is used to deliver the thing you asked for. None of them is given your data for their own marketing, and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone.

Cookies and browser storage

There are no advertising cookies, no analytics cookies and no third-party trackers on this site. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.

The site does keep a few things in your own browser’s storage, which never leave your device except where noted:

• Your sign-in session, so you stay signed in. This is what proves to our API that a pass is yours.
• The last email address you signed in with, so the form can prefill it.
• A note that you have a confirmation email outstanding, so the site can tell you what to do next.
• Your part-finished tour while you are away at Stripe, so paying does not lose it.

Clearing your browser’s site data removes all of it. If you were using an anonymous identity rather than an account, clearing it also loses the tours and any pass held by that identity — which is exactly why the site offers to turn an anonymous identity into a real account after a purchase.

How long it is kept

Account, saved tours, walks and passes

Until you delete them or delete your account.

Hashed IP records used for rate limiting

A rolling window of about 24 hours, then discarded automatically.

Usage counts

A rolling window kept only long enough to read the current month’s allowances, then pruned automatically.

Payment records at Stripe

For as long as Stripe’s own retention and financial record-keeping obligations require.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Deleting your account from within the site removes your account, your saved tours, your walks and your passes.

Depending on where you live you may also have the right to object to or restrict processing, to data portability, and to complain to your local data protection authority. We do not use your data for automated decisions that have a legal effect on you.

To exercise any of this, write to info@customwalkingtours.com. We will reply within 30 days, and usually within two business days.

Where data is processed

The services listed above operate in the United States and the European Union, so your information may be processed in either. Where that involves a transfer out of the UK or the EEA it is covered by the standard contractual clauses those providers publish.

Children

This site is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. A tour can of course be walked by a family — but the account and the payment should belong to an adult. If you believe a child has created an account, write to info@customwalkingtours.com and we will remove it.

Security

Traffic to and from this site is encrypted. Access to your saved tours and passes is enforced by the database itself, row by row, rather than by the page you are looking at — so another signed-in person cannot read your tours by asking for them. Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider and are not recoverable by us; if you forget yours, we can only send you a reset link.

No system is perfect. If you find a security problem, please tell us at info@customwalkingtours.com before telling anyone else, and we will fix it and credit you if you would like.

Changes to this policy

If this changes in a way that matters, the date at the top of the page changes with it. Continuing to use the site after that means the new version applies.

Contact

Questions about this page go to info@customwalkingtours.com.