Privacy Policy

Overview

Talus Cloud helps people plan hikes together, record them, keep each other safe on the trail, and keep each finished hike as a Moment. Because the app works with location, photos, routes and safety information, privacy is part of how it is built. Talus Cloud is private by design: there is no public audience, and people you are not connected with cannot see your Moments.

This policy explains what information Talus Cloud uses, why, who helps us run the service, and the choices you have.

Information Talus Cloud uses

• Account and profile. Your handle, display name, profile picture and e-mail address.
• Signing in. Talus Cloud has no passwords. You sign in with Apple (on iPhone), with Google, or with a 6-digit code e-mailed to you. With Google, we receive the name and e-mail address on your Google account and use them to create your profile; you can change the name. With Apple, we receive what Apple shares, which may be a private relay e-mail address. We also keep an Apple token so we can revoke Talus Cloud's access when you delete your account. With an e-mail code, we store your e-mail address. You can link more than one sign-in method to the same account under You › Account.
• Routes and location when you plan, record, import or share a hike.
• Your content. Photos, captions, notes, comments, Moment text and messages you choose to add.
• Photo location. Before a photo leaves your phone, Talus Cloud removes its embedded GPS location and other hidden details, such as the device it was taken with, and resizes it. If you place a photo on your route, that position is saved with the photo in your Moment or plan and shown to the people who can see that Moment or plan.
• Voice notes. Talus Cloud uses the microphone only when you press record or talk. A voice note is stored with the message or item it belongs to, and the people who can see that message or item can hear it. Voice notes in a plan's chat are deleted 24 hours after they are recorded; only the message entry remains. Voice notes on a hike's Observe timeline and in live-hike chat are kept with that hike's safety session. Voice recordings in an incident report stay on your phone. Talus Cloud does not transcribe your voice.
• Heart rate. If a hike includes heart rate, your average and maximum heart rate are stored so that only you can see them. Heart-rate, cadence and temperature readings are removed from route files before they are uploaded.
• People. Your connections, your crews, and the plans and hikes you join, watch or are invited to.
• Push notifications. If you allow notifications, your device gives Talus Cloud a push token. We store it with your account, the platform (iPhone or Android) and when it was last seen, and use it only to send you Talus Cloud notifications. Notifications travel through Apple's or Google's push service (Google Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android). Their text can include a person's name, a crew or hike name, or the start of a message, so it may appear on your lock screen. When you sign out, the token is marked inactive and we stop sending to it.
• Mobile coverage sharing (optional, Iceland only). The first time you set up a hike in Iceland, Talus Cloud asks whether you want to help map mobile coverage. If you say yes and choose your network, the app records, during your hikes in Iceland, where your phone had or lost a mobile connection, with the time, position, altitude, your network (carrier) and the hike's title, and uploads it to help build a coverage map. These records are stored with your account. It is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time under You › Privacy.
• Device permissions, asked for only when a feature needs them: location, microphone and notifications on both phones; Face ID or fingerprint unlock, which stays on your phone; on iPhone, Bluetooth (to connect a heart-rate monitor), motion and the barometer (for elevation gain, and to dim the map in your pocket), Apple Health (read only), local network (to share your position with your crew's phones nearby on a trek), and permission to save photos and films to your photo library. Photos you add are picked with the system photo picker.
• Diagnostics. Talus Cloud does not use third-party analytics, advertising or crash-reporting services. The iPhone route planner can send a technical log of a planning session, including the route's coordinates, to our database so we can find and fix planner errors. Only you and the Talus Cloud team can access it, and it is deleted with your account.

How information is used

• To provide planning, recording, navigation, Observe and Moment features.
• To sync your plans, Moments, privacy choices, connections and shared content across your devices.
• To show your Moments, plans and messages to the people you choose.
• To keep the service reliable and fix problems.
• To protect people, prevent abuse, and answer support requests.

We never sell your data, and location is never used for advertising or tracking.

Service providers

Talus Cloud uses a small number of companies to run the service. They process data only to provide their service to us.

• Supabase hosts our database, sign-in and real-time messaging, in its Zurich, Switzerland region. Your account, plans, routes, Moments, messages, crews and safety sessions are stored there.
• Cloudflare stores the photos, profile pictures and plan attachments you upload (Cloudflare R2). It also runs our small servers that accept uploads and fetch weather, road and route data for the app, and it hosts this website.
• Resend sends our e-mails: sign-in codes and account-deletion codes.
• Apple and Google deliver push notifications (Apple Push Notification service on iPhone, Google Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android). They also handle Sign in with Apple and Sign in with Google if you choose them.

To show maps, weather, terrain and routes, the app also asks public map and weather services for data. Those requests contain the map area or the coordinates being looked at, but not your name or account. The services are OpenTopoMap and OpenStreetMap (map tiles, and trail data through Overpass, with Kumi Systems as a backup Overpass server), Apple Maps (place search, place names and driving directions on iPhone), Open-Meteo (weather and elevation), the Icelandic Met Office, the Icelandic Road Administration, the National Land Survey of Iceland, Esri (hillshade), Amazon Web Services (public elevation tiles), Open-Elevation, OpenTopoData, GeoNames, Photon (place search on Android) and BRouter (a backup route engine). The forecast from MET Norway reaches you through our own Cloudflare server, so MET Norway does not see your device.

If you export an interactive map file from the iPhone app, that file loads its map viewer from unpkg.com each time someone opens it. The file itself stays wherever you send it.

Location and safety data

Talus Cloud uses location to show your position, record hikes, place photos on routes, support Observe, and show route information nearby. You control location permission in your device settings.

Location while a hike is being recorded. When you start recording a hike, Talus Cloud keeps receiving your location while the screen is locked or you are in another app, so your track and any safety session keep going. On iPhone, the app asks for "Always" location in a separate step and explains why first. You can say no, and recording then works only while the app is open. On Android, recording runs as a visible foreground service with an ongoing notification, and Talus Cloud does not ask for Android's separate background-location permission. When no hike is being recorded, the app does not collect your location in the background.

Observe: being watched on a hike

You can ask people you trust to watch a hike. When you start a watched hike, Talus Cloud creates a safety session. Only you, the members of that hike's plan, and the people you asked to watch can see it (anyone who declined cannot). It holds the hike's title, route, start and end times and, if set, an expected return time.

Live position. While you hike, your position is sent to your watchers and the plan's members over real-time channels. This happens only while your "Share live location" switch is on and the plan allows live location. Both are on by default, and either can be turned off at any time. When sharing is off, check-ins still reach your watchers but carry no position.

SOS. An SOS always includes your position, whatever those settings are, because it is a request to be found. If you press SOS without signal, it is kept on your phone and sent as soon as signal returns. Our server then notifies your watchers.

Timeline. Check-ins, status changes, messages and voice notes from you and your watchers are saved to the session's timeline, which the same people can read.

Overdue alert. If a watched hike goes quiet for too long (by default, 90 minutes without a sign from the hiker) or passes its expected return time, our server sends your watchers an alert with your name and the hike's title.

Safety sessions and their timelines are kept with your account and deleted when you delete it.

Health, Bluetooth and local network

Apple Health access is optional and used only on iPhone: Talus Cloud reads hiking workouts and their routes to notice when your Apple Watch has finished a day's hike, and never writes to your health record. Bluetooth is used on iPhone to connect a heart-rate monitor you pair. The local network is used on iPhone to pass your position phone to phone to your crew nearby during a multi-day trek. None of this data is sold.

Chat safety and reports

Before a message in a plan's chat, a crew's chat or a live-hike chat, or a comment on a Moment, is posted, its text is checked by an automatic word filter on our server. No other company sees your messages for this. If the filter matches, the message is not posted, and a report is created for the Talus Cloud team with the message's identifiers, who sent it and what kind of words matched.

Talus Cloud has no AI features. It does not use AI to write, summarise or analyse your content, and your messages are not used to train AI.

You can report any Moment, comment or message, and block any person, from the app. The Talus Cloud team reviews reports and can see the reported content and the accounts involved.

Sharing and visibility

You choose who can see each Moment: only you, the people who were on the hike, the hike's crew, people you pick from your connections, or all your connections. There is no public option. Plans are shared with the people you invite to them.

Crews. A crew is a small private group you create or join. Its name, motto, cover photo and member list are shown in the app only to its members, and only current members can read its messages. You can edit or delete your own messages. A crew can set limits on what its members share on crew hikes, such as live location; these limits can only make sharing narrower, never wider. Other people in your crews, plans and connections see your name, handle and profile picture.

Photo files. The app shows a photo only to the people who can see its Moment or plan. Photo files are kept at long, unlisted web addresses, and someone who is given such an address can open the photo without the app.

Retention and deletion

Talus Cloud keeps information for as long as you have an account, unless this policy says it goes sooner (such as voice notes in plan chat), or the law requires us to keep it longer.

You can permanently delete your account and data at any time, two ways:

• In the app: You › Account › Delete account. You confirm it is you before anything is deleted.
• On the web, without the app: talus.cloud/delete-account, with a code sent to your e-mail.

Deletion removes your sign-in record, your profile and your account data (plans, routes, Moments, gear, connections, safety sessions, push tokens, coverage records, diagnostics and related data), and the photos in your Moments and your profile picture. Photos and files you added to plans, including other people's plans, are removed from those plans. If you signed in with Apple, your Apple sign-in token is revoked. Crews and plans you share with other people are handed to the next person in them instead of being deleted, so their hike is not lost; your own messages in them are deleted, and your photos and files are removed from them. Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone.

Your rights

Talus Cloud ehf, Reykjavík, Iceland, is responsible for your personal data in Talus Cloud (the data controller). We use your data to provide the service you signed up for, with your consent for the things you switch on yourself (such as location, health data, notifications and cell-signal sharing), and to keep the service safe (such as reports, blocking, the word filter and fixing faults).

You can ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it or delete it, ask for it in a form you can take elsewhere, or object to or limit how we use it. You can take back your consent at any time by switching the feature off in the app or in your phone's settings. E-mail info@talus.cloud and we will answer within one month.

You can also complain to Persónuvernd, the Icelandic Data Protection Authority, at personuvernd.is.

Contact

For privacy questions, data requests, or help with deletion, contact info@talus.cloud.