Privacy Policy
Last updated August 13, 2026
OurHike is a small, volunteer-built offline map for the Appalachian Trail, currently in public beta. This page explains what information we collect, why, and what you can do about it — in plain language, not legalese. If something here is unclear, open an issue and ask.
Information we collect
Account information
Creating an account is only needed to submit a trail report or contribute in other ways — not to use the map. If you sign in, we (through our authentication provider, Supabase) collect:
- Your email address, whether you sign in with a magic link, a password, or a Google account you already have.
- If you sign in with Google, the basic profile information Google shares to verify your identity (your email address, typically nothing beyond that).
- If you set a password, it's stored and hashed by Supabase — we never see or store it ourselves.
- A trail name you choose yourself, and the kind of hiker you say you are (thru, section, day, or maintainer). Your trail name — not your real name or email — is what other hikers see if you post a report.
Location
OurHike can use your device's GPS to show your position on the map. That location is used on your device only and is not sent anywhere unless you choose to attach it to a report you submit — for example, to mark exactly where a blowdown or a water source is.
That includes the off-trail alert. If you turn it on, OurHike watches your position continuously to notice when you may have left the trail — and it does that entirely on your phone. Your track is not uploaded, not stored on our side, and not used for anything else.
Notifications
OurHike sends exactly one kind of notification: the off-trail alert. Nothing else — no news, no reminders, no marketing, no "come back and use the app". That is a rule in the code rather than a promise here: there is a single function allowed to send a notification, and an automated check reads the whole codebase and fails the build if anything else tries to.
Reports you submit
If you report a trail condition (a blowdown, flooding, a shelter needing repair, and so on), we collect what you put in it: the category, any note you write, the location if you include one, and the time you wrote it. A report may in the future let you attach a photo, in which case that photo is collected too.
Reports about other people ("bad hikers") are handled more carefully than trail-condition reports: they go only to safety moderators, never shown publicly.
Information kept only on your device
The downloaded map data, your app preferences, and any report you've written but haven't yet been able to send (there's often no signal on the trail) are stored locally on your phone using your browser's on-device storage. We don't have access to this until a report is actually sent.
Standard technical information
Like almost any website, the infrastructure that serves OurHike (GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, and similar) may log ordinary technical details — such as IP address and browser type — as part of normal operation. We don't collect this ourselves or use it to identify you.
Usage analytics
We don't currently run any analytics or event-tracking tool in the app. We're likely to add some limited, aggregated analytics in the future — for example, which screens or features get used — to help us understand what's working and prioritize what to build next. If we do, we'll aim to keep it as non-identifying as we reasonably can, and we'll update this page when it happens rather than after the fact.
How we use this information
- To run the app: show your position, sync your account, and let you submit and track reports.
- To keep the trail community trustworthy: moderators use report details to verify conditions and act on safety concerns.
- To improve OurHike: understanding what's used and what isn't, in aggregate.
We do not sell your personal information, and we don't run advertising in the app.
Who we share it with
- Supabase, our authentication provider — handles sign-in and stores your account credentials on our behalf.
- Trail clubs and maintainers may see reports relevant to the sections they maintain, and public reports are visible (by trail name, not real name or email) to anyone using the app.
- We may disclose information if required to by law, or to protect the safety of someone on the trail.
Map tiles come from three places, and asking for a tile
says roughly where you are looking. The trail data and
the downloadable offline maps come from our own storage at
Cloudflare. The default background map comes from
OpenFreeMap
(tiles.openfreemap.org), and the hillshading and
contours from
AWS Terrain Tiles
(s3.amazonaws.com). None of those requests carries
your account, your trail name
or anything else that identifies you — but the servers involved
do see which part of the map was fetched, in the ordinary way any
website sees which page you asked for.
If you would rather not fetch tiles at all while you walk, downloading the map for offline use is the answer: once it is on your phone, the map draws from your own device and asks nobody anything.
Your choices
- Browse the map, water, shelters, and closures with no account at all.
- Ask us to see, correct, or delete the account information we hold by opening an issue — no need to put personal details in the issue itself, just ask and we'll follow up.
- Clear locally stored map data and preferences any time from your device or browser settings.
Children's privacy
OurHike isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Security
We take reasonable steps to protect the information we hold, but no method of storage or transmission is completely secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the app changes. We'll update the date at the top when we do, and for meaningful changes we'll try to call it out on the app's GitHub page.
Contact
Questions about this policy or your data: open an issue on GitHub.