Privacy Policy
Effective date: July 23, 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Explorly ("Explorly," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, shares, retains, and protects information when you use the Explorly iOS application, our related online services, and explorly.app (together, the "Service").
Explorly is the controller of the personal data described in this policy. You can contact us at [email protected].
Contents
- Information we collect
- How we use information
- Legal bases for processing
- How we share information
- Retention and deletion
- Your choices and rights
- International transfers
- Security
- Children
- Changes to this policy
- Contact us
1. Information We Collect
Account and authentication information
- Guest accounts: a device identifier supplied by iOS, an internal user identifier, and an automatically generated guest username.
- Registered accounts: your email address, chosen username, internal user identifier, and a securely hashed form of your password.
- Third-party sign-in: if you choose Sign in with Apple, Google Sign-In, or Facebook Login, we receive a provider-specific identifier and may receive your email address and profile picture. We process sign-in tokens and authorization credentials needed to authenticate you and to disconnect the provider if you delete your account.
Travel and app-content information
We store the places you mark as visited or favorite, visit dates, optional visit notes, achievement progress, and information used to create your timeline, travel statistics, completion percentages, and rankings.
Location information
If you explicitly grant "Always" location permission, Explorly uses iOS significant-location-change monitoring. The app sends latitude, longitude, horizontal accuracy, and capture time to our servers so we can identify a country or city you may have visited and send an optional notification. Explorly does not automatically add a visit: you must review and confirm every suggestion.
You can use the rest of the app without enabling this feature and can revoke location access at any time in iOS Settings.
Profile photos
If you choose to add a profile photo, we receive the edited image you select from your photo library or capture with your camera. We do not use profile photos for advertising or facial recognition.
Notifications and device information
If notifications are available, we process an Apple Push Notification service token, platform, and preferred language to deliver account and likely-visit notifications. We also receive technical request information such as IP address, user agent, app language, time zone, request time, and server error information through ordinary network and security logs.
Communications
We process information you provide when you contact support. We also use your email address for transactional messages such as email confirmation, password reset, password-change confirmation, welcome messages, and account-deletion confirmation. We do not send third-party advertising emails.
Website information
Our current website does not use first-party advertising cookies or behavioral analytics. Website hosting and content delivery providers may process standard request information, including IP address, browser type, requested page, and time of access, to deliver and secure the site. Loading the external App Store badge may also create a request to Apple.
2. How We Use Information
We use the information described above to:
- create and maintain guest and registered accounts;
- authenticate users and support email, Apple, Google, and Facebook sign-in;
- store and display visits, favorites, notes, profile photos, timelines, statistics, and achievements;
- provide destination search, country details, currency information, maps, and related app features;
- generate optional likely-visit suggestions and deliver notifications you allow;
- send transactional account emails and respond to support requests;
- protect the Service, prevent abuse, troubleshoot errors, and maintain reliability;
- calculate aggregate or comparative travel statistics; and
- comply with applicable law and enforce our Terms of Service.
3. Legal Bases for Processing
Where the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or similar law requires a legal basis, we rely on the following:
| Legal basis | Examples |
|---|---|
| Performance of a contract | Providing your account, travel history, favorites, profile, statistics, achievements, and support. |
| Consent | Optional location access, camera or photo selection, and notification permissions. |
| Legitimate interests | Securing, debugging, and improving the Service, preventing abuse, and producing aggregate statistics. |
| Legal obligations | Responding to lawful requests and retaining information when applicable law requires it. |
4. How We Share Information
We do not sell your personal data. We do not share your travel history for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share information only as needed to operate the Service, at your direction, or when required by law.
Service providers and platform partners may include:
- Apple: App Store distribution, Sign in with Apple, Apple Maps, system permissions, and push notifications. See Apple's Privacy Policy.
- Google: Google Sign-In when you select it. See Google's Privacy Policy.
- Meta: Facebook Login when you select it. See Meta's Privacy Policy.
- Amazon Web Services: object storage for profile photos and supporting cloud infrastructure. See AWS Privacy.
- Mailgun: delivery of transactional account emails. See Mailgun's Privacy Policy.
- Hosting, database, and content-delivery providers: infrastructure used to serve the app, API, website, and destination media.
These providers may process only the information needed for their services and are required to protect personal data consistently with their contractual and legal obligations.
We may disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with law, protect users or the Service, investigate fraud or security issues, or respond to a valid legal process. If the Service is involved in a merger, acquisition, or asset transfer, information may be transferred subject to appropriate notice and protection.
5. Retention and Deletion
We use the following retention criteria:
- Account information, visits, favorites, notes, achievement progress, and statistics are retained while your account is active and as needed to provide the Service.
- Profile photos are retained until you replace or remove them or delete your account.
- Location-based suggestion records are retained as needed to provide suggestions and avoid repeatedly notifying you about the same place.
- Verification, password-reset, access, refresh, and sign-in-provider credentials are retained only for their operational lifetime or until they are used, revoked, or no longer needed.
- Security, technical, and support records are retained only as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which they were collected, subject to legal, fraud-prevention, backup, and dispute-resolution requirements.
Deleting your account
You can delete a registered account in the app by opening Profile → Settings → Delete account. Account deletion revokes available social-login credentials, removes authentication and notification tokens, deletes the profile photo, and removes or replaces direct identifiers such as email, username, device identifier, password, and provider IDs.
Some historical trip, favorite, achievement, and visit-suggestion records—including previously provided location coordinates—may currently remain attached to a pseudonymous deleted-account record. That record retains an internal identifier, while its username is replaced with a random value and direct account identifiers are removed. These records are no longer available through an active account, but they may still be personal data. To request deletion or irreversible anonymization of residual data, email [email protected]. We will honor valid requests unless retention is required for legal, security, fraud-prevention, or dispute-resolution reasons.
6. Your Choices and Rights
- Location: change or revoke access in iOS Settings. Revoking access stops future location updates but does not by itself delete information already received.
- Notifications: change notification permissions in iOS Settings.
- Profile photo: remove it from your profile or delete your account.
- Account: delete it from Profile → Settings → Delete account.
- Support and privacy requests: use the options on our Support page.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or obtain a copy of your personal data; restrict or object to processing; withdraw consent; or lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority. Withdrawing consent does not affect processing that occurred before withdrawal.
We may need to verify your identity before completing a request. Authorized agents may submit requests where permitted by law. We will not discriminate against you for exercising a privacy right.
7. International Data Transfers
Our providers may process information in countries outside your country of residence. Where applicable law requires it, we use recognized safeguards for international transfers, such as adequacy decisions, contractual protections, or another lawful transfer mechanism.
8. Security
We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect information. These include encrypted network connections, hashed passwords, protected authentication credentials, and access controls. No internet transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.
9. Children
Explorly is not directed to children under 13 or the minimum age required to consent to data processing in their jurisdiction. We do not knowingly collect personal data from a child without legally valid authorization. If you believe a child has provided personal data improperly, contact us so we can investigate and take appropriate action.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy when the Service, our providers, or applicable requirements change. We will post the updated policy here and revise the effective date. If a change materially affects how we use personal data, we will provide additional notice when appropriate.
11. Contact Us
Explorly is the data controller for the processing described in this policy. For privacy questions, requests, or complaints, contact:
Explorly
Email: [email protected]
Support: https://explorly.app/support/