TravelBuddy Privacy Policy

Last updated 27 September 2026

This Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) explains how information is handled in connection with the TravelBuddy mobile application (the “App”), which is developed and provided by Alper Kaplan (“we”, “us” or “our”). The content you create in TravelBuddy is private by default: it runs on your device, we operate no servers that receive or store that content, and we cannot access the trips, notes, photos or documents you create. There are two limited exceptions, both of which are optional and under your control: the Import with AI feature, which sends pages of files you choose to Apple to be read, described in Section 9; and advertising-measurement technology used to understand which of our own advertising campaigns are effective, described in Section 10 and subject to the tracking choice you make in the App. This Policy should be read together with our Terms of Service.

1. Definitions

1.1 “App” or “TravelBuddy” means the TravelBuddy application, together with its updates, content and documentation.

1.2 “We”, “us” and “our” mean Alper Kaplan, the developer and provider of the App.

1.3 “You” and “your” mean the person who downloads, installs or uses the App.

1.4 “Personal Data” means information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.

1.5 “Device” means the Apple device on which you install and run the App.

1.6 “Apple Services” means Apple-operated services on which the App relies, including the App Store, iCloud and, where you enable the feature described in Section 9, Private Cloud Compute.

2. Our approach to privacy

The App has no account and no sign-in. We do not operate back-end servers that receive or store your content, and we cannot see the trips, notes, photos, documents or other content you create. Any processing of your content takes place on your Device or within Apple Services under your own Apple ID. The only information that leaves your Device is the pages of files you choose to have read under Section 9, the limited advertising-measurement information described in Section 10, and the public reference requests described in Section 8. None of that information goes to a server operated by us.

3. Information we do not collect

We do not require an account, and we do not collect or have access to the content you create. In particular, we do not:

3.1 require you to create an account or provide your name, email address or telephone number;

3.2 receive, store or have access to your trips, notes, photos, documents or other content on any server operated by us, including the pages read under Section 9;

3.3 show advertising inside the App; or

3.4 sell or rent your Personal Data.

For the limited advertising-measurement information the App does share with our advertising partners to gauge the effectiveness of our own ads, and the control you have over it, see Section 10 (Advertising measurement and tracking).

4. Information stored on your Device

The content you create in the App is stored locally on your Device using the operating system’s standard storage. You control this content at all times, and it is not transmitted to us.

5. Optional iCloud synchronisation

If you are signed in to iCloud and leave iCloud enabled for the App, your content is synchronised across your own Apple devices through Apple’s CloudKit private database. That copy resides in your personal iCloud account, is tied to your Apple ID, and is processed by Apple under Apple’s Privacy Policy. We have no access to it. You may disable iCloud for the App at any time, in which case your content remains only on the individual Device.

6. Device permissions

The App may ask your permission to use certain Device features. You may grant or decline these, and change them later in your Device settings.

6.1 Location. If granted, location is used only on your Device to display maps and nearby places. It is not collected by, or transmitted to, us.

6.2 Photos and documents. Items you add to a trip remain on your Device and, if enabled, in your private iCloud, alongside your other content.

6.3 Notifications. Reminders and alerts are delivered as local notifications generated on your Device.

7. Purchases and subscriptions

Purchases and subscriptions are sold and processed by Apple through the App Store. Apple handles your payment; we do not receive or store your payment details. To make paid features available, the App verifies your entitlement through Apple’s StoreKit, which does not disclose your identity to us.

8. Third-party reference services

To enrich destination details, the App may request public reference information from a limited number of open services — currently Wikipedia (for destination summaries) and an open exchange-rate service (for currency conversion). These requests are anonymous and contain no account information, Personal Data or trip content. As with any internet request, technical details such as your IP address are necessarily visible to those services, which process such information under their own privacy policies.

9. Reading your documents with Apple Intelligence (Import with AI)

9.1 What the feature does. The App includes an optional feature, Import with AI, which reads a ticket, hotel booking or bill that you choose and fills in your trip from it, so that you do not have to type it out. The feature is off until you turn it on.

9.2 When anything is sent. Nothing is sent for this purpose unless you turn the feature on, choose files yourself and start an import. Only the pages of the files you choose are read. Your other trips, notes, photos, documents and journal are not sent.

9.3 Where it is sent. The pages you choose are sent to Private Cloud Compute, a service operated by Apple that runs the larger Apple Intelligence models. They are not sent to us and they are not sent to anyone else. We operate no servers, so we never receive them, never see them and never store them. Travel documents often carry your name and document numbers, which is why the App tells you this before you turn the feature on.

9.4 What Apple says happens to them. Apple states: “The data being processed in Private Cloud Compute is not stored or made accessible to Apple. It is processed only to fulfill your request, after which point the results are returned securely to your device and are not retained by Private Cloud Compute.” Apple carries out that processing as an independent controller under Apple Intelligence & Privacy and Apple’s Privacy Policy. Apple also publishes a Private Cloud Compute Security Guide describing how the service is built and verified.

9.5 What happens to the result. What comes back is a draft of your trip, shown to you for checking before anything is saved. If you accept it, it is saved on your Device and, where iCloud is enabled, in your own iCloud account, exactly like a trip you entered by hand. If you cancel, nothing is saved.

9.6 Training. We do not use your documents, or anything read from them, to train any model, and we operate no model of our own.

9.7 Your consent, and withdrawing it. Before the feature runs for the first time, the App shows you what is sent and asks you to agree. If you decline, the feature stays off and nothing else about the App changes: every trip, document and expense can still be added by hand. You can turn the feature off at any time in Settings › Preferences › Import with AI. Turning it off takes effect immediately, stops any reading still in progress, and we will ask you to agree again the next time you use the feature.

9.8 Requirements and availability. The feature requires a Device that supports Apple Intelligence, with Apple Intelligence switched on in your Device settings, and a current subscription; it is not available while you are exploring the sample-data demo. Because the feature depends on services and models provided by Apple, it may change or cease to be available if Apple changes or withdraws them, as described in our Terms of Service.

10. Advertising measurement and tracking

To promote the App, we run advertising campaigns on third-party platforms, currently Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok. So that we can understand which campaigns are effective and spend our marketing budget responsibly, the App includes those companies’ measurement software development kits (“SDKs”).

These SDKs may collect a limited amount of technical and device information — including your device’s advertising identifier (IDFA), general device and app information, and a small number of app events such as installation of the App, the start of a free trial, and the purchase of a subscription — and share it with Meta and TikTok. Meta and TikTok act as independent controllers of the information they receive and process it under their own privacy policies (see Meta’s Privacy Policy and TikTok’s Privacy Policy).

This activity is “tracking” as defined by Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (“ATT”) framework, so the App asks for your permission through Apple’s standard ATT prompt before any advertising identifier is used:

If you allow tracking, your device advertising identifier may be included so that an installation or subscription can be attributed to a specific advertising campaign.
If you do not allow tracking, or on devices or in regions where it is not available, no advertising identifier is used, and measurement relies only on Apple’s privacy-preserving SKAdNetwork, which reports aggregated, non-identifying campaign results.

You can change your choice at any time in Settings › Privacy & Security › Ad Measurement. If you are in the EEA, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we ask for your separate, prior consent inside the App before any of this measurement takes place, and the measurement software does not run at all unless you agree (see Section 14). Importantly, this advertising-measurement information never includes the content you create in the App, such as your trips, notes, photos and documents, which remains on your Device and, if enabled, in your private iCloud.

11. Data retention

We retain no Personal Data about you on our own systems. Your content persists on your Device and, if enabled, in your iCloud until you choose to delete it. Pages sent under Section 9 are not retained by us at any point, and Apple states that they are not retained by Private Cloud Compute. Any advertising-measurement information shared under Section 10 is retained by Meta and TikTok in accordance with their own retention policies.

12. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights in respect of Personal Data, such as the rights to access, correct, delete, port, or restrict or object to processing. Because we do not hold your Personal Data on our own systems, you exercise these rights over your content directly by managing or deleting it on your Device and in iCloud (Settings › your Apple ID › iCloud). You control the Import with AI feature described in Section 9 in the App (Settings › Preferences › Import with AI), and the advertising-measurement described in Section 10 in the App (Settings › Privacy & Security › Ad Measurement), together with Apple’s App Tracking Transparency setting. For rights in respect of data held by our advertising partners, you may also contact Meta and TikTok directly. You may contact us at any time with questions, and we will respond as required by applicable law.

13. United States state privacy rights

For the purposes of the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended) and comparable United States state privacy laws, the advertising-measurement activity described in Section 10 may constitute “sharing” of personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising when you allow tracking. You can opt out of this sharing at any time by declining the App Tracking Transparency prompt, or by turning ad measurement off in Settings › Privacy & Security › Ad Measurement. Apart from this, we do not “sell” your personal information, and because we do not otherwise collect Personal Data, we hold no such information to disclose, correct or delete on our side.

14. Your rights in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland (GDPR)

Because the App does not collect or process the content you create on our servers, we do not act as a data controller of that content. Personal data associated with iCloud and the App Store is processed by Apple as an independent controller under Apple’s Privacy Policy, data handled by the reference services in Section 8 is processed by those parties as independent controllers, and the pages you choose to have read under Section 9 are processed by Apple as an independent controller. For the advertising measurement in Section 10, we (Alper Kaplan, the independent developer of the App, contactable through our support page) are responsible for asking your consent and for the data the App collects and shares, while Meta and TikTok are responsible, as controllers, for how they process that data once they receive it. If you are in the EEA, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, those measurement SDKs are not started, and no advertising identifier or app event is shared with Meta or TikTok, unless you first give your consent on the consent screen shown in the App. That consent is the legal basis for this processing (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR and the corresponding UK GDPR and Swiss FADP rules); Apple’s separate App Tracking Transparency prompt is an additional device permission and is not, by itself, that consent, and we do not rely on legitimate interests or on contract for advertising measurement. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Settings › Privacy & Security › Ad Measurement, as easily as you gave it; withdrawal stops further sharing and does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before you withdrew, and if you decline or later withdraw, the App works exactly the same. The Import with AI feature in Section 9 is likewise off unless you turn it on, and you may withdraw that agreement at any time in Settings › Preferences › Import with AI, with the same effect.

Where you consent, the advertising-measurement data is shared with Meta and TikTok, which may process it outside your country, including in the United States and, in TikTok’s case, other countries such as China; those transfers rely on the mechanisms set out in the partners’ own policies, such as the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses. We keep no advertising-measurement data on our own systems and do not use it for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects; your consent choice is stored only on your Device. Subject to applicable law, you may access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your Personal Data, object to or restrict its processing, and withdraw your consent. Because the App is offline and we do not hold your content, most of these rights are exercised on your Device or with Apple, and for data held by Meta or TikTok you can exercise them directly with those companies; you can also contact us through our support page. You have the right to lodge a complaint with your data protection supervisory authority (in the United Kingdom, the Information Commissioner’s Office; in Switzerland, the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner; in the EEA, your national authority).

15. Children’s privacy

The App is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your jurisdiction), and we do not knowingly collect Personal Data from children. If you believe a child has provided Personal Data to us, please contact us.

16. Security

Your content is protected by your Device’s built-in security and, where iCloud is enabled, by Apple’s platform security. No method of electronic storage or transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

17. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time, including when features of the App are added, changed or withdrawn. The date at the top indicates when it was last revised, and material changes will be reflected on this page. Your continued use of the App after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Policy.

18. Contact

If you have any questions about this Policy, please contact us through our support page.