Legal
Privacy Policy
Last updated: August 8, 2026
This Privacy Policy explains what information Trawell (“Trawell”, “we”, “us”) collects when you use the Trawell mobile app and website, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. We keep it plain-English on purpose.
1. Information we collect
We collect only what we need to run the app.
Account information
- Your name and email address.
- A password if you sign up with email — it is stored only as a secure one-way hash, never in plain text.
- If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your name and email from that provider to create or match your account. We never receive your Google or Apple password.
Trip content you create
- Trips, destinations, travel dates, accommodation, and the currency of a trip.
- Checklist items and notes; expenses, who paid, splits, and settlements.
- Files you upload to a trip (for example tickets and bookings as PDFs or images) and attachments on checklist items.
- The countries and cities you mark as visited on your travel map.
Profile & payment details (optional)
- Optional bank/payment details you add to your profile — account holder name, account number/IBAN, and bank name — used only to help other trip members reimburse you (see Payment details).
Location (only when you turn it on)
- Your precise device location, collected only while you choose to share it with a specific group trip. It is off by default and you turn it on per trip. See Location sharing for exactly how it works and how to stop.
Technical information
- Basic technical data needed to operate and secure the service, such as your device’s IP address and app/session tokens, and error logs.
We do not use third-party advertising or cross-app tracking, and we do not sell your personal information.
2. How we use your information
- To create your account and sign you in, and to sync your trips across your devices.
- To provide the app’s features — packing checklists, expense splitting and balances, files, weather and the travel map.
- To send you in-app notifications about your trips (for example when a member joins, an expense is added, or a trip is coming up).
- To keep the service secure, prevent abuse, and fix problems.
3. Shared trips & visibility
Trawell lets you plan trips with other people. When you join or are added to a shared trip, the content of that trip is visible to the other members of it. This includes:
- Your name and the items, expenses, files and notes you add to the shared trip.
- Your balance within that trip, and — only where you owe or are owed money — the payment details described below, shown to the relevant members so they can settle up.
Content in a private trip, and any item you mark as private within a shared trip, is visible only to you.
4. Location sharing
Group trips include an optional live location sharing feature so members can find each other while travelling. It is designed to be private and fully in your control:
- Off by default and opt-in per trip. Your location is never collected until you explicitly turn sharing on for a specific trip, and you can turn it off again at any time.
- Only your trip members see it. While you share, your current location is visible only to the other members of that same group trip — never to other users, never publicly, and we do not use it for advertising or tracking.
- Background sharing is your choice. If you grant the “Always” location permission, sharing can continue while the app is in the background so your group still sees your position; iOS shows its status-bar indicator while this happens. If you grant “While Using”, we only update your location while the app is open. You can change this in your device Settings at any time.
- Distances use your location on-device. The app may read your location to show how far away your trip members are; this calculation happens on your device and is not uploaded unless you are actively sharing.
- When you stop. When you turn sharing off, we stop collecting new location updates. Your last shared position may remain visible to that trip’s members as a “last seen” point until the trip ends, after which it is no longer shown. Deleting the trip, or leaving it, removes your location from it.
We keep only your most recent shared location per trip (not a location history), and it is removed when the trip is deleted or your account is deleted.
5. Third-party services
We use a small number of third parties to run the app:
- Google Sign-In and Apple Sign In — for optional social login. They handle authentication; we receive only your name and email.
- Open-Meteo — to show weather for your destinations. We send only the coordinates of a destination to fetch its forecast; no account information or authentication token is ever sent to Open-Meteo.
- Our hosting provider — which stores the app’s data on our behalf under our instructions.
6. Payment details
Trawell is a planning and tracking tool. It does not process payments or move money. The expense and “settle-up” features only record and calculate balances between trip members.
If you choose to add bank/payment details to your profile, they are shown only to members of a shared trip who owe you money, so they can pay you directly outside the app. You can edit or remove these details at any time in your profile.
7. Storage & security
- All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit over HTTPS.
- Passwords are stored only as secure hashes; sign-in uses short-lived access tokens with revocable refresh tokens.
- Uploaded files are served only through authenticated, ownership-checked requests — never from a public link.
No method of storage or transmission is 100% secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your information.
8. Retention & deletion
We keep your information for as long as your account is active. You can:
- Delete individual trips, items, expenses and files at any time in the app. Deleting a trip permanently removes its items and files.
- Delete your entire account and all associated data — from within the app, or by contacting us at the address below. We will action account-deletion requests promptly.
9. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your personal data, and to object to or restrict certain processing. You can exercise most of these directly in the app, or contact us and we’ll help. We won’t discriminate against you for exercising these rights.
10. Children
Trawell is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your country), and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we’ll update the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app.