Privacy Policy
Effective 7 November 2026
This policy covers the Walk Companion - El iPhone app (“the App”) and the website elnearby.com (“the Site”). The person responsible for your data (the “controller”) is Viktor Balujev, an individual, reachable at el@elnearby.com. We say “we” below.
In short: El needs your location to send you on a walk, and we use as little else as we can. You do not need to register or give your name. We do not sell your data and we do not show advertising.
1. The App
What we collect and why
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| An anonymous account. The App signs you in without a name or email and gives you a random identifier. | To keep your place in the story and your settings. |
| Your progress and choices: where you are in the story, your language, voice on/off, walk length, light/dark map, your yes/no answers to El's questions, what El has written in its notebook. | To run the story and to let El remember what you told it. |
| Location (precise). See “Location” below. | To choose a point to walk to, to show you on the map and to notice that you have arrived. |
| Sign in with Apple (optional). If you link your Apple ID, we receive the email address Apple gives us, which may be a private relay address. | So your progress can follow you to a new phone. |
| Push notifications (optional, only if you agree). OneSignal receives a push token, the app version, language, time zone, country, device model and operating system, mobile carrier, session counts and your IP address. We also send one label: the number of the season you are in. | To tell you when you have arrived somewhere and to send story updates. |
| Usage and crash data (Google Analytics for Firebase and Firebase Crashlytics): app version, device model and operating system, crash reports, and how the App is used. | To find bugs and improve the App. |
| Request counts. Our servers count how many times an account asks for certain features per hour and day. | To keep the service from being abused. |
We do not ask for your name, contacts, photos, camera or microphone.
Location
- The App asks for your precise location through the normal iOS permission. Without it El cannot send you on a walk; you can change your choice at any time in iOS Settings.
- While a walk is on, the App keeps following your position in the background (with the screen locked) so it can tell you when you have reached the point. It does this only during a walk.
- Your phone's compass direction is used on the phone only, to draw the direction you face on the map.
- We do not store your location on our servers or link it to your account. The walking point lives in the App's memory and is gone when the App closes.
- Your exact position is sent to Google to lay a walking route (Routes API) and to find the name of your city (Geocoding API). Google also sees the usual technical data when the map loads. See Google's privacy policy.
- For a line about the weather, a place rounded to about 10 km is sent to our server, which asks Google's Weather API. The place is not stored against your account and is not given to the AI model (see below).
Artificial intelligence
Some lines El says are written by an AI model (Claude by Anthropic). The requests are made by our servers, not by your phone, so Anthropic does not receive your IP address or account identifier. What is sent:
- for a weather line: only the weather conditions and the language, no place;
- for a line about an answer you gave: the story question El asked, your yes or no, and the language;
- for a “where we are” message: the story text you have already passed and El's notebook records for it, and the language.
We send no name, email, location or identifier. The AI's reply is checked by our rules before El says it, and shared answers are kept so the same line can be reused.
Voice
When the voice is on, the text El is about to say is turned into speech by ElevenLabs, again through our server. That text can include the name of your city or the walk length you chose. The audio is kept in a shared cache keyed by the text, not by user. If you turn the voice off, nothing is sent for this.
Who else receives data
- Supabase hosts our database and servers, in London (UK).
- Google: Maps, Routes, Geocoding, Weather, and Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics.
- OneSignal: push notifications (policy).
- Apple: Sign in with Apple, push delivery.
- Anthropic and ElevenLabs: as above.
These companies act for us and under their own policies. We may also disclose data where the law requires it or to protect people's safety. We do not sell personal data.
How long we keep it
- Account data (progress, settings, answers, notebook) is kept while the account exists and is deleted at once when you delete the account.
- We do not automatically delete accounts that were abandoned. They hold no name or email unless you linked Apple.
- Analytics and crash data are kept by Google for the period set in our Firebase settings.
- Shared caches (voice audio, weather and message lines) are not tied to any person.
Deleting your account
- If you signed in with Apple, open El's memory and choose Delete account. Your progress, settings and account are erased from our database.
- Anonymous accounts can be deleted on request: write to el@elnearby.com from the phone's details we can verify, or delete the App and tell us.
- Deleting the account does not yet cancel the link on Apple's side. To remove El from your Apple ID, open iPhone Settings → your name → Sign in with Apple → El → Stop using Apple ID.
2. The Site
- If you leave your email, we keep it with your platform (iPhone or Android), whether you want an early version, and the time you agreed. We use it only to tell you about El's launch and early access. The box you tick is your consent; you can withdraw it at any time by writing to el@elnearby.com, and we will delete the entry.
- The form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that you are not a bot and sees your IP address and browser signals. We do not store your IP address.
- We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and does not follow you between sites.
- The Site is hosted on Firebase Hosting (Google), which keeps ordinary server logs including IP addresses.
- Your email is stored in our database in London (UK). We keep it until you ask us to remove it or the early-access list closes.
3. Your rights
Wherever you live in the UK or EU you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, limit or object to its use, and receive it in a portable form. Where we rely on your consent (the email list, push notifications, location) you can withdraw it at any time. Write to el@elnearby.com. You can also complain to your data protection authority; in the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office.
We rely on these legal grounds: running the App for you (account, progress, walks), our legitimate interest in keeping it secure and working (counts, crash reports), and your consent (location, push, the email list). Some of the companies above process data outside the UK and EU, such as in the United States; we rely on safeguards such as standard contractual clauses or their recognised adequacy for that.
4. Children
The App and the Site are not aimed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us information, write to us and we will delete it.
5. Security
We protect data with access controls and encrypted connections. No system is completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute security.
6. Changes
We will post any change on this page and update the date above. If a change matters to how we use your data, we will tell you in the App or by email where we can.