Who we are
Charted is made and operated by Northfoundry, based in Québec, Canada. For anything about your personal information, write to [email protected] — a person reads it.
Some of the companies that help run Charted are outside Québec and Canada, mostly in the United States. Your information can therefore be stored and processed there, under the contracts and protections described in Who processes data for us.
What we collect
Your account
Your email address and a password (we keep only a scrambled version of it, never the password itself), or your Apple ID sign-in, your first and last name, and — if you choose one for the community — a username. We also keep the settings you pick: how you like to get around a city, your categories, your appearance choices, your notification choices, your home base if you set one.
Your trips
Everything you put in Charted to plan a trip: trips and their dates, the places and days of your itinerary, your saved boards, packing lists, notes, reservation numbers, the documents and photos you upload to a trip or to your wallet (a passport scan, a ticket), contacts you type in, and flight numbers. This is the heart of the product, and it is yours.
What you send in to be read
Booking emails you forward to Charted, text you paste, PDFs and screenshots you attach, links to social videos you paste or share, and videos you send from your camera roll. We keep the text of what came in for two years in an import log, so you can see what happened when an import goes wrong (see retention).
Your position
Only if you allow it, and only for the features that need it: the voice guide, city walks and roams (the "Always" permission lets the narration keep going with the phone in your pocket), Maître D (to find the restaurant you are in), and "near me" in Explore. Your position is sent to our servers to look up what is around you. We don't store a track of your movements. Two things do remember a place: a Maître D consultation keeps where it happened, because it is part of your tasting journal, and the progress of a city walk is kept on your phone.
Photos and voice
A photo you show the guide is described and then forgotten — it is not stored. Photos of a menu you give Maître D are kept privately with that consultation, in your journal. Your voice, when you hold to talk to the guide or dictate a city-guide stop, is sent to the AI service to be understood and is not stored by us.
Technical records
Like any online service, our servers keep records needed to run and repair Charted: the requests made to our AI and map services (with their cost, so we can watch our bills), import logs, sign-in tokens, the push token that lets your phone receive notifications and live flight cards, and the last fatal error the app noted on your device (visible to you in Settings › Diagnostics). We use no analytics or advertising SDK.
How we use it
- To run Charted for you — build your itinerary, place things on the map, compute travel times, track your flights, prepare your guide, sync between your phone and the web.
- To make the AI features work — the assistant, imports, place summaries, suggestions, the guide's narration, Maître D. Details in The AI, plainly.
- To tell you things — a confirmation email when an import lands, opening-hours changes for a place you planned, a code to reset your password, a notification when someone you follow shares a trip. Each notification channel can be turned off in Settings › Notifications.
- To keep the service safe and paid for — sign-in security, abuse prevention, and knowing what each feature costs us.
We do not sell personal information, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not build profiles for anyone else. Charted learns your travel habits (your usual dinner time, how much you pack into a day) only to plan better for you, and you can see and erase what it has learned in Settings › AI Settings.
The AI, plainly
Charted uses AI services from OpenAI and Google. They receive only what a feature needs:
- Imports — the text of a forwarded booking email, pasted text, or a PDF/screenshot you attach, so the AI can turn it into itinerary items.
- The assistant and the guide — your question, your itinerary for the trip, your written AI preferences, your position when you ask what is around you, and — with the voice guide — your voice.
- Video imports — the caption of a video you paste, or the video itself when its caption names no place, so the AI can watch it and list the spots (see Scrape Creators below for how the link is read).
- Maître D — the photo of a menu or wine list, the kind of place you are in, the weather, and your past tasting notes.
- Images — a short description (a destination, a dish) when Charted generates an illustration.
We use these companies' business APIs, whose terms do not allow them to train their models on your content. AI answers are kept in your trip's conversation so you can find them again; every AI request is also logged on our side with its prompt and answer, for up to two years, so we can fix mistakes and watch costs — those logs are visible only to Charted's administrators.
Your own AI key. If you enter your own OpenAI key in Settings › AI Settings, it stays in your phone's secure keychain and is never sent to us; the guide's voice sessions then run directly between your phone and OpenAI.
Connected assistants. You can connect ChatGPT or Claude to your Charted account (Settings › Connected apps, or the Charted GPT in ChatGPT). You sign in to Charted and allow it; from then on, that assistant, under your own account with its maker, can list and read your trips and create trips or items when you ask it to. We only hand it what you asked for; what the assistant does with it is governed by its maker's terms, not ours. Disconnect at any time in Settings › Connected apps — access ends within the hour.
Who processes data for us
These are the companies that receive some of your information so that Charted can work. Each one receives only what is listed. We add a line here whenever a new service joins.
| Service | What it receives, and why |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare infrastructure | Runs our servers, hosts the app and this site, stores your uploaded files (documents, photos, generated images and audio).Everything Charted does passes through Cloudflare's network. |
| Neon infrastructure | Our database (hosted in the United States): your account, trips, places, settings and logs.The place where Charted's data lives. |
| OpenAI AI | Bookings and text to read, your questions to the assistant and the guide, your voice in voice sessions, menu photos for Maître D, videos or voiceovers to transcribe, descriptions for generated images and narration audio.The assistant, imports, the voice guide, Maître D, illustrations. |
| Google AI maps | Sign in with Google, if you use it. Place names and searches, the coordinates of your itinerary (routes, travel times, maps, weather), flight and airport look-ups, and — through Gemini — the videos and video links Charted watches to find the places they show. Google Maps in the app and Google Fonts on this site also see your device's connection.Places, maps, routes, weather, and watching travel videos. |
| Scrape Creators link reader | Only the public web address of a social video you paste or share (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube). Nothing about you goes with it — no name, no account, no identifier. It sends back the video's caption and a link to the file so Charted can read or watch it. If it is unavailable, Charted's own readers take over.Reading video links reliably, since the platforms often refuse our servers. |
| TikTok, Meta, YouTube, TripAdvisor | When you paste a link, our servers (and, for Instagram, your phone) may fetch the public page or file directly from the platform. The platform sees that request; it does not learn who you are on Charted.Our own fallback readers for video links. |
| FlightAware · AviationStack | Flight numbers and dates you enter or import.Live flight status, gates, delays, the plane that will fly you. |
| Resend | Your email address and the content of the emails Charted sends you; and the booking emails you forward to Charted's import address.Sending and receiving email. |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, if you use it; the push token that delivers notifications and live flight cards to your lock screen; App Store purchases when subscriptions launch.Signing in and notifications on iPhone. |
| Expo | Your device's push token, to deliver app notifications (for example when someone you follow shares a trip).Notifications. |
| Unsplash | A destination name, to find a cover photo for a trip. No personal data.Trip cover photos. |
| Open-Meteo | The coordinates of your day's location, for sea and tide conditions. No personal data.Live conditions in the assistant's advice. |
None of these companies is allowed to use your information for its own purposes beyond providing the service to us.
What is public
Nothing, until you share. When you share a trip or a city guide in the Community section, Charted publishes a copy that keeps only what a stranger should see: the places, the days, the stories and photos of the guide — never your notes, documents, confirmation numbers or private flights — under your first name or the username you chose. You can unshare or delete it at any time. Comments, ratings and follows in the community are public to other Charted users. People you invite to a trip see that trip, with the role you give them.
How long we keep things
- Your account and trips — as long as you have an account. Your travel history is the product: we never delete a past trip on our own.
- Import and AI logs — two years, then removed automatically.
- Video-import progress records — seven days.
- Places you remove from a board — kept in an archive for 30 days so you can restore them, then deleted.
- Sign-in sessions — 30 days without use; password-reset codes — 15 minutes.
- Looked-up place details (a cache shared by all users, no personal data) — up to 30 days.
Deleting your account (Settings › Privacy & Security › Delete account) removes your account and everything attached to it from our database right away, and signs you out everywhere. Files you had uploaded are removed from our file storage on request while we finish automating that step — just write to us. If you deleted a trip that had already started and other travellers were part of it, they keep their own copy of that trip, without your documents.
Your rights
You are in control from the app itself:
- See and take your data — Settings › Privacy & Security › Download my data gives you a complete copy.
- Correct it — everything is editable in place.
- Erase it — Delete account, above.
- Limit it — turn off location, notifications, email import or the AI's learned preferences in Settings at any time.
Under Québec's private-sector privacy law and similar laws elsewhere, you can also ask us to confirm what we hold about you, to correct it, to stop using it, or to explain a decision the software made about you. Write to [email protected]; we answer within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you may complain to the privacy authority where you live (in Québec, the Commission d'accès à l'information).
Security
Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are stored scrambled with a modern hash, never in clear. Sign-in tokens are short-lived and rotate; on iPhone they live in the device keychain. Access to production data is limited to Charted's administrators, and every AI and map request is logged so that unusual activity can be seen. If a breach ever affected your information in a way that could harm you, we would tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
Children
Charted is not intended for people under 16, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
When Charted gains a feature that changes what is collected or who processes it, this page is updated first, with a new date at the top. For meaningful changes we will also tell you in the app.
Contact
Northfoundry · Québec, Canada · [email protected]