Privacy Policy

Last updated October 8, 2026

1. About this policy

FaceTravel is a social travel app. You create a profile, post trips and experiences, join other people's, chat in groups, and review each other afterwards. That only works if we hold some information about you. This policy sets out what we hold, why, who else sees it, and how to get rid of it.

It covers the FaceTravel mobile app and this website. You must be 18 or older to have an account.

The data controller is BEPART LTD (company no. 16616236), 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom.

2. What we collect

How you sign in. If you sign in with an email code, we store your email address. If you use Google, we receive the email address, name and profile picture Google returns. If you use Apple, we receive the identifier Apple returns and, if you allow it, your name and email — if you choose Apple's Hide My Email, we only ever see the relay address, never your real one. Whichever route you take, we create a FaceTravel account ID for you and record when you accepted the Terms.

Your profile. First and last name, username, date of birth, gender if you set one, home city and country, your bio, profile photo, the languages you speak, your interests and travel preferences, and Instagram or TikTok links if you add them. Date of birth is required so we can enforce our 18+ rule, and it cannot be changed after setup.

What you create. Posts and their photos, comments, trips and experiences (title, description, dates, destination city and country, capacity, cover photo, price label and itinerary days), group chat messages, and reviews you write after travelling with someone.

What you do. Who you follow and who follows you, trips you save or ask to join, the trips and communities you belong to, the notifications we send you, and accounts you block.

Your device. If you turn on notifications, we store a notification token for each device you use, and whether that device is iOS or Android. The token identifies your installation of the app so we can deliver an alert to it.

Diagnostics. When the app crashes or hits an error, a report goes to Sentry, our error-tracking provider. It contains your FaceTravel account ID, your device model, operating system version and app version, and a technical trail of the screens you opened and the network calls the app made just before the problem. We configure Sentry not to record your IP address, and we strip your email, phone number and login credentials out of the report before it is sent. We also sample a small share of sessions (around 15% in the live app) for performance timings.

Safety records. If you report someone, or someone reports you, we store the report, the reason given, anything typed into it, and a copy of the content that was reported.

Messages to us. If you email support or use our web deletion form, we keep what you send and the email address you send it from.

Network address. When the app makes a request without being signed in, our servers note the IP address it came from in order to rate-limit abuse. Those entries are not tied to an account and are deleted after a day.

We do not collect your contacts, your calendar, microphone audio, health data, or advertising identifiers. The app contains no advertising, analytics or attribution software, and no software that tracks you across other apps or websites.

3. Location

Location is optional. FaceTravel works without it.

If you allow it, the app reads your device's position while the map screen is open — one reading when the map loads, then an update roughly every 20 seconds or every 80 metres you move. It stops when you leave that screen. We never read your location in the background or while the app is closed.

Those readings are used in two ways. On your phone, to centre the map and to order trips by how close they are. And when you run a "near you" search, the coordinates are sent to our servers as part of that one search so it can find trips within range. We do not save your position on your profile or anywhere else, and we never show your live position to other users.

Trip pins are a different thing entirely. They come from the destination city typed by whoever created the trip. When you type a destination, the text is sent to OpenStreetMap's search service to suggest matching places, and the city you settle on is turned into coordinates by your phone's built-in address lookup (Apple's on iOS, Google's on Android). Those coordinates are stored on the trip, not on you.

Photos are re-encoded on your device before they are uploaded, which removes any location the camera had recorded inside the image file.

The app asks for precise location permission. The readings it actually takes are at balanced accuracy — roughly neighbourhood level rather than exact GPS.

4. Photos, camera and notifications

• Photo library — only so you can pick images for your profile picture, your posts and your trip covers. The app receives only the images you select.
• Camera — only when you choose to take a photo for those same things.
• Notifications — to tell you about join requests, messages, and changes to trips you are part of.

You can refuse any of these and keep using the app, and you can change your mind later in your device settings.

5. What other people can see

Your profile — name, username, photo, home city, bio, interests, languages and any social links you added — is visible to other signed-in FaceTravel users. So are your posts, the trips you create, your comments and your reviews. Reviews show the reviewer as a first name and last initial only.

Profile photos and post images are stored privately and served through links that expire. Trip cover images are stored in a public bucket, which means anyone holding the direct image address can open it, including people without a FaceTravel account. Bear that in mind when choosing a cover photo.

If you block someone, our servers stop showing each of you the other's content, and any follow between you is removed.

6. How we use your information

• To run FaceTravel — your profile, trips, chats, communities, search and the map.
• To keep people safe — enforcing the 18+ rule, handling blocks and reports, and removing content or accounts that break our rules.
• To send the notifications you have asked for.
• To find and fix crashes and slow screens.
• To meet legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

We do not sell your personal information, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not build advertising profiles.

7. Who else processes your data

• Supabase — hosts our database, sign-in system, file storage and server functions. Almost everything described in section 2 is stored there.
• Expo — delivers push notifications. Receives your notification token and the text of the notification.
• Sentry — crash and performance diagnostics, as described in section 2.
• Google — Google Sign-In, if you use it. Google Maps draws the map inside the app and receives the coordinates of the area you are looking at. On Android, Google performs the address lookup for trip destinations.
• Apple — Sign in with Apple, if you use it. On iOS, Apple performs the address lookup for trip destinations.
• OpenStreetMap — suggests places as you type a destination. Receives what you type in that field, and the network address your device is connecting from.
• Resend — delivers one-time sign-in codes to your email address, if you sign in that way.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or where we believe it is necessary to prevent serious harm.

8. Deleting your account

In the app. Settings → Delete account. After two confirmations this runs immediately — it is not a request that waits in a queue.

What is deleted. Your login, your profile, your posts, comments and likes, your follows, saves, join requests and trip and community memberships, your notifications, blocks and notification tokens, the images you uploaded (trip cover photos included), the reports you had filed about other people, and the reviews other travellers wrote about you.

What stays, anonymised. Trips and experiences are shared with the people who joined them, so they are not deleted with your account. The trips and experiences you hosted, their group chats, the messages you sent and the reviews you wrote about other travellers stay where they are, no longer linked to your account and shown as “Deleted user”.

What happens to your upcoming plans. Every trip or experience you host that has not ended yet is cancelled the moment you delete your account. Its members get the usual cancellation notification, and any pending join requests are closed. Pending requests on your past trips are closed too, since nobody is left to answer them.

Two kinds of record are kept on purpose:

• Reports other people filed about you — the reason and a copy of the content that was reported — are kept with the link to your account removed, so we can still act on abuse and recognise repeat behaviour.
• Actions our moderators took, such as removing a post or banning an account, stay in an internal log recording what was done and to which account identifier.

On the web. The deletion form on this site does not delete anything by itself. It records your request so that someone on our team can confirm you own that email address before running the deletion. We aim to complete verified requests within 30 days. The email address and any note you submit are kept with the request record.

If you sign in with Google or Apple, deleting your FaceTravel account does not affect your Google or Apple account. You may also want to remove FaceTravel's access from your Apple ID or Google account settings.

9. How long we keep things

We keep your information for as long as your account exists. When you delete it, your information is deleted or anonymised as described in section 8, apart from the safety and moderation records, which we keep for as long as we need them to protect other people using FaceTravel. Crash diagnostics are held by Sentry under its own retention schedule and are linked to nothing but your account ID. Database backups may hold copies for a short period after deletion, until those backups are cycled out.

10. Security

Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted. Your sign-in session is held in your device's secure keychain. Access to the database is controlled per account by row-level rules enforced on the server, so one account cannot read another's private data simply by asking for it. Profile and post images are stored privately and served through links that expire. No system is perfectly secure and we will not pretend otherwise.

11. Your choices and rights

You can edit most of your profile in the app at any time, turn location and notifications on or off in your device settings, block anyone, and delete your account and content. Depending on where you live, local law may also give you the right to ask for a copy of your data, to have it corrected, to object to how we use it, or to complain to a data protection authority. Write to privacy@joinfacetravel.com and we will respond.

12. 18+ only

FaceTravel is for adults. We collect date of birth at sign-up and refuse accounts under 18, both in the app and on the server. We do not knowingly collect anything from a child. If you believe a minor has an account, tell us at support@joinfacetravel.com and we will remove it.

13. Where your data is processed

Our providers operate in the European Union and the United States, so your information may be processed outside the country you live in. Where that happens we rely on the standard data protection terms our providers offer.

14. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when the app changes, and the date at the top will change with it. If a change materially affects you, we will tell you in the app.

15. Contact

Privacy questions: privacy@joinfacetravel.com
Safety and reports: support@joinfacetravel.com
Legal: legal@joinfacetravel.com