DackPack Privacy Policy

DackPack is a hiking app and website for the Adirondack Park, made by Ironset LLC, [[MIKE: postal address]] (“we”). This policy covers the DackPack app for iPhone and Android, the website at dackpack.io, and the service behind both at api.dackpack.io.

Questions and requests: Contact@ironset.io.

• The map, your position, search and your hiking records work on your phone without an account and without a connection. Without an account, your records do not leave your phone.
• With an account, your hiking records are backed up to our server so they survive a lost phone and appear on your other devices.
• The AI assistant sends your messages, and the records it reads to answer you, to Anthropic. The app and the website both ask your permission first, and you can withdraw it.
• There are no ads, no analytics or crash-reporting tools, and no tracking across other companies’ apps or websites. We do not sell your personal information.

Your account

• Email address and password. To sign you in. Passwords are stored only as a one-way hash. Your email address is never used as your name and is never shown to other people.
• Your public name. An account created with an email address has no display name: your profile is shown under a random profile name such as “hiker-kfbadpeo”. If you sign in with Google on the website, the name on your Google account becomes your display name, which appears on your public profile and next to your reviews.
• Google sign-in, offered on the website only (the app has none): the name, email address and profile picture link Google shares, and the tokens Google issues for the sign-in.
• Sign-in sessions. For each signed-in device or browser we keep the session, the IP address it signed in from and the device or browser description it sent. A session lasts 7 days and is renewed while you use it.

Your location

With your permission, the app uses your phone’s location to show where you are on the map, to offer a summit check-in, and to record a hike. It can keep using location with the screen off while you are recording a hike. It also reads the phone’s barometer to improve altitude. Location is processed on your phone, and your position is not sent to us except in these cases:

• Recorded hikes, if you are signed in: each hike's totals (start and end time, distance, moving time, ascent and descent) are uploaded to back it up. The track itself (a series of points with latitude, longitude, altitude, time and accuracy) is uploaded only if you allow it when the app asks, and only on Wi-Fi. You can stop at any time in Settings under Privacy, and delete the tracks already uploaded from our server there too, with their earlier versions; the hikes' totals stay backed up.
• Trips you plan, if you are signed in: the stops you chose on the map.

A summit check-in records which summit and which day. The GPS reading taken at the summit stays on your phone and is never uploaded.

Weather. The app asks our server for a forecast by forecast zone or by summit — not by your position. Our server gets forecasts from the US National Weather Service and sends it nothing about you.

On the website, “show my location” uses your browser’s location only inside your browser, to move the map. It is not sent to us.

Hiking records you back up

If you are signed in, the app backs up the records you create: summit visits (which summit, the date, how it was recorded, your notes, and the names of anyone you list as with you), challenges you have started, your trip log, peaks you have marked to climb, saved trips, and recorded hikes. They are stored with your account so they can be restored and synced. If you list companions by name, that is information about them — please only add names they would be happy for you to record.

Reviews, photos, lists and profiles

• Public: your profile (your display name if you have one, your profile name, the bio and location text you enter, counts of visits and peaks, and who you follow and who follows you), your reviews (your name, rating, text, activity and conditions), and photos you add with a review. Anyone can see these without signing in.
• Reviews you mark helpful are recorded with your account; only the total for each review is shown.
• Photos are added on the website. Before a photo is published, our server removes the details the camera stored in the file (EXIF and similar metadata), including the location where it was taken, and keeps only the picture. Photos published before we started doing this have the same details removed from the published copy. Photos are served from photos.dackpack.io. If you start adding a photo and do not finish, the file you uploaded is kept apart, not shown or linked anywhere, and deleted within about a day.
• Saved places and lists are private unless you make a list public, in which case other signed-in users can see it.

The AI assistant

The assistant is Claude, an AI made by Anthropic. When you use it, our server sends Anthropic — directly, or through Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Web Services’ AI service — your messages and the records the assistant reads to answer you: your summit visits (with their dates, notes and companions’ names), trip log, saved trips, peaks marked to climb, and challenge progress. The assistant on the website reads the same records as the one in the app. Your location is not sent, unless you type it.

The app and the website both ask your explicit permission before anything is sent. The app remembers your answer on your phone, and the website in your browser, for the account you are signed in with. You can withdraw it at any time: in the app, from the information button at the top of the assistant or from Settings; on the website, from the information button at the top of the assistant. Withdrawing stops any further sending and ends the conversation, and signing out withdraws it too — on the website, so does your sign-in expiring, and someone else who signs in on the same browser is asked for their own. Everything else works the same either way.

We keep a copy of each conversation with your account — your questions, the answers, what the assistant looked up, and how much it used — to operate the assistant and to investigate problems, until you delete your account. The app also keeps the text of your recent AI chats on your phone for one hour, so the assistant can remember them, sends it with your next questions in that hour, and then deletes it. We do not collect, use or sell your personal information to train large language models. What Anthropic and Amazon may do with it is set by their terms; see “Who else handles your information”.

Map downloads

The app downloads map packs from our server. These downloads carry no account information.

Server logs

Like any web service, our server logs each request, including the IP address and request headers (never passwords or sign-in tokens), to operate and secure the service. Logs are kept for 30 days.

• dackpack.io itself sets no cookies.
• Signing in sets one session cookie on api.dackpack.io (secure, not readable by scripts, 7 days). Google sign-in adds a short-lived cookie for the sign-in itself.
• The website keeps two things in your browser’s local storage, and never sends them to us: which reviews you marked helpful, and whether you allowed the AI assistant, and for which account.
• There are no advertising or analytics cookies.
• The website loads fonts from Google Fonts, a photo from Wikimedia Commons, and — only if you turn on 3D terrain — map data from demotiles.maplibre.org. Those services receive your IP address when your browser fetches them.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising or for profiling that makes decisions about you. We use these providers:

• Amazon Web Services — hosting, database, photo and map storage and delivery, logs (United States).
• Anthropic, directly or through Amazon Bedrock — the AI assistant, only if you allow it.
• Google — sign-in on the website, only if you choose it; fonts on the website.

Each provider receives only what it needs for its part, and we require the same or equal protection of your information as this policy describes. [[MIKE: confirm the providers’ terms — that AWS’s, Anthropic’s and Google’s data-processing terms give this protection, and what Anthropic’s and Amazon Bedrock’s terms say about keeping and training on assistant data — and state it here]]

We may disclose information if the law requires it.

• Your account, backed-up records, reviews, photos, saved places, lists, profile and follows: until you delete them or delete your account.
• When you edit or delete a backed-up record, we keep the earlier version on the server until you delete your account — except hike tracks you delete from the app’s Settings, whose earlier versions are deleted with them.
• AI assistant conversations: until you delete your account.
• Server logs: 30 days.
• After you delete your account, we keep a one-way fingerprint of each of its sign-in sessions for 7 days, so a phone that missed our reply can learn the account is gone. The fingerprint names no person and no account.

• Use the app without an account: your records stay on your phone.
• Turn location off or down in your phone’s settings; the map still works.
• Allow or withdraw the AI assistant’s access, as described above.
• Stop backing up hike tracks, and delete the ones already uploaded, from the app’s Settings under Privacy.
• Export your visits and trip log from the app, in CSV format.
• Delete your account from the app’s Settings. That deletes, from our server: your account (email address, password and every sign-in), your backed-up records and their earlier versions, your recorded hikes and their tracks, your reviews and helpful marks (and their effect on ratings and counts), your photos, saved places, lists, profile and follows, and your AI assistant conversations. Photo files are removed from storage straight after, and uploads still in progress are swept again about ten minutes later. Server logs expire on their own after 30 days. The website has no delete button: use the app, or write to us.
• Ask us for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it: Contact@ironset.io. We answer these requests from anyone, wherever they live.

If you live in Connecticut, the Connecticut Data Privacy Act gives you the right to confirm whether we process your personal information and to see it; to correct it; to delete it; to get a copy in a portable format; and to opt out of targeted advertising, the sale of your personal information, and profiling that makes significant decisions about you. We do none of those three. Under that law your precise location is sensitive information; we use it only as described in “Your location”.

To use these rights, write to Contact@ironset.io from the email address on your account, or delete your account in the app. You do not need an account to ask. We answer within 45 days, and if we need up to 45 more we will tell you why within the first 45. There is no charge for one request a year.

If we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer with the word “Appeal”. We will tell you in writing what we did and why within 60 days. If we deny the appeal, you can complain to the Connecticut Attorney General.

We will not treat you differently for using any of these rights.

DackPack is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.

Connections to our service are encrypted, passwords are stored as one-way hashes, and each account’s backed-up records are isolated from every other account’s in our database. No system is perfectly secure.

We will post changes here and update the date at the top. If we change how we use information we already hold, we will tell you before the change applies and give you the chance to withdraw. If what the AI assistant shares changes, the app and the website will ask your permission again.

This policy is governed by the laws of the State of Connecticut.

Ironset LLC, [[MIKE: postal address]], Contact@ironset.io