Privacy Policy

The short version

Alleytale is built around one promise: your walk is yours. We collect what the guide needs to narrate the place you're standing in, and not much beyond that. We don't sell your data, and we don't share anything that identifies you with advertisers.

This policy covers the Alleytale app and this website: what they collect, why, and what you can switch off.

Location

Location is what makes the guide work. It is how we find the places and stories around you as you move.

While a walk is running, Alleytale keeps reading your location even when the app is in the background and your screen is off. That is deliberate: it is what lets the narration continue while the phone is in your pocket. Your device asks for this permission separately, and you can decline it and still use Alleytale with the app open.

Location is only read while a walk is active, and ending a walk stops it. We keep the path of each walk so you can see where you went, and so we can show you distance and time.

Microphone and speech

You can ask a question out loud instead of typing it. When you do, your speech is turned into text by your own phone's built-in speech recognition. The recording does not reach Alleytale's servers and we never store it. Only the resulting text is sent, exactly as if you had typed it.

On iPhone, Apple's speech recognition may process the audio on Apple's servers under Apple's own privacy policy. The microphone is active only while you are asking.

Camera and photos

You can attach a photo to a question: point at a building you're curious about and ask. Photos you attach are uploaded, described so the guide can answer, and kept with that walk. We never scan your photo library; we only receive the images you choose or take.

Your account

Creating an account gives us your email address, plus your display name if you sign in with Google. Sign-in is handled by Supabase. We use your email to identify your account and to reach you about the service.

Memory

Alleytale remembers things between walks: that you love Art Deco, that you've already heard about that cathedral. The guide gets better the more you walk. This does mean we build and keep a picture of your interests, drawn from your walks and the choices you make in them.

You can turn memory off in the app at any time. You can also delete your account, and everything attached to it, from the same place.

Payments

Credit purchases are handled by Mollie. Your card details go to Mollie and never to us. We store the status, amount and method of each payment, plus the identifiers Mollie gives us so that auto top-up can work.

Analytics and diagnostics

We use PostHog, hosted in the EU, to understand how the app is used, and Grafana Faro to catch crashes and errors. Both record events linked to your account: which screens you open, which features you use, what broke. That is how we fix problems and decide what to build next. This is not anonymous, and we do not use it for advertising.

Who we share data with

To narrate a place we have to ask other services about it. What they receive is the place or the question, not who you are.

Places and surroundings: OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass), Google Places, Open-Meteo for local weather, and Nager.Date for public holidays.

Story material: Wikipedia and Wikidata.

AI: narration and answers are generated by language models from DeepSeek and OpenAI, OpenAI also searches the web for fresh facts and describes photos you attach, and Google generates the spoken audio.

Infrastructure: Supabase for accounts, Mollie for payments, S3-compatible object storage for saved audio and images, and PostHog and Grafana for analytics and diagnostics.

We don't sell your data, and we don't share anything that identifies you with advertisers.

How long we keep things

Walks, facts, bookmarks and walk paths stay until you delete them or delete your account. Memory stays until you switch it off or clear it. Payment records are kept for as long as tax and accounting rules require. Cached place and article data expires on its own schedule and is not linked to you.

Your rights

You can delete your account and its data from inside the app, and any active location or microphone access stops immediately.

If you are in the EU or the UK you also have the right to see the data we hold about you, correct it, export it, restrict how we use it, and complain to your national data protection authority. Write to us and we will help.

Changes

We will update this policy as the app changes. When a change actually affects you, we'll tell you in the app rather than quietly editing this page.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Reach us at contact@alleytale.com.