BeeMyGuide Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 10, 2026

BeeMyGuide is a location-based audio tour app: as you walk or drive, it finds places of interest near you and plays short, AI-narrated audio about your surroundings, and it lets you build and share guided tours. This policy explains what we collect, why, and how it is handled, in plain English. BeeMyGuide is operated by an individual developer ("we", "us"). Questions: val@beemyguide.travel.

Information we collect

• Account. To use BeeMyGuide you sign in. You can use an email and password, Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Apple. In each case we receive your email address (and, from Google/Apple, your basic name if provided). Authentication and the account database are handled by our provider, Supabase. You may also provide a display name.
• Precise location. With your permission, the app uses your device's precise location while you are using it to find places near you and to power the tour. Your location is sent to our server in real time to build your queue of nearby places. This is operational, used in the moment, and not stored as a history or linked to your identity. The only location we retain is a single, coarse coverage signal: when you are somewhere we have no content yet, we log that empty spot's coordinate (event no_pois_nearby) to improve coverage. That record is tied to the place, not to you. It is never linked to your account, so no movement trail is ever built.
• Usage analytics. We keep first-party, app-interaction events (our own events store), such as opening the app or starting and finishing a narration, to understand how BeeMyGuide is used and improve it. These events carry no location, with the single no_pois_nearby exception described above. Analytics are first-party only; your identity on an event is derived on our server from your signed-in session, not from any third-party tracker.
• Diagnostics & feedback. If you use the in-app "Log an issue" feature, your report (subject, description, your account email, and a technical debug log) is emailed to our support address so we can troubleshoot.
• Terms acceptance. When you accept the Terms of Use, we record which version you accepted and when.
• About you (optional). After you sign up, BeeMyGuide asks for your age range (18 and up, never a birthdate), your sex, your occupation, and the city and country you live in, which you type yourself. Every question is optional and you can skip them all. We use the answers only to understand who uses BeeMyGuide and to decide where to tell people about it. They stay in our own database: we never sell them, share them, or send them to an advertising network. Your home city and country are what you typed, never your device's location. You can change or clear them any time under Settings > Account > Your info in the app, or Preferences > Your info on the web.
• Places you have heard. We record which places the app has played for you and when, so it does not repeat them and so your Heard list works. This is a list of places, not a trail of where you were.
• Purchases and passes. See Purchases and passes.
• Photos. See Identify and Photos and places you contribute.

Purchases and passes

Passes and subscriptions are bought through the App Store or Google Play. The store takes the payment; BeeMyGuide never sees or stores your card or bank details. The store's receipt goes to RevenueCat, the subscription service we use, which tells our server whether your account has an active pass or subscription. What we keep on your account: which store you bought from, which product, when it expires, whether it renews automatically, and a store transaction ID for a pass. Passes we grant (for example during a beta) are recorded the same way, with their start and end. Refunds and cancellations are handled by the store under its own policy.

Identify

When you use Identify, the photo you take and your current location are sent to our server. The server looks up the places and addresses around you (through Google Maps Platform) and sends the photo, with the names of those nearby places, to Anthropic (Claude), which works out what the photo shows. The photo is used for that one request and is not stored on our servers; Anthropic processes it under its API terms. Identify is available to accounts with an active pass or subscription.

Photos and places you contribute

• When you add a photo of a place, or suggest a new place, we store what you sent: the photo, the text, the place, and a link to your account with a snapshot of your name and email address. Photos are re-encoded on the way in, which removes embedded metadata such as camera location tags.
• A person reviews every contribution. Nothing is published automatically. An approved photo may be shown in the app for that place.
• Your email address is never published. It is visible only to us, and only so we can reply to you about the contribution.
• Delete your account and your contributions are unlinked from you. To have a photo or a suggestion removed entirely, email val@beemyguide.travel and we will delete it.

How we use your information

• To provide the core service: find nearby places, generate and play narration, and build and run tours.
• To create and secure your account and sign you in.
• To respond to issues you report and fix bugs.
• To understand usage and improve the app's quality, coverage, and performance.
• If you choose to answer the optional questions about you, to understand who uses BeeMyGuide and plan where to market it. Never for advertising targeting by anyone else.

How narration is generated

Narration is created from publicly available source text (from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects), which is translated, summarized, and converted to speech by AI services. We do not send your personal information to those services as part of generating narration.

Third parties

We do not sell your personal information, and BeeMyGuide is ad-free. We do not show third-party ads or use third-party advertising trackers. We rely on these service providers only to operate the app:

• Supabase: account authentication and database.
• Render: hosting for our server and websites.
• Google Maps Platform: Places and Routes/Directions, to find places and build tour routes; and Text-to-Speech, to produce narration audio.
• Google and Apple: if you choose their sign-in.
• Apple App Store and Google Play: payment for passes and subscriptions.
• RevenueCat: processing store receipts and keeping your pass or subscription status.
• Anthropic (Claude): turning public source text into narration, and identifying the place in an Identify photo.
• Wikimedia: public source text and images about places.

Enhancement requests

The What's next page lists enhancement requests. Reading it needs no account and we collect nothing from you for it. Posting a request or upvoting one happens in the app, where you are signed in.

• When you post a request we store what you typed, the display name you chose for that submission, and a link to your account (including its email address).
• Your request and your chosen display name may be published, but only after a person has reviewed it. Nothing is published automatically.
• Your email address is never published. It is visible only to us, and only so we can reply to you about the request.
• When you upvote, we record that your account voted for that request. This is how one person is stopped from voting many times. Who voted for what is never shown publicly; only the total is.
• Delete your account and your votes go with it, and your requests are unlinked from you. To have a submission removed entirely, email val@beemyguide.travel and we will delete it.

Data retention and your choices

• You can delete your account in the app (Settings > Delete account) or by emailing val@beemyguide.travel. Deletion removes your account and the data tied to it, including your heard places, your answers to the optional questions about you, your passes and purchase records on our side, and your tours, except anything we must keep by law. Your purchase records at Apple or Google stay with them under their policies. Details: Delete your account.
• We keep account data while your account is active, and analytics events for as long as needed to understand and improve the app.
• You can revoke the app's location permission any time in your device settings; BeeMyGuide then falls back to a basic search and some features may not work.

Security

We use reasonable measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections and authentication tokens managed by our provider. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Children

BeeMyGuide is intended for adults and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. We will revise the "Last updated" date above, and for significant changes provide a more prominent notice.

Contact

Questions or requests: val@beemyguide.travel.

This page is the single source of truth for the BeeMyGuide privacy policy, published at beemyguide.travel/privacy.html.