Welcome to TripPal ("we," "our," or "us"). We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. This Privacy Policy outlines how our mobile application handles, secures, and safeguards your data when you use our itinerary planning, expense splitting, and travel memory services.
🔒 Privacy First: We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for advertising or tracking purposes. Zero third-party ads, zero tracking across apps.
1. Information We Collect
We collect only the minimum information necessary to provide you with a high-quality travel planning experience:
A. Account & Profile Data
- Account Registration: Your display name, email address, and securely hashed passwords when creating a local account.
- Google Sign-In: If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, verified email address, and profile picture avatar from Google Identity Services.
B. User-Generated Travel Data
- Itineraries & Trips: Trip titles, destinations, travel dates, planned activities, checklists, and lodging notes.
- Expenses & Currency Splits: Custom expense titles, amounts, participant allocations, and currency selections. We do not collect or store credit card details or bank account numbers.
- Photo Memories: Travel photos, notes, and memory albums that you explicitly select from your device gallery to preserve your journeys.
C. Device & Permission-Based Data
- Location Data: With your explicit runtime permission, TripPal uses approximate or precise GPS coordinates to show your current location on trip maps and help you discover nearby points of interest. You can revoke location permissions anytime in your device settings.
- Camera & Photo Library: Used strictly when you choose to take a photo or select an existing image for your profile or trip memories.
- Receipt Scanning (OCR): Receipt text processing runs 100% on-device using local machine learning. Receipt images are not sent to any third-party vision APIs.
2. How We Use Your Information
We process your data strictly to deliver and improve TripPal features:
- To create and maintain your user profile and trip data.
- To synchronize your itineraries and travel memories across your devices.
- To calculate multi-currency expense splits and settlements among your travel companions.
- To provide offline access so your schedules are available without internet connectivity.
- To facilitate optional, user-initiated backups to your personal Google Drive storage.
- To respond to customer support inquiries and resolve technical issues.
3. Data Safety & Disclosures (Google Play & App Store)
Below is a summary of data categories as reported under Google Play Data Safety and Apple App Privacy declarations:
| Data Type | Collected | Shared with 3rd Parties | Purpose | Encryption |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Optional | No | Interactive maps & nearby stops | Encrypted in Transit (TLS/HTTPS) |
| Name & Email | Yes | No | Account management & security | Encrypted in Transit (TLS/HTTPS) |
| Photos & Media | Optional | No | Trip memories & profile avatar | Encrypted in Transit (TLS/HTTPS) |
| Financial Info | Optional | No | Trip budgeting & group cost splitting | Encrypted in Transit (TLS/HTTPS) |
| Diagnostics | Anonymous | No | Crash analytics & app stability | Encrypted in Transit (TLS/HTTPS) |
4. Data Storage, Security & Retention
- Encryption in Transit: All communications between the TripPal app and our backend servers are secured using TLS 1.3 encryption (HTTPS).
- Password Protection: Passwords are cryptographically salted and hashed using industry-standard bcrypt before database storage.
- Cloud Infrastructure: Our backend databases and cloud storage are hosted on secure, SOC-2 compliant cloud infrastructure (Neon, Render, Cloudinary).
- Local Caching: Itinerary summaries and recent memories are cached on your physical device in app-private sandbox storage.
5. Your Rights & Account Deletion
You have full control and ownership of your personal data:
- Access & Edit: You can view, update, or edit your personal profile, trips, and expenses directly within the app at any time.
- Account & Data Deletion: You have the right to request immediate and complete deletion of your account and all associated trips, memories, and photos.
🗑️ How to Request Account Deletion:
To request permanent deletion of your account and all associated personal data, send an email to privacy@trippalapp.in from your registered email address with the subject line "Account Deletion Request".
Upon verification, your user profile, saved itineraries, expense logs, uploaded photo memories, and authentication credentials will be permanently purged from our production databases within 30 days.
6. Children's Privacy (COPPA Compliance)
TripPal is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from children under 13. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at privacy@trippalapp.in, and we will promptly remove the data.
7. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes in our legal obligations or application enhancements. We will notify you of any material changes by updating the "Last Updated" date at the top of this document.
8. Contact Us
If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact our support team:
- Email: privacy@trippalapp.in / support@trippalapp.in
- Website: https://trippalapp.in