Privacy Policy

Effective: 17 October 2026Last updated: 18 October 2026

This policy explains what Trouble (“Trouble”, “we”, “us”) collects when you use the Trouble mobile app and this website (travelwithtrouble.com), why we collect it, who processes it for us, how long it is kept and the choices you have. Your use of Trouble is also governed by our Terms of Service.

At a glance

We store your account and the trips you plan so they sync across your devices and can be shared when you choose.
Trip requests are sent to OpenAI to write and edit itineraries. Your name, email address and account ID are not included in those requests.
Your device’s location is used only if you allow it, and it never leaves your phone: it is never sent to us. On a trip day it keeps the day’s times up to date. On a Big Trip you can let your family follow where you are on your route for a time you pick: your phone works out which country of your plan you are in (or that you are on the way between two, or away from the route) and only that is sent (see Location).
What you post to Discover is public: your posts, your profile once your first post is live, and your comments can be seen by anyone, in the app and on this website, and search engines can list them (see Discover).
We do not sell your personal data. The app requests non-personalised ads only. This website counts visits on our own servers without cookies or any ID stored in your browser, and has no analytics or advertising cookies.
You can delete your account and its data in the app at any time.

What we collect

Account and sign-in. Your email address and the sign-in methods linked to your account (email and password, Sign in with Apple, Google). Passwords are handled by our authentication provider, Supabase; we never see them. If you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive the name and email address that provider shares (with Apple this can be a private relay address).
Profile and preferences. A display name taken from your sign-in provider or the first part of your email address, and, for signed-in users, your app language and preferred currency (a theme choice saved by an earlier version of the app stays in that record but is no longer used).
Trips. What you plan: destinations, dates, number of travellers, the route, areas and nights, day-by-day activities, area details, travel times and cost estimates, plus what you add: saved hotels and restaurants, tours and items of your own added to a day, car-rental searches, eSIM choices, private notes, packing lists and expenses. Receipt photos you attach to expenses are stored in private storage.
Planning and search inputs. The answers and free text you give when you create or edit a trip (for example travel style, interests, budget or specific places), and the text you type to search for places, hotels or restaurants or for your home city. To find nearby results we use the names and coordinates of places in your trip, never your device’s location.
Collaboration. Who is on a shared trip and their role, the email addresses you invite, invite links you create, a short activity history of changes on the trip, and temporary “editing now” markers that show who is changing what.
Share links. A snapshot of a trip that you choose to share (see Share links).
Discover. If you use Discover: your profile (your @username and name, and a photo, a short bio and your home city if you add them); the trips you post (a title, a one-line tip, whether you went or it is just an idea, photos you add such as a cover, the plan the trip was made with, and a copy of the trip’s days and places); your comments; the posts you like, save, open or remix; who you follow and block; what you report; and your Activity (see Discover).
The Big Trip. If you plan a Big Trip: its title, dates and route (countries, weeks and cities) and an optional budget; your “I’m OK” check-ins and SOS (the city, its country, the time and an optional note); the family links you create (the name and relation you give each one, whether it was joined in the app and when it was last opened); while you share your route live, where you are on it as your phone works it out (a country of your plan, on the way between two, or away from the route), never your device’s location; and, if you turn on On your route, the city you appear in (see The Big Trip).
Purchases and plan. Your plan, what it includes, how many trips you have used, the store transaction identifiers needed to credit a Trouble+ purchase, and the ID our purchase processor uses for you (your Trouble account ID). We do not receive or store payment card details. In Discover, an active Trouble Pro subscription shows as a Pro badge on your profile, and each post shows the plan of its trip, unless you turn off Show my plan in Edit profile (see Your profile and @username).
Emails. Messages you send to support, and the account and invitation emails we send you (see Emails).
Technical data. Our servers see your IP address and basic request information. IP addresses and account IDs are used in memory to limit request rates and prevent abuse, and our server logs can contain request details and error messages. Crash reports go to Sentry (see Crash reports). Trouble does not include a third-party analytics SDK. On this website we count visits ourselves, anonymously and without cookies (see This website). When the app checks for a new version of itself, Expo’s update service receives technical details (see Who processes your data). If you use the in-app “Report a technical problem” email, it adds your app version and device operating system version so we can reproduce the problem.

What stays on your device

Some data is kept only in the app’s storage on your phone or tablet and is not sent to us:

Your sign-in session, stored in the device’s secure keychain or keystore.
A copy of your trips for faster loading and offline use, and trips you keep with Save to My Trips from a share link.
Your preferences, accessibility settings and the “stay signed in” choice.
A trip that is still being built, so it can resume if the app is closed; an invite you opened before signing in, until you join or dismiss it; and the address waiting for its confirmation email.
Cached place, area and map-outline lookups, some kept for up to 30 days.
On a trip’s Required documents page: the photos of travel documents you add (boarding passes, passport pages, visas, tickets, insurance or vaccination cards), their titles and notes, which are kept in the app’s private folder and never uploaded, synced or shared; the passport country or countries you choose (up to three, used for every trip on this device); and the last entry requirements checked for each country, so they show offline. They stay when you sign out (hidden from any other account on the device) and are deleted with the document, its trip or your account.
Your Travel journal: the words and photos you add to a trip’s journal, kept in the app’s private folder and never uploaded, synced or shared. They stay when you sign out (hidden from any other account on the device) and are deleted with the entry, its trip or your account.
The photo of an item of your own that you add to a day. The item itself (its words and time) is part of the trip, so it syncs and the people you plan with see it, but its photo stays on the phone that added it and is never uploaded. It is deleted with the item, its day, its trip or your account.
A cover photo you choose for a trip in Trip Settings, kept in the app’s private folder and never uploaded, synced or shared: the people you plan with, share links and the website show the trip’s automatic cover. It is deleted when you remove it, or with its trip or your account.
For live times on a trip day: your answers about using location, the day’s time changes and when the phone was last found outside the trip’s countries, never a position (see Location).
For the Big Trip: a copy of the last Big Trips opened on the phone (up to three, yours or ones you follow as family), so they open without signal, removed from the phone when you sign out or another account signs in; check-ins and SOS waiting for signal (for up to 7 days); and whether you turned On your route on. Live sharing keeps no position on the phone: each reading is used to work out where you are on your route, then dropped.
The username you chose when you signed up, until your new account is confirmed and it becomes your Discover @username.

Deleting the app removes this data from the device. It never replaces what is stored in your account. Your phone’s own backup (iCloud or Google) can include the app’s files, as it does for any app.

Location

On a trip day: Today and the live map. If you allow it, the app reads your device’s location while a trip’s Today page, its live map or its live bar is open, only while the app is on screen, to show where you are and keep the day’s times up to date (“Live times from where you are”). Live times wait while your phone is outside the trip’s countries, which the app checks on the phone itself. This position stays on your phone: it is never sent to Trouble, never stored, and never put in usage statistics, crash reports or logs. Directions hand your maps app only the place you are going to; that app finds your position itself, under its own privacy policy.
Sharing your route live on a Big Trip. Your device’s location is not sent then either. Your phone works out, on the phone, where it is on your route (in one of your plan’s countries, on the way between two of them, or away from the route) and sends only that: only if you choose to share it with your family, only for the time you pick and only while Trouble is open (see Sharing where you are on your route).
Sending your location yourself. On an SOS the app can open your phone’s own share sheet with your exact location, for you to send to whoever you choose (for example in a text message). It goes from your phone to them, never to Trouble.
Check-ins, SOS and On your route use the city you choose from your plan, never your device’s location.
Maps and searches. Map points in a trip are the places in the trip, not you, and searches use the places in your trip, never your device’s location. On the live map your position is drawn by the app itself; the map service (see Who processes your data) loads the area shown, as on any map.
Photos in Discover. When a photo is used in a post or as your profile photo, our server removes the location and other details stored inside it before anyone sees it.
From your connection. Google AdMob receives your IP address, from which an approximate location can be worked out (see Ads), and this website’s statistics count the country Cloudflare reports for your connection (see Visit statistics).
Trouble never uses your location in the background, and asks for it only “While Using the App”. Everything works without it, with the plan’s own times. You can turn it off for Trouble in your device’s settings at any time.

How we use it

To create, edit, save, sync and share your trips.
To find places, hotels, restaurants, tours, car-rental pick-up points and eSIM plans for the destinations in your trip.
To run accounts, sign-in, account linking and collaboration.
To apply your plan: unlock features, count trips and enforce limits.
To run Discover: show posts, profiles, comments and Activity, order the For You feed, check what is published and handle reports and blocks.
To run the Big Trip: keep your plan, show your check-ins and, while you share it, where you are on your route to the family you invited, and send them notifications.
To show ads to plans that include them.
To answer support requests and send account and invitation emails.
To keep the service secure, prevent abuse and fix problems.

AI processing and its limits

Trouble uses OpenAI’s models, through our server, to write and edit itineraries: generating trips and days, suggesting destinations, areas and activities, replacing activities, building multi-country journeys, writing area details and sub-areas, estimating trip costs and typical hotel prices, suggesting the ways to travel between a trip’s stops, correcting the names of planned places that maps could not find, translating trip content, listing the entry, visa and health requirements of a trip’s countries, and drafting a Big Trip’s route by weeks. Some requests let the model use web search to check current information.

What is sent: your planning inputs and the parts of the trip the task needs (for example the destination, dates, areas and activities). For entry requirements, only each destination country, the passport country or countries you chose and the app language; the answer is kept for up to 14 days for everyone asking about the same countries and language, never with your account. For a Big Trip’s route draft, the countries, the start date, the number of months, the travel style in your words and the budget if you give one; the same request gets the same answer from our server’s memory for 30 minutes, never with your account.
What is not sent: your name, email address, account ID, private notes, expenses, receipts and your travel documents.
Discover’s automatic check also uses OpenAI, to tell whether what you publish may be harmful, not to write anything; it is described in Checks, reports and blocks.
Limits: AI output can be wrong or out of date, and cost and price figures are estimates. Check anything important (opening hours, prices, availability, travel times, entry rules) with the provider before you rely on it. AI is used only to produce travel suggestions; it is not used to make decisions about you.
While a trip is being generated, the request and its result are held in our server’s memory for up to 30 minutes, so the app can collect the result if it was sent to the background.
Reporting AI content: if you use Report AI content (a trip’s ⋯ menu, or Profile → ⋯ → Settings & account → About & Support), we keep the reason you chose, what you wrote, your account ID, the trip it is about, your platform, app version and language, so we can review it and improve Trouble’s AI. Reports are deleted with your account.

Read-only share links

When you share a trip, Trouble stores a snapshot of it behind a long, random link. Anyone with the link can view that snapshot without an account. The snapshot contains the trip’s title, destination, route, days, activities and places, your saved hotels and restaurants, the number of travellers and, in the app, the packing list. It never contains your private notes, expenses, receipts, email address or account ID. The website version shows even less (no packing list). Sharing the same trip again refreshes the snapshot and keeps the same link.

The link stops working when you delete the trip or your account. To have a link turned off without deleting the trip, contact us. Pages can stay cached for a few minutes after a link is turned off.

How far a link went. When someone opens your share link and the trip shows, in the Trouble app or on this website, or remixes it, Trouble counts it, so you, the people on the trip and its viewers can see how many people opened it and how many remixed it. Someone signed in counts once, by their account. In the app, someone signed out counts once by a random ID the app creates on first use and keeps on that device (never the advertising ID; deleting the app removes it).

On this website nothing is stored in your browser for this: no cookie, no local storage and no ID. If you are not signed in, our server makes a one-way code from your IP address and browser type (user agent) together with a random value that changes every day, so you count once that day; if you come back on another day or on another device, you can count again. Your IP address is used only in that moment and never stored, and the day’s random value is deleted when the day ends, so the code cannot be traced back to you afterwards. We rely on our legitimate interest in showing the people on a trip, in total, how far its link went. A browser that sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control is shown the numbers but not counted. (Until 11 October 2026 this website kept a random ID in your browser’s local storage for this count, trouble-viewer-id; it is no longer used and is deleted the next time you open a shared trip here.)

We store only one-way codes made from an account, an ID or that daily code, different for every trip, and show numbers only, never who. You and your collaborators are never counted. These codes are kept with the trip and deleted with it.

Adding a trip to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet puts its share link on the pass as a QR code. If you have not shared the trip yet, adding it to your wallet creates the link.

When you share a trip, an invite link or a referral link through your phone’s share sheet, the app tells us only which kind of app it went to (for example Instagram, WhatsApp or Messages; on Android, only that something was shared) and from which part of the app, and we keep nothing but anonymous daily totals of those counts: never your account, a device or installation ID, the trip, the link or your IP address.

Collaboration

On a paid plan you can invite people to plan a trip with you, by email or with an invite link. An invite link is different from a share link: it lets someone join the trip after they sign in and tap Join Trip.

People who join can see and edit that trip only, including the notes, packing list and expenses stored on it. Your other trips are never shared. Receipt photos stay private to the person who uploaded them.
Everyone on the trip can see the email addresses of the other members and of pending invitees, and your display name as the owner. Changes show who made them.
The owner can remove people, turn an invite link off, or stop collaboration at any time; a member can leave. Only the owner can delete the trip.

Remix and Save to My Trips

Someone who opens your share link can keep a read-only copy on their device (Save to My Trips) or, on a paid plan, Remix it. Remix creates an independent copy in their own account. It never changes your trip, and later changes to your trip do not update their copy. A copy someone has already made belongs to them and is not removed if you delete your trip. Trips posted to Discover can be remixed too (see What a post shows).

When you create an account, the app tells us once how you first came to Trouble on that phone: through a friend’s invite code or link, a trip invite, a shared trip link, or none of these. Only that one word is sent and stored with your account, to count how people find Trouble; the owner’s statistics show totals only. If you use Invite friends, we keep your personal invite code, which accounts redeemed it and when they planned their first trip, so we can give you and your friend the bonus AI Actions; your friend never sees your name or email through the code. Before a reward we check that your friend’s account is verified (a confirmed email, or Sign in with Apple or Google). To stop one phone redeeming codes for several accounts, and rewards for accounts made on the inviting person’s own phone, we also keep a one-way code made from the random ID the app keeps on the phone where you redeem a code or use Invite friends (never the ID itself or the advertising ID). This is deleted with your account, except that a redemption record without your account is kept to prevent abuse.

Discover: posts, profiles and comments

Discover is where travellers post trips for everyone to see, follow, comment on and remix. Using it is optional: nothing you plan is posted unless you post it yourself.

What a post shows

You choose one of your own trips (never one shared with you, and not while it is under way; one post per trip). The post shows its days and their places: each day’s title and area and its stops’ names, the route, the countries, the number of days, the trip’s travel styles and the plan it was made with (a Trouble+, Trouble+ Max or Trouble Pro tag; nothing for a Free trip), plus what you add: a title, a one-line tip, whether you went (“I went”) or it is “Just an idea”, and photos such as a cover. It never shows the trip’s dates, your private notes, expenses, receipts, the places you stayed, your packing list or your documents. A post shows when it was posted, and you can turn its comments off. Its plan tag is not shown while Show my plan is off (see Your profile and @username).

The post keeps the copy made when you posted it: later changes to the trip do not change the post, and deleting the trip does not delete the post (it can then no longer be remixed). To remove a post, delete the post itself.

Once it passes the automatic check (see below), a post is public: anyone can see it in Discover, in search, on your profile and on its own page on this website (travelwithtrouble.com/p/…), without an account, and search engines can list that page. Its totals, such as likes, comments, views and remixes, are shown with it.

Remix puts a copy of your trip into the other person’s own trips. It is made from your trip as it is at that moment: its days and places, the restaurants you saved and the packing list (with nothing ticked), never its dates, your private notes, expenses, receipts, hotels or documents. The copy is marked as remixed from the post, never with your account, and it belongs to them: it stays if you later delete the post, the trip or your account. Remixing a post uses one of the remixer’s remixes, as with a share link.

Your profile and @username

Your Discover profile has an @username and a name and, if you add them, a photo, a short bio and your home city. You can choose the username when you sign up or when you first post (while you type one, the app asks our server whether it is free; nothing is saved until you choose it). An account that has none yet gets one the first time it opens Discover or its Profile tab, or posts, made from the username you gave at sign-up or that your sign-in provider shares, or else from the part of your email address before the @ (without any +tag), with a number added if it is taken. The name comes from your sign-in provider, or is the username. You can change them in your profile at any time. Suggestions for your home city come from Google’s place search through our server (see Who processes your data); only the city you pick is kept, as text.

Your profile page stays private until your first post is live: until then nobody else can open it or find it in search. After that it is public, in the app and on this website (travelwithtrouble.com/u/…), and search engines can list it, with your live posts and totals counted from them (such as trips, countries, likes and remixes), how many people you follow and follow you, and, in the app, a Globe of the countries of your live posts. In the app it also shows a Pro badge while your account has an active Trouble Pro subscription (never for Trouble+). You can hide both the Pro badge and the plan tags on your posts with Show my plan in Edit profile (it is on until you turn it off): while it is off, nobody else sees them, and your own profile does not show them either. Your own Globe adds the countries of your other trips, for you only: the app works them out on your phone. Your profile then stays public while your account exists, even if you later delete your posts. Even before your first post, your username, name and photo show next to any comment you write, and to the people whose posts you like, comment on or remix, or whom you follow (in their Activity and notifications). Posts, comments and profiles in the app also carry an internal ID of your account, which the app uses to follow or block you; the pages on this website leave it out.

Likes, saves, follows, comments and Activity

Likes, saves, follows, remixes and views are stored with your account, once per post or person. A post’s author sees the totals, and, in their Activity, who liked, commented on or remixed it and who started following them. Who saved or opened a post is never shown in the app. A view is counted when you open someone else’s post in the app while signed in; opening a post on this website counts nothing.
Comments and replies are public with the post; this website shows a post’s first comments with each commenter’s username. Links are not allowed in comments. A post’s author can pin, hide or delete comments on it, and turn comments off.
For You orders posts for you from what you like, save and remix, who you follow and the travel styles of your own recent trips, and each card says why it is shown. Following shows the people you follow, newest first.
Search finds posts by title, place or country and travellers by username or name. What you type is used to answer and is not stored.
Activity lists likes, comments, follows and remixes of your posts, and milestones such as a number of likes. Discover’s notifications follow your notification choices (see Notifications).
On the Free plan, Discover’s feed shows a card marked “Sponsored” after every 10 posts, from Google AdMob under the rules in Ads in the app.

Checks, reports and blocks

Before a post, a comment or an edit to a post shows to anyone else, our server checks it automatically with OpenAI’s moderation service, which tells us only whether the words or photos may be harmful (for example hateful, harassing, sexual or violent). It receives the post’s title and tip and each of its photos, or the comment, and, for the post that would make a profile public while its username was made automatically, that username and name. Your profile’s words (username, name, bio and home city) and photo are checked when you save them: words that do not pass are not saved, and a new photo that does not pass, or that could not be checked yet, is refused and deleted. The check never receives your email address or account ID. A post or comment it holds, or that could not be checked yet, is saved but visible only to you (“Being checked”) and to the Trouble team, until it passes a later check or the team reviews it.

Photos are kept in private storage and shown through links that expire after an hour. When a photo is used in a post or as your profile photo, our server first removes the details stored inside it (such as where and when it was taken and the camera).

You can report a post, a comment or a profile (for example spam, a scam, hate or private information), with a note if you like. Reports go to the Trouble team, which can see who made them; the person reported is not told who reported them. We may hide a post, a comment or a whole profile with its posts; a hidden post stays visible to its author, marked as hidden. Blocking someone hides their posts, profile, comments and Activity from you and yours from them, and ends any follow between you; they are not told.

On this website, post and profile pages are refreshed about every minute, and copies of their photos in this website’s image cache expire within about an hour, so a removed post can take that long to disappear here. Search engines, and apps that showed a preview of a link, may keep their own copy for longer; we cannot remove those.

The Big Trip: check-ins, family page and live sharing

The Big Trip is a trip of up to 12 months, planned week by week across countries, that your family can follow. We store your plan (its title, dates, countries, weeks and cities, its status and an optional budget, which your family never sees) and the first name on your account (the first word of the name from sign-up or your sign-in provider, never your email address), which is how your family and other travellers see you. If you ask Trouble AI to draft the route, see AI processing. If a Big Trip pass is offered and you buy it, we keep a record that your account has it, as checked with RevenueCat.

“I’m OK” check-ins and SOS

A check-in tells your family you are OK; an SOS tells them you need help. Each carries the city you pick from your plan (or type yourself), its country, the time and, if you write one, a short note for your family. The city comes from your plan, not GPS: a check-in or SOS never sends your device’s location. Without signal it waits on your phone (for up to 7 days) and goes out by itself once you are back online. Family who follow the trip in the Trouble app get a notification; an SOS is sent at once, even in their quiet hours, unless they turned those notifications off. On an SOS the app can also open your phone’s share sheet with your exact location, for you to send yourself to whoever you choose; it goes from your phone to them and never to Trouble. Trouble is not an emergency service: if you are in danger, call the local emergency number first.

The family page

To let someone follow, you create a private link for them (travelwithtrouble.com/f/…) and send it yourself. Anyone who has the link can open the page, without an account, so send it only to people you trust. The page shows your first name, the trip’s title and dates, the route by country, weeks and cities, your check-ins with their notes (the latest 20; family who joined in the app have access to earlier ones too), and, only while you share it (below), where you are on your route — never your position. It never shows your budget, your email address, your account or who else follows. Search engines are asked not to list it, and its map loads only after the visitor taps Show map (see Maps on trip pages).

We store only a one-way code of each link, with the name and relation you give it (for example “Mom”). Someone with the link can also join the trip in the Trouble app with their own account, to see it there and get notifications; we then keep which account joined. You see, for each link, its name, whether it was joined in the app and when it was last opened. You can remove a link at any time: it stops working at once, and that person gets no more notifications.

If you choose to, you can let your family follow where you are on your route for a time you pick (30 minutes, 2 hours, 8 hours or until tonight). The app asks for location access “While Using the App” when you first do. Then, only while Trouble is open on your phone (when you start, when you come back to the app and about every 5 minutes, never in the background), your phone reads its position and works out, on the phone, where that is on your route: in one of your plan’s countries, on the way between two countries that follow each other in your plan, or away from the route. Only that is sent to Trouble, with the time: never your position, how accurate it is, an address or anything else that could place you on a map. Our server refuses an update that contains coordinates, and takes at most one update a minute. Your family, on the family page and in the app, sees the latest one (for example “On the way from Peru to Bolivia”), with that stop or stretch lit up on the route, and when it was sent; family who follow in the app are told when you start. Sharing ends by itself when the time is up, or when you tap Stop or mark the trip as done, and your family can never turn it on. We keep only the latest update of each trip, and delete it when sharing ends, when you change the trip’s route, or at the latest 24 hours after it reaches us. Live points sent by earlier versions of the app have been deleted. Signing out stops that phone sharing at once (your family keeps seeing the last update until the time you picked is up).

On your route

On your route is off until you turn it on for a trip. We then store the city you appear in (from your plan, or as you change it) and its country, never a more exact place. Other Big Trip travellers in the same country who turned it on too see how many travellers are in their city and, if you are heading to the same next country soon, your first name, the next country and cities of your plan and the date your plan says you go there. You see them only while you are visible yourself. Turning it off deletes your city at once, and so does marking the trip as done or deleting it.

Who processes your data

We use these service providers to run Trouble. Each receives only what it needs for its part:

Hosting and infrastructure: Supabase (sign-in, database, private file storage, including Discover photos, and live updates for shared trips), Railway (hosting for our server and this website) and Cloudflare (DNS, encryption and delivery for this website).
AI: OpenAI (itinerary writing and estimates and Big Trip route drafts, see AI processing, and the automatic check of what you publish in Discover, see Checks, reports and blocks).
Places and maps: Google Maps Platform (place search, suggestions as you type a place or a city, place details and, in the app, place photos on cards and in a place’s details, all requested by our server; those photos reach you through our server. The small profile pictures of the people who wrote the Google reviews a place’s details show load from Google’s own servers, which receive your IP address as for any picture loaded from the internet) and OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim service (map outlines of countries, regions and cities, looked up by place name only). Maps inside the app are drawn by Google Maps (Google’s Maps SDK, which receives your device’s IP address and technical details to load the map) on Android and, in app versions that include it, on iPhone; other iPhone versions use Apple Maps. Trip maps on this website load only after you tap Show map, and are then drawn by Google Maps (the Maps JavaScript API, which receives your IP address and technical details to load the map); when it cannot load, no map is drawn and the stops stay listed. A Big Trip’s family page uses OpenStreetMap data only (see Maps on trip pages). If you tap Open in Google Maps or Open in Maps, that app or website opens under its own privacy policy.
Sign-in: Apple and Google, when you choose to sign in or link an account with them. On this website, Google’s sign-in service also loads in your browser if you allow sign-in with Google in one tap (see Signing in with Google in one tap).
Purchases: the Apple App Store (and Google Play where Trouble is offered there) processes payments. RevenueCat receives your purchases and your Trouble account ID so we can confirm what your plan includes.
Email: Resend delivers account emails, collaboration invites and, if you subscribe, our email updates.
App updates and notifications: Expo. The app gets new versions of its own code from Expo’s update service (EAS Update): when you open it, and when you come back to it, it asks whether a newer version exists and downloads it, sending your IP address and technical details (your device’s platform, the app’s version and update, its update channel and a random ID that Expo’s update software keeps for the app on your device), never your account or your trips. Expo’s push service delivers notifications (see Notifications).
Ads: Google AdMob (see Ads).
Crash reports: Sentry (see Crash reports).
Travel partners: our server asks Viator for tours (using destination and activity search text), Travelpayouts for eSIM and transport partner links (the partner page’s address, which can name a journey’s places and day), DiscoverCars’ public pages to check car-rental pick-up locations, and GetTransfer for private transfer prices (using the pick-up and drop-off map points, date, time and number of passengers you search for). No personal data is sent in these requests. In the app, the pictures of Viator’s tours load from Viator’s own servers, which receive your IP address as for any picture loaded from the internet. See Partner links.

Many place photos in the app, and every place photo on this website, are openly licensed photos from Wikimedia Commons or, when it has none, Openverse (mostly photos from Flickr). Our server looks each one up by the place’s name, its country and where the trip puts it, keeps its own copy (in our storage at Supabase) and shows it with its author and licence; nothing about you is sent to these sources, and they never see your visit. In the app, a place without one shows Google’s photo of it, through our server, credited to Google Maps and, where Google names them, its author; this website never shows Google’s photos. Some place data comes from public datasets bundled into Trouble (OurAirports, Natural Earth and U.S. Census boundaries via us-atlas). Nothing about you is sent to them. See Credits.

We do not sell your personal data. We may disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the service and its users from abuse.

Ads in the app

The Free and Trouble+ plans show ads from Google AdMob. Trouble Pro and No Ads do not show ads. The app asks AdMob for non-personalised ads only, and it does not show Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt, so on iOS your advertising identifier is not made available to it. Google can still receive device and connection information (such as IP address and device type) to deliver ads, limit how often they repeat, measure them and prevent fraud, under Google’s own privacy policy. On Android, the Google Mobile Ads SDK can use the device’s advertising ID in line with your device settings.

Before any ad is requested, the app asks Google’s consent software (User Messaging Platform) whether a consent message applies to you, for example in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland or in some US states, and shows Google’s message if it does. Where Google says you must be able to change your answer, Profile → ⋯ → Settings & account → About & Support → Ad privacy choices opens it again. Your answer is kept by Google’s consent software on your device.

App usage statistics and crash reports

To see how many people use Trouble and which parts of the app matter to them, the app sends us anonymous usage statistics: that it was opened, which main area was on screen (for example Home, a trip’s Days or Map, or your profile) and a few actions, such as adding a trip to your wallet or setting up a widget. They never include what you type, the content of your trips or the places in them, your location or your advertising ID.

Each batch carries the random ID the app creates on your device, the app version, your device’s platform (iOS or Android) and the app’s language. When you are signed in it also carries your sign-in session, so you count once across your devices. Our server keeps only a one-way code made with a secret key from that account or random ID, never the ID itself or your IP address, and counts per day; we never link these codes back to you. This is Trouble’s own measurement: no third-party analytics service receives it, and we do not sell or share it. The per-person daily counts are deleted after about 13 months.

The app also sends us its own crash reports, so we can fix what went wrong: the error’s name and message, where in the app’s code it happened, the app version, your device’s operating system version and kind (for example iPhone or iPad), and, when the app closed unexpectedly without an error of its own, only that it did. Before anything leaves your device, web addresses’ parameters, email addresses, long numbers, codes and folder names are removed from the text, and our server removes them again; a report never includes the content of your trips. Reports are grouped by problem with the same one-way code, and the per-person records are deleted after about 7 months.

Both are on by default. Turn them off at any time in the app under Profile → ⋯ → Settings & account → Privacy → Share anonymous usage & crash reports: that device sends nothing more (this also turns off the Sentry crash reports below), and anything not yet sent is deleted.

Crash reports (Sentry)

When the app crashes or runs into an error, it sends a crash report to Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.), which processes it for us so we can find and fix the problem. A report contains the error and where it happened in the app’s code, the app version, your device model and operating system version, the screens and buttons used just before, and app sessions (so we can count crash-free sessions). Sentry tells devices apart only by a random installation ID. Your name, email address, account ID and trip content are not sent: the app removes them before it sends a report, and Sentry is set not to store IP addresses. You can turn crash reports off in the app’s Settings & account, under Privacy (“Share anonymous usage & crash reports”). Sentry keeps reports for at most 90 days.

Partner links and third-party sites

Some buttons open partner sites: Booking.com and Agoda (through the CJ affiliate network), Viator, GetYourGuide, DiscoverCars, and GetRentACar, Airalo and GetTransfer (through Travelpayouts), and for transport Aviasales, Kiwi.com, Klook and Kiwitaxi and, where offered, 12Go and Trip.com (also through Travelpayouts), Omio for trains and buses in Europe (through Impact), and, where offered on a Big Trip, travel insurance from SafetyWing (through its referral program). These links carry a tracking code so the partner knows the visit came from Trouble, and Trouble may earn a commission (see the Affiliate disclosure). Links can include your trip’s destination and, for hotels, dates and number of guests; for transport, a journey’s places and day; for a car-rental search on DiscoverCars, the pick-up and return places, dates and times you chose and your phone’s region as your country of residence. They never include your name, email address or account. Order eSIM opens the plan you chose on Airalo. Once you leave Trouble, the partner and the affiliate network can set cookies and collect data under their own privacy policies. Any booking or purchase is made directly with the partner, not with Trouble.

Other buttons open a site or app without any partner: Google Maps (directions, a place, or a city’s transport line by its name) and, in Getting around, the websites of a country’s ride apps. When you tap a partner link, the app tells our server only which partner it was and from which part of the app, and we keep daily totals of those taps: never your account, a device ID, the link or your IP address.

Emails

Account emails (confirming your email address, resetting your password, confirming an email change) are sent by our authentication provider, Supabase, through Resend from [email protected].
Collaboration invites are sent by our server through Resend when a trip owner invites your address. The email shows the owner’s display name, the trip title and a Join Trip link.
Support emails you send to [email protected] are used to answer you. When we reply to a support request, the reply is emailed to you (see Support requests & feedback).

We send marketing emails only if you ask for them (see Email updates).

Email updates

If you tick “Email me trip ideas and news from Trouble” when you create an account, turn on Profile → ⋯ → Settings & account → Email updates in the app, or sign up on our newsletter page (and confirm with the link we email you), we send you occasional trip ideas, tips and Trouble news, at most 2 emails a week, through Resend. They come in the app’s language at about 10:00 in your time zone (from your device, when known). Some are triggered by what you do: a welcome series after you subscribe, a reminder after a long time without signing in or changing a trip, and a note the day after a trip’s dates end. We keep your email address, its language and time zone, when and where you agreed and the wording you agreed to, and for each email whether it was delivered, opened or clicked (measured by Resend with a small image and links that pass through it) and any bounce or spam report. We use this only to send these emails, to stop sending to addresses that bounce or report spam, and to see in total which emails help. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link; unsubscribing, or turning the switch off in the app, works at once and does not affect account emails. We keep a note that you unsubscribed so we don’t email you again; deleting your account deletes your subscription record. We never sell your address.

Support requests & feedback

When you contact us from Help & feedback in the app (Profile → ⋯ → Settings & account) or the contact form on this website, we store your request on our server: the topic, your messages and our replies, the email we should reply to (if you are signed in, your account’s email), and — in the app, only while Include app info is on — the app version, device type, system version, app language and plan. Screenshots you choose to attach (up to 3 images) are kept in private storage that only you and the Trouble team can open, through links that expire after a few minutes; we never see your photo library. The in-app rating (“How’s Trouble so far?”, 1–5 stars and an optional comment) and your “Was this helpful?” answer are stored the same way. We use all of this only to answer you and to improve Trouble, and we email you when we reply (through Resend). It is kept for 2 years after the last message, or until you delete your account, which deletes your requests, screenshots and ratings, including requests sent from this website with your account’s email.

Notifications

Notifications are optional. The app asks before your device shows its own permission prompt, and you choose what you get in Profile → ⋯ → Settings & account → Notifications, including quiet hours. Promotional notifications (trip ideas and news from Trouble) are off unless you turn them on.

Trip reminders (a countdown before a trip, each day’s plan, a packing reminder and a welcome-back note) are scheduled on your device from the dates and plans of your trips. Scheduling them sends nothing to us.
Notifications from our server (for example a trip that finished building, changes by people you plan with, or your plan) need a push token: an identifier Apple or Google issues for Trouble on your device. When you are signed in and allow notifications, the app sends us that token with your device platform, time zone, app language, app version and permission state, and we keep it with your account. Your notification choices and quiet hours are stored with your account too. Notifications are delivered through Expo’s push service and Apple Push Notification service or Firebase Cloud Messaging.
Discover and the Big Trip. You can be notified of new likes, comments, followers and remixes on your Discover posts (the notification names the post and, for a comment or a follow, the other person’s name, never the comment itself). Family who follow a Big Trip in the app can be notified of a check-in, an SOS and the start of live sharing. These follow the same choices and quiet hours, except that an SOS is sent at once, even in quiet hours.
Notification statistics. To see whether notifications are useful, the app tells us when one was scheduled, shown while the app was open or opened, and how you answered the permission prompt: the type of notification and its ID, never its text or your trip. These reports carry a random ID for the app on your device, not your account.
Turning notifications off in the app or signing out removes this device’s push token from our server; deleting your account deletes the tokens and your notification choices. You can also turn notifications off for Trouble in your device settings at any time.

This website

If you sign in on this website (with your email, Google or Apple), Supabase sets strictly necessary cookies that keep you signed in, and My trips shows your trips read-only. Your accessibility choices are remembered in your browser’s local storage when you change them, and so are your choices about maps and Google sign-in (see Maps on trip pages and Signing in with Google in one tap). Apart from the cookie Google’s sign-in can set once you allow it, nothing else is stored in your browser: opening a shared trip is counted without storing anything on your device (see How far a link went). There are no analytics or advertising cookies and no tracking IDs, so there is no cookie banner. Photos from other sites, such as Wikimedia Commons, are fetched by our server and shown from this website, so those sites do not receive your IP address. A trip page shows no Google photos: for a place without a photo of its own, it asks our server for an openly licensed photo by the place’s name, its country and where the trip puts it (nothing about you), and that photo comes from our own copy. See Cookies for details.

Trip posts (travelwithtrouble.com/p/…) and traveller profiles (travelwithtrouble.com/u/…) are public pages that search engines can list (see Discover). A Big Trip’s family page (travelwithtrouble.com/f/…) is private to the people who have its link and asks search engines not to list it (see The family page). Nothing is stored in your browser for these pages, apart from your map choice if you tap Show map.

Maps on trip pages

A trip page does not load its map until you tap Show map. Until then nothing is requested from the map provider, so it does not receive your IP address. When you tap it, the map is drawn by Google Maps, loaded from Google’s servers, which receive your IP address and technical details (such as your browser and the part of the map shown) as part of those requests, under the Google Privacy Policy; it sets no cookies. If Google Maps cannot load, no map is drawn: the trip’s stops stay listed, each opening in Google Maps. A Big Trip’s family page asks in the same way before it shows its map, which always comes from OpenFreeMap (OpenStreetMap data; if that fails, from OpenStreetMap), which receives your IP address in the same way — never Google.

Your choice is remembered in this browser’s local storage (trouble-maps-google or trouble-maps-openstreetmap, “allowed”), so the next trip page shows the map without asking. To take it back, use Stop loading maps on the Cookies page; trip pages then ask again.

When you are not signed in, this website can offer to sign you in with your Google account in one tap. It asks first, in a small card of our own; until you tap Show Google sign-in, nothing is requested from Google. If you tap No thanks, it does not ask again.

Once you allow it, this website’s pages load Google’s sign-in service (Google Identity Services) from Google’s servers while you are signed out. Google receives your IP address and technical details (such as your browser type and that you are visiting this website) and, if you are signed in to Google in this browser, uses its own cookies to recognise your Google account and offer it in Google’s own sign-in card, under the Google Privacy Policy. Google’s service can also set a cookie named g_state on this website, which records whether you closed its card. Trouble receives nothing from Google unless you choose to continue in that card. If you do, Google sends us a signed confirmation of your Google account, and we receive the same details as with “Continue with Google” (see What we collect).

Your choice is remembered in this browser’s local storage (trouble-google-sign-in, “allowed” or “declined”). To change it, use Stop offering Google sign-in on the Cookies page.

Visit statistics, without cookies

To know how the website is used, we count visits ourselves, on our own server. There is no third-party analytics service, no cookie, nothing saved in your browser’s storage and no device fingerprinting. For each page you open we count:

which page it is. Shared trip and invite pages are counted as “a shared trip page” or “an invite page”, never which trip or link;
the website you came from, by its name only (for example google.com), and any campaign tags in the link (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign), but nothing else from the address;
the country your connection appears to come from, as Cloudflare reports it, and whether you are on a phone, tablet or computer, which our server tells from the browser type (user agent) your browser sends with every request — your screen is not read;
taps on the App Store and Google Play buttons and on Open in Trouble.

To count how many different people visit each day, our server combines your IP address and your browser’s user agent with a random value that changes every day, and keeps only the resulting one-way code. Your IP address is used only in that moment (and, briefly in memory, to limit how many requests one address can send) and is never stored. The day’s random value is deleted when the day ends, so a code cannot be turned back into an IP address or linked to another day, and the codes themselves are deleted after two days. What remains is totals per day.

These statistics are not sold, not shared with anyone and not used for advertising. Because they use no cookies and store nothing on your device, there is no cookie banner and no consent to give for them; we rely on our legitimate interest in understanding, in total, how the website is used. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, nothing is counted at all. Ad blockers can also stop it.

How long we keep data

Account, preferences and trips: kept while your account exists, until you delete a trip or the account.
Share links: kept until the trip or your account is deleted, or until we turn the link off at your request.
Invites: an email invite that is not accepted expires 14 days after it was last sent. Invite links stay valid until the owner turns them off or stops collaboration.
Collaboration history: kept with the trip; “editing now” markers expire on their own within minutes.
Trip generation in progress: held in server memory for up to 30 minutes after it finishes.
Website visit statistics: daily totals are kept; the anonymous visitor codes are deleted after two days, and each day’s random value at the end of that day. IP addresses are not stored.
Share link counts: the one-way codes behind a trip’s “Opened by” and remix numbers are kept with the trip and deleted with it. IP addresses are not stored.
Discover: your profile, posts, comments, likes, saves, follows, blocks, views, remixes and Activity are kept while your account exists, until you delete or undo them (or, for a profile, change its details); a report is kept until your account, or the reported person’s, is deleted. A post stays when you delete the trip it was made from. A hidden post or comment, or one held by the automatic check, is kept until it or the account is deleted. Photos you upload but never use in a post or as your profile photo stay in private storage until you delete your account.
The Big Trip: the plan, its check-ins and its family links are kept until you delete the trip or your account; a family link you remove is deleted at once. Where you are on your route while you share it live is kept only as the latest update, deleted when sharing ends or at the latest 24 hours after it reaches us. Your On your route city is deleted when you turn it off, mark the trip as done or delete it.
After you delete your account: only a one-way fingerprint of your email address, kept for up to 12 months, solely to stop the free trial being claimed again (see Deleting your data and account).
On your device: until you clear it or delete the app, or as described in What stays on your device; some cached lookups expire after 30 days.
Purchase records: the App Store, Google Play and RevenueCat keep purchase records under their own policies.

Deleting your data and account

You can delete any trip in the app. To delete your whole account, open Profile → ⋯ → Settings & account → Account → Delete account in the app and confirm. Our server then deletes your receipt photos, your trips, your share links and your sign-in account; your plan record, preferences, collaboration memberships and invites are removed with it. See Delete my account for exactly what is removed, what remains and how to ask by email instead.

In Discover you can delete a post (its likes, comments, saves, views and photos go with it; copies others already remixed stay theirs), delete your comments and comments on your posts, undo likes, saves and follows, and change your profile or remove its photo, bio and home city. Deleting a trip does not delete its post. On a Big Trip you can delete the trip (its check-ins, family links, live route updates and On your route city go with it), remove a family link, stop sharing your route live and turn off On your route. Deleting your account also deletes your Discover profile, posts, comments, likes, saves, follows, blocks, reports and Activity, and their photos, and your Big Trips with everything in them; if you follow someone else’s Big Trip in the app, your family link to it is removed too.

After deletion we keep only a one-way fingerprint of your email address for up to 12 months, solely to stop the free trial being claimed again. It is a keyed code that cannot be turned back into your address, stored with whether the free trip and how many free AI Actions were used, and nothing else: no name, no trips. If you sign up again with the same address within that time, the new account continues from there instead of starting a new free trial. Purchases and subscriptions are never affected. The fingerprint is deleted after 12 months.

Security

Data travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Database rules restrict each account to its own trips and to the shared trips it has joined, and receipt photos are kept in private storage that is opened only through short-lived links. Secret keys for our providers stay on our server and are never in the app or this website. In the app, your session is kept in the device’s secure storage. Share, invite and family links use long random tokens (for family links we store only a one-way code of each), and our servers limit request rates. Discover and Big Trip records are reachable only through our server, and Discover photos are kept in private storage, opened only through short-lived links. No service can be made completely secure, so we cannot guarantee that data will never be accessed without permission.

Children

Trouble is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your country), and we do not knowingly collect their personal data. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

International processing

Several of our providers are based in the United States, so your data may be processed there and in other countries where they operate, which may be different from where you live.

Why we may use your data

Where the law asks us for a reason (for example in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland), these are ours:

To give you the service you asked for (our contract with you): your account and sign-in, your trips and what you save in them, sharing and planning together, what you publish in Discover, the Big Trip, purchases and your plan, and answering your support requests.
With your consent, which you can withdraw at any time in the app without affecting what was done before: sending your trip requests to OpenAI (the “Plan with AI” prompt), email updates, notifications, the phone’s location for live times and live sharing, and ads where Google’s consent message asks.
For our legitimate interests, balanced against yours: keeping Trouble secure and preventing abuse (including the one-way fingerprint kept after an account is deleted), the automatic check of what is published in Discover, crash reports and usage statistics (which you can turn off in Settings), and counting how many people opened a shared trip.
To meet legal obligations, for example answering a lawful request, or keeping what tax and consumer law require.

You are not legally required to give us any personal data. If you do not, the features that need it (an account, a trip, a post) cannot work, and the rest of Trouble still can.

Your choices and rights

Edit or delete trips, notes, packing lists and expenses in the app.
Change your language and currency in the app, and your accessibility settings on each device.
Change the email address of an email-and-password account in the app.
In Discover, edit your profile, delete your posts and comments, undo likes, saves and follows, and block or report people.
On a Big Trip, choose who gets a family link and remove it, stop sharing your route live, turn On your route off, or delete the trip.
Delete your account at any time.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your personal data, to object to or restrict some processing, and to withdraw a consent you gave at any time. Email [email protected] and we will respond. You may also be able to complain to your local data protection authority.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top of this page. Where a change is significant, we will also say so in the app.

Contact

Privacy questions and requests: [email protected]. More help: Help centre · Support