Privacy policy

What Furlong collects

Only what a feature needs. In each case you can see it in the app, and most of it you typed or chose yourself.

• Your account: the email address you sign in with, and a first and last name if you give them.
• Your movement profile: your units, your height, and a stride length if you set one. These turn a step goal into a distance and a time and back again. Your birthday, if you enter it, exists for exactly one badge (a goal met on your birthday) and nothing else.
• Your goal and your days: the daily goal you set, each day’s steps, distance and minutes against it, and a short record of when you set, changed or counted a goal, so the app can show how the target moved.
• Your walks: while you track a walk, your location, so the app can draw the route, measure the distance and speak turns. This includes while the screen is locked, for as long as the walk is running. Each walk keeps its trace.
• Your routes and places: the loops the app draws for you, the ones you save, and the destinations you search for.
• Health data, if you connect it: daily steps, distance and workouts read from Apple Health or Health Connect, so what you already walked counts toward the goal. The raw records stay on your phone; your account stores the daily totals you see in the app.
• Your streaks and trophies, which are worked out from the above.
• Your preferences: appearance, text size, voice cues, reminders, haptics and the like, kept on your account so they follow you between phones.
• Notifications, if you turn them on: a push token for this phone, and your time zone so reminders and quiet hours land at the right local time.
• A little about the app itself: which platform you are on and which version you are running, so that notices about an update reach the people who need them.
• Messages you send us through Get help in the app, and our replies. What you send carries the app version and whether you are on iPhone or Android, so that we can answer without first asking which build you were running.
• Anything you send us by email.

What Furlong does not collect

• No advertising identifiers, no analytics or tracking SDKs, no crash reporting that leaves the phone. There is no third-party tracking in the app at all.
• No location when you are not tracking a walk. The app never asks for “always” location.
• No contacts, and no photo library or camera access beyond the single profile picture you choose or take. The microphone is never used: voice cues are spoken by the phone, never recorded by it.
• Nothing is written back into Apple Health or Health Connect.

Why

• To run the app: sign you in, keep your goal, draw a loop sized to what is left of it, track and store your walks, count your streaks and award trophies.
• To send you what you asked for: a daily suggestion at the time you chose, and notices about the app.
• To answer you when you write to us.
• To meet legal obligations, including honouring a request to delete your account.

We do not sell your data, share it for advertising, or build profiles of you for anyone. Where a law asks for a legal basis: running the app is performance of our contract with you; the optional parts (health data, location, notifications) rest on your consent, which you can withdraw in your phone’s settings at any time; keeping a deletion record is a legal obligation.

Where your data is stored, and who else sees it

Your account and everything in it is stored with Amazon Web Services in Ireland (the eu-west-1 region), encrypted in transit and at rest. AWS processes it on our behalf and does not use it for its own purposes.

A few features need a partner, and each sees only what that feature needs:

• Route suggestions, place search and points of interest come from OpenRouteService (HeiGIT gGmbH, Heidelberg). When you ask for a loop, the starting point and any destination are sent to it through our servers; when you search for a place, the text you typed is. Nothing about you goes with it.
• The map in the app is Google Maps on Android and Apple Maps on iPhone. Showing a map means the provider receives requests for the tiles around what you are looking at, under its own privacy policy.
• Push notifications travel through Expo’s notification service, which holds the push token for your phone.
• Updates to the app come from Expo’s update service. In the background the app asks it whether newer code exists for the build you are running; the question says which build and which platform is asking, and nothing about you.
• Email we send you (a confirmation code, a deletion confirmation) goes through Amazon Cognito or Resend, which see your email address and the message.
• If you share a walk, the card is made on your phone and goes only where you choose to send it.

Furlong’s stewards, the small team that runs it, can see accounts, profiles and recorded activity through an internal dashboard, so that they can answer support requests, send notices and carry out deletions. They never see your password.

We disclose data beyond this only if the law requires it. We would tell you unless we are prohibited from doing so.

Location

Furlong uses your location for one thing: tracking a walk you started. While a walk is running the app keeps recording, including with the screen locked, until you finish or pause it. When no walk is running, it does not read your location at all.

A loop starts at your front door, so a route is a sensitive thing. Routes are never published, shared with other users, or combined into any community map. You can revoke location access in your phone’s settings; the app then cannot track walks, and everything else keeps working.

Health data

If you connect Apple Health or Health Connect, Furlong reads your daily steps, distance and workouts so that what you already walked counts toward your goal. It reads; it does not write. It never uses health data for advertising, never sells it, and never shares it with a third party. You can disconnect in the app, and revoke access in your phone’s health settings, at any time.

There is one optional extra, off unless you switch it on: keeping the day up to date in the background. With it on, the app re-reads today’s totals from the health app while Furlong is closed, so your goal, your streak and any reminder are right the next time you look. It reads the same three things and nothing more, and you can switch it off in Settings.

How long we keep it, and how to delete it

We keep your data for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account from inside the app (More, then Delete account) or, without the app, from the delete-account page on our website. Either way it works like this:

• Deletion happens 30 days after you ask. Until then, signing in again cancels it and keeps everything as it was.
• On day 30, the following is deleted: your account, so you would start from nothing if you came back; your goal, and every day's record against it; every walk you tracked, with its route; your saved routes and places; your streaks and trophies; your messages to us through Get help, and the replies you were sent; your profile: name, movement profile and profile picture.
• A record of this deletion request: the email address, when it was made and when it was fulfilled. Kept 90 days as proof that the deletion was carried out, then removed.
• Short-lived backups roll off within 30 days of the live data being deleted.

Nothing else is kept. Furlong keeps no copy of your walks, your routes or your profile after day 30, and the request record itself is gone after 90 days.

Your rights

Wherever you are, you can see and change everything the app holds about you from inside it, and delete all of it as above. Depending on where you live you may also have the right to ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to restrict or object to how it is used, and to complain to a data-protection authority.

To exercise any of these, write to ibk2k7@gmail.com. We answer within a month.

Children

Furlong is not for anyone under 13. We do not knowingly hold an account for a child; if you believe we do, tell us at ibk2k7@gmail.com and we will delete it.

Security

Data travels encrypted and is stored encrypted. Sign-in is handled by Amazon Cognito; we never see your password. If you choose “Continue with Google” or “Continue with Apple” instead, Google or Apple confirms who you are and shares your email address (and your name, if you allow it) with us under its own privacy policy: we never see those passwords either, and we receive nothing else from those accounts. No system is perfectly secure, and if something goes wrong that affects you, we will tell you.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the app tells you with a notice. A change that affects what we collect or why will be announced before it takes effect, not after.

Contact

Furlong. Email ibk2k7@gmail.com.