Last updated: July 2026
Waypacker is a safety-first travel platform connecting hosts and travelers. Because we verify identities and handle location data, we’re direct about what we collect and why. This policy applies to the Waypacker website and mobile app.
Waypacker is intended for users 18 years of age or older. By creating an account, you confirm you meet this requirement.
Account information: email address, display name, gender (used only to apply the same-gender matching preference you or a host has chosen — never shown publicly), and password (stored hashed by our authentication provider, never in plain text or visible to us).
Identity verification documents: a government-issued ID photo and a selfie, submitted voluntarily to unlock hosting and browsing features. These are stored in access-controlled storage, reviewed by an automated check and, where needed, a human reviewer, and used solely to confirm your identity. We do not sell, share, or use these images for any other purpose.
Location data:your approximate location is used to show nearby hosts, meetups, and travelers. Your precise location is never stored in a form visible to other users — listings and profiles only ever display a neighborhood-level area, deliberately blurred (“fuzzed”) to roughly 1km. If you opt in to Journey Timeline, we log GPS points to build your personal trip history; this feature is off by default and can be turned off at any time, which stops new points from being recorded.
Emergency contacts:names and phone numbers you choose to add, used only when you tap “Share my location” to open a pre-filled WhatsApp message to that contact. We do not contact these people ourselves or store them anywhere other than your own profile.
Messages and activity: chat messages between you and other users, stay requests, meetup attendance, trips you post, and reviews, all needed to operate the core features of the app.
To operate the service: matching you with hosts, meetups, and travelers; verifying identity; enabling chat; and powering the optional AI travel concierge (your messages to the concierge are sent to our AI provider to generate a response, and are not used to train their models beyond standard API processing).
We do not sell your personal data to third parties, and we do not use your ID documents or precise location for advertising.
We use a small number of infrastructure providers to run Waypacker: Supabase (database, authentication, and file storage), Mapbox (map rendering and place search), OpenRouter (AI concierge responses), and WhatsApp (only when you personally choose to send a location-share message). Each processes data only as needed to provide their service to us, under their own privacy terms.
Account and activity data is retained while your account is active. Identity verification documents are retained only as long as needed to maintain your verified status; if you delete your account, we delete your ID documents and selfie within 30 days. You can request earlier deletion at any time (see Section 7).
Data access is enforced with row-level security policies at the database layer, so other users’ private data (raw location, verification documents, emergency contacts) is never directly queryable by other accounts. Verification documents are stored in private storage and only ever accessed via short-lived signed links generated for an authorized reviewer.
You can view and edit most of your data directly in the app (Profile page). You can request a copy of your data, request correction, or request full account deletion (which removes your profile, listings, messages, and verification documents) by contacting us — see Section 9.
If we make material changes to this policy, we’ll update the date at the top of this page and, where required, notify you in-app.
Questions about this policy or your data: reach us via the contact details in the app.