Privacy

The short version

A file you open stays in your browser until you decide to publish it. If you never sign in, this site stores nothing about you but a cookie remembering whether you like miles or kilometres. If you do sign in, it keeps what it needs to show your name on the routes you publish, and it lets you delete all of it.

What an account holds

Signing in with Google passes on your name, email address and profile picture — nothing else, and no access to anything in your Google account. To that you may add a handle, a short bio, a link to your channel and a home town, all of which are shown publicly on your profile because that is what they are for.

What publishing a route holds

The GPS file itself, the figures worked out from it — distance, climb, duration, twistiness — the nearest named places at each end, and whatever you typed alongside it. Public routes are listed on Explore and are meant to be found; unlisted ones are reachable only by their link; private ones are visible to you alone.

A ride is trimmed at both ends before it is uploaded, in your browser, so the part nearest home never leaves it. How much is cut is up to you at the time of publishing.

Cookies

Four, all set by this site, none shared with anyone and none used to follow you anywhere: one that keeps you signed in, one remembering miles or kilometres, one holding the routes you have already viewed so a reload does not count twice, and one that carries a message like "Saved." across a single redirect and is then thrown away. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, because there is no advertising or analytics.

Who else sees a request

Cloudflare hosts this and so handles every request. Google serves the sign-in and the two typefaces the player uses. Esri serves the satellite imagery your map tiles come from. If a route has a YouTube link, YouTube's player is loaded on that page and Google's terms and privacy policy apply to it — no YouTube code is loaded on a route without one. Terrain is fetched by this site rather than by you, so that host sees nothing about you at all.

Deleting things

Deleting a route hides it at once and removes the file from storage a week later. Deleting your account removes it immediately along with everything on it, and unpins every route you published so the same purge takes those too. Both are in your own settings; neither needs to be asked for.

Asking

If you want to know what is held about you, or want it gone and cannot do it yourself, write to hello@twistward.com.