Farsider privacy policy

Effective date: 28 October 2026

This policy covers the Farsider app for Android and iPhone, and our server at farsider.app. It says what data the app uses, where it goes, how long it is kept, and what you can do about it.

Who we are

Farsider is published by Verano Solutions BV, a company in the Netherlands ("we", "us"). We are the controller of the data described here. Contact: hello@farsider.app.

The short version

• No account. You never give us an email address, a password or a phone number.
• Navigation works on your phone. Maps, routing, turn guidance and offline search run on the device. Rides are not recorded or uploaded. Points of a route leave the phone only for weather, the Local guide and group routes.
• Usage statistics are on by default and you can turn them off (Menu → General → "Share anonymous usage"). They include what you search for and a rough area of about 5 km. Never your exact position.
• Anonymous traffic data is on by default and you can turn it off (Menu → General → "Contribute traffic data"). While you ride, the app sends your speed on each road with no name, account or install ID, never near your Home or Work and never the first and last few hundred metres of a ride. We keep only road averages.
• Farsider Social is off until you turn it on (Menu → Social; being tested). Riders within about 1 km who also turned it on see your name, avatar and position while you ride, never near your Home or Work. We keep no position history and no messages; only your connections, your blocks and the contact list you chose to add.
• Some features talk to a server when you use them: weather, rider groups, the Local guide, online search, satellite imagery and map downloads. Each is described below.
• No ads, no selling data, no tracking across other companies' apps or websites.
• You can delete your data in the app (Menu → Groups → Reset identity; usage statistics off), by uninstalling it, or by writing to us. See https://farsider.app/delete-data.

No account

Farsider has no sign-up. If you use rider groups, the app creates an anonymous rider profile on our server (see "Rider groups"). It holds only the display name and avatar you pick.

What stays on your phone

These are stored only on your device. We cannot see them.

• Your settings, saved places and recent searches.
• Trips and GPX files you import. They leave the phone only if you share a trip with a group.
• Downloaded maps, and satellite imagery the map has cached (up to the size you set, 500 MB by default).
• Usage statistics waiting to be sent (at most 5,000 events or 2 MB).
• Your group sign-in secret and your groups' keys, encrypted with a key kept in Android Keystore or the iPhone Keychain.

Your phone's own backup (Google or iCloud) may include some of these files, under your Google or Apple account. The rider-groups files are left out of Android backups, and the group key on the iPhone never leaves the device.

What leaves your phone, feature by feature

Usage statistics (analytics)

On by default. Turn it off in Menu → General → "Share anonymous usage". Turning it off deletes the events waiting to be sent and the app's random install ID, and stops sending at once. Turning it back on starts with a new ID.

What is sent:

• Which screens and features you use: rides started and ended, searches, trips and GPX imports, groups, map downloads, ride-screen layouts, weather and alert notices, settings you change (on/off and choice values only), and failures such as a route that could not be found.
• What you search for: the text you typed, trimmed, lower-cased and cut at 64 characters, once per search, and the rank of the result you picked. A position you paste (coordinates or a map link) is never sent as text.
• A rough area: a map cell of about 5 × 5 km (a 5-character geohash) and the country you are in, taken when the event happens. During a ride the app also sends the cell every 5 km ridden, so a ride's cells show its rough course, 5 km at a time.
• Distances, durations and counts in ranges (for example "200–250 km"), not exact values.
• A random install ID, a random session ID, the app version, the phone model, the operating system and its version, the language setting, units and voice mode.

What is never sent: your coordinates, routes (beyond the 5 km cells above), trip or GPX names, group names, rider names, invite codes, or other text you type besides searches. Map pack names are sent; they are ours ("Italy North").

Where it goes: PostHog, in PostHog's EU cloud. The app sends events in batches, often later (for example when you are back home). Each event tells PostHog not to look up a location from the IP address and not to build a person profile. The PostHog project is set to discard IP addresses. PostHog keeps events for and then deletes them. We use the statistics to learn which features are used and what to improve.

Weather

On by default. Turn it off in Menu → General → Weather; then the app makes no weather requests.

• While you navigate, the app sends our server points along the route ahead of you (one every 2 km for the next 100 km, at most 60 points) with their height, so it can tell you where rain is coming.
• While the app is open without a route, it sends your current position about every 10 minutes (sooner after 3 km), and when you open the weather overview.
• Our server uses the points to answer and does not store or log them. To get forecasts it asks MET Norway for an area rounded to about 1 km. MET Norway sees our server, not you.
• Rain radar pictures come from our server by map tile (zoom level and tile numbers).

Rider groups

Only if you create or join a group.

• Profile: a display name (1–24 characters) and an avatar from the app's built-in set. Our server gives you a random rider ID and a secret; it stores only a hash of the secret.
• Groups: the group's name, its members, each member's colour, and the group's shared route (its stops with their positions and names, the route options, and who made the last change).
• Your position: only while you ride with a group switched on. The app sends your position, heading, speed and GPS accuracy every 5 seconds while moving (30 seconds while still). Only the members of that group receive it. The server keeps only your latest position, no history, and deletes it 60 minutes after it last heard from you. It is deleted at once when you switch the group off or leave it.
• Invites: invite codes are made on your phone and expire (QR codes after 5 minutes, shared links after 24 hours). Anyone who opens a valid invite link in a browser sees the group's name and nothing else.
• Group trips: if you share a trip with a group, its GPX file, its name and your display name are stored on our server for the group's members. A GPX file can contain whatever its author put in it (for example times or a name). Up to 10 trips per group, 8 MB each.

Farsider Social (nearby riders)

Off until you turn it on in Menu → Social (it is being tested with a few riders first). It uses your rider profile from groups (a display name and an avatar, no account).

• What others see: while you ride, riders within about 1 km who also have Social on see your name, avatar, position, heading and speed on their map, and can send you a message from a fixed list (for example "Wait for me") or a connect offer. A connection you made today sees you at any distance while you both ride. Nobody sees you within about 500 metres of your saved Home or Work, after 3 minutes standing still, after you arrive at the end of a route, or once the ride ends. There is no free text between riders on the road. Riders you are connected with can also ask you, from a fixed list, whether you want to go for a ride or hang out, and you can answer yes or not today, even when neither of you is riding.
• What is sent: every 5 seconds while you ride, your position, heading and speed with your rider ID, your install ID (to check the feature is on for you) and your time zone, in the same request as the traffic data. The server keeps them apart: the traffic points go to the anonymous queue under their trip ID only, as described below.
• What the server keeps: your latest position in memory only, never written down: shown to others until 20 seconds after your last update, and kept for an hour to check that your next position is one a motorcycle could reach (so nobody can fake their way next to you); messages and offers on the road in memory only, until your phone has them or 10 minutes pass; asks and answers between connections are kept on our server, with who sent them and when, until your phone has them or 7 days pass (at most 50 waiting for you); that you turned Social on, and your contact list if you add one (up to 5 entries: a phone number, a messenger name, an email address or a short note, never shown to nearby riders, only to a connection you choose to show it to, until you hide it again); your connections (who and when; where you met is kept on your phone only) and the riders you blocked. Names and contact entries pass a filter of offensive words.
• Notifications: if you allow them, your phone gives us a push token (and your language) so we can tell you when a connection asks you something. We keep one token for you and delete it when you turn Social off or Reset identity, or when Google or Apple say it no longer works. The notification goes through Google (Android) or Apple (iPhone), who see that a notification for your phone was sent, the sender's name and the short text.
• Deleting it: turning Social off stops sending at once. Reset identity in Menu → Groups deletes your rider profile with your contact list, connections, blocks, waiting messages and push token.

Traffic data (anonymous road speeds)

On by default; turn it off in Menu → General → "Contribute traffic data". It is used to make arrival times and routes better for every rider.

• What is sent: while you ride (with a route, or with the app open), your position, speed, heading and GPS accuracy once a second, sent every 15 seconds, with your time zone and a random trip ID made new for each ride. No name, account, rider ID or install ID goes with it. With Farsider Social on, the same points travel in Social's request every 5 seconds and are fed into traffic data even if this switch is off; the server stores them the same anonymous way, under the trip ID only.
• What is never sent: anything within about 500 metres of the Home and Work you saved in the app; the first few hundred metres of a ride (300–700 m, random each time); the end of a ride (the last 500 metres or 2 minutes are held on the phone and dropped when the ride ends); a ride the app simulates. Standing still for 5 minutes ends a trip, so the way to where you stopped is dropped too.
• What we keep: the server matches the points to roads and keeps, for each stretch of road and hour of the week, how many seconds riders spent at each speed and how many trips it saw. The points and the trip ID are deleted once matched, at the latest 24 hours after they arrive, and are never in our backup. A road's speeds are used only once at least 5 different trips have ridden it.
• Where it goes: our own server and our own routing service; nobody else.

Local guide (stories along the ride)

Off by default. Turn it on with the Local guide switch.

• When a ride starts with the guide on, the app sends our server your route (at most 2,000 points along it), the expected time to each point, your language, how much the guide should talk, the topics you chose, your time zone's offset (so the guide says the time of day as your clock does), and a random Local guide install ID (used for daily limits and test access). As you ride it sends how far along the route you are, so the server can prepare the next half hour of stories, and the new route if you leave the planned one.
• The server keeps each ride's guide, with its route, what it planned and what you played, for 90 days, to find faults and to understand how the guide is used. Then it is deleted.
• The app tells the server which stories you played, how much of each you heard, and your 👍 and 👎, by the same install ID. The server uses them so a story you heard isn't told again and the guide learns which topics you like. It keeps them until you clear them (below).
• New stories are written by an AI model from Anthropic (Claude) and checked against facts from Wikidata and Wikipedia. Our server sends Anthropic the place and the topic; for the words that open a ride, link two stories or close it, the names of the places, where the ride starts and ends, the local time and names from stories you heard. Never positions. The voice is made on our own server.
• Story audio is downloaded from data.farsider.app (see "Map downloads").
• Menu → Local guide has "Forget heard stories" and "Forget what I like", which delete them on our server.

Online search

When you search with a signal, the app also asks Photon, a search service run by komoot GmbH, for places outside your downloaded maps. The app sends komoot directly, from your phone:

• the text you are typing (from 3 characters, a moment after you stop typing),
• one reference point so near results come first: your position, the map centre, or your place on the route,
• your language.

komoot also sees your IP address. komoot's privacy policy applies to that request. In Menu → General → Online search you can point the app at another Photon server. Search in your downloaded maps never leaves the phone.

Map links you share or paste

When you share a link to Farsider or paste one into search, and the app can't read the place from the link by itself, the app sends the link to our server: a short link such as maps.app.goo.gl, a place Google names only by its ID, a place Yandex Maps names only by its page (an organisation, a house), and any other link the app finds no place in, from a map site or not. Our server tells the app what to ask the map's site, and your phone asks it, as opening the link in a browser would: our server never contacts Google, Apple or anyone else for you. The site sees your IP address, as it would if you opened the link.

Our server does not keep the link. When it can't read one, its log records only the site's name (for example maps.app.goo.gl), the step it got to and the site's answer code, so we notice when a map site changes its links. A link with the place's position in it is read on your phone and never sent.

When another app opens Farsider with an address (a calendar event's location, a navigation link without a position, or words you share), the app searches it as usual. Only if that finds nothing does it send our server what it was opened with and the words it searched, so our server can suggest another way to read it. Our server does not keep them; its log records only the kind of opening (for example geo) and the kind of answer.

Logs you send us

Under Advanced, "Send logs to the developers" sends the app's log to our server: what the app did, what you searched for and what it found, street and place names, your positions while riding, and your install ID, phone model and app version. Some test phones have it on until their rider switches it off; for everyone else it is off until you switch it on. Only the developers read these logs, to find and fix problems, and our server deletes them after 30 days.

Satellite imagery

Only when you choose the Satellite map. The app loads imagery tiles directly from Esri (ArcGIS). Each request names a map tile (zoom level and tile numbers), so Esri can tell roughly which area you are looking at. Esri also sees your IP address. Esri's privacy policy applies.

Map downloads

Maps, the map list, map updates and story audio come from data.farsider.app, our storage on Cloudflare. Cloudflare and we can see your IP address and which files you download, so which regions you got. We do not keep access logs for these downloads. The app checks the map list once a day for updates.

Farsider Pro (purchases)

Only when you buy Farsider Pro or restore a purchase. Apple or Google handles the payment; we never see your name, card or store account. The app sends our server the store's proof of purchase (Apple's signed transaction, or Google's purchase token) with the app's install ID, and our server checks it with Apple or Google to know which plan the phone has and until when. Apple and Google then tell our server when the subscription renews, ends or is refunded. We keep the subscription's store ID, product, dates and status, linked to the install IDs that proved it (at most five).

Location, camera and other permissions

• Location is used on your phone to show where you are, route you and guide you. It leaves the phone only as described above (weather, groups, analytics' 5 km cell, online search).
• Background location: while you navigate, the app keeps using location with the screen off or another app in front, so it can keep guiding you. On Android this runs as a navigation notification (a foreground service; the app does not ask for "all the time" location). On the iPhone the app asks only "While Using" and the status bar shows that location is in use.
• Camera: only to scan a group's QR code. The picture is read on the phone and not stored or sent.
• Notifications: for the navigation notification and, on the iPhone, the Live Activity. Both are made on the phone. The app does not use push messages.

Our server and its logs

Our server runs at farsider.app on a host we manage in the EU, behind Cloudflare.

• All app traffic uses HTTPS.
• Our server's logs record which kind of request it was, the result code and how long it took. They do not record addresses, IDs, names, positions, routes or search text.
• Your IP address is used briefly, in memory, to limit abuse (too many requests). It is not written to disk.
• The proxy in front of our app may keep its own access logs.
• Our server's database is copied as it changes to a backup at Cloudflare, stored in the EU, so it can be brought back after a failure. The backup goes back 30 days: what is deleted on our server is gone from the backup 30 days later. Positions in groups are never in the backup.

Who receives data

We do not sell or rent your data. We may disclose data if the law requires it.

Data outside your country

Cloudflare, Anthropic and Esri are based in the United States, and Cloudflare's network is worldwide. Where data from the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland goes to such a provider, we rely on the safeguards the law allows, such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. PostHog's EU cloud stores data in the EU.

How long we keep it

The server checks every minute and deletes what is due; the backup lets it go 30 days later.

Why we may use your data (legal bases)

For users in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland:

• To provide what you ask for (contract): weather, groups, group trips, the Local guide, search, satellite imagery and map downloads.
• Our legitimate interests: usage statistics, to understand how the app is used and improve it. They are rough, without accounts, and you can turn them off at any time. Anonymous traffic data, to make arrival times and routes better for every rider: without names, accounts or install IDs, cut around your Home and Work and the ends of a ride, kept only as road averages, and you can turn it off at any time. Also keeping the service safe from abuse.
• Your consent: Farsider Social, which is off until you turn it on and stops when you turn it off.
• Legal obligations, where the law requires us to keep or disclose data.

Your rights and choices

You can:

• turn off usage statistics and weather in Menu → General, and the Local guide with its switch;
• leave a group, switch it off, or change your profile, in Menu → Groups;
• delete your rider profile on our server with Menu → Groups → Reset identity, which also takes you out of every group (see https://farsider.app/delete-data);
• delete everything on the phone by uninstalling the app;
• ask us for access to your data, or to correct, delete, restrict or export it, or object to how we use it.

Because there are no accounts, we may need an ID from the app to find your data (for example your rider ID). We cannot link usage statistics to you once the app's install ID is deleted.

To use your rights, write to hello@farsider.app. We answer within one month. You can also complain to a data protection supervisory authority. Ours is the Dutch Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl). You can also go to the authority in the country where you live or work.

Children

Farsider is a navigation app for riders and drivers. It is not directed at children under 13, or under 16 in the EEA and the UK. We do not knowingly collect data from them. If you think a child has used rider groups, write to us and we will delete the profile.

Security

All connections use HTTPS. Group secrets are stored encrypted on the phone and only as a hash on our server. Invite codes are signed and expire. Positions go only to members of the same group who have it switched on.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top and, for important changes, tell you in the app.

Contact

Verano Solutions BV, the Netherlands. Email: hello@farsider.app.