Quester Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 4, 2026
Last updated: October 28, 2026

Quester ("Quester," "we," "us," or "our") is a travel companion app. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, how we use and share it, and the choices and rights you have. We wrote it in plain language on purpose — if anything is unclear, contact us using the details at the end.

This policy applies to the Quester mobile app (iOS and Android), our website getquester.com, and any related services we operate.

The short version

• We never store your exact location. Your device's precise GPS coordinates pass through our systems briefly to power nearby discovery, but the most we ever save is a coarse map cell (about 0.1 km², a few hundred metres across). We cannot reconstruct your exact position from what we store.
• We don't sell your data, and there are no ads in Quester. We use AppsFlyer so that an invite link a friend taps carries them to the right trip after they install, and to tell which link or campaign an install came from. We use Google's Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics to understand how the app is used and to fix crashes. We do not show ads, build advertising profiles, or use advertising identifiers (IDFA/GAID). Those are switched off in our code, which is why Quester never shows you Apple's tracking prompt.
• Your guide uses external AI models. To plan with you, your guide sends what you share (your messages, trip details, saved places and the links and screenshots you import) to external AI models (Google Gemini and OpenAI). We ask for your OK once, right after you sign in, before anything is sent. See Section 6.
• You control what you import. Places are added to your collection only from links, screenshots, or notes you choose to share with the app.
• If we imported content from your public social post (because a Quester user shared a link to it), you can ask us to remove it — see "Content Creators" below.
• You can delete your account and data at any time in the app. Deletion happens right away and cannot be undone (see Section 10).

1. Who We Are

Quester is operated by Alta Via Labs, LLC, 2810 N Church St STE 88497, Wilmington, DE 19802, USA. For privacy questions, contact privacy@getquester.com. If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the UK: we will appoint a representative under Article 27 of the GDPR and the UK GDPR before Quester is publicly available there, and we will add their contact details here at that time. Until then, contact us at privacy@getquester.com. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer.

2. Information We Collect

We collect only what we need to run the features described in the app. Here's the full list, organized by category, with why we collect it and what our legal basis is if you're in the EEA/UK.

2.1 Account information

We do not receive your password. Sign-in is handled entirely by Apple, Google, and Firebase Authentication; for email sign-in, Firebase holds only a hash of the password.

2.2 Location information

This is the category we want to be most transparent about.

• What we ask for, and when: We never ask for location on install or when you first open the app. We ask once, around a trip: from about 24 hours before a trip starts (or on your first day in the city, if that moment passed), after an in-app screen that explains why. On iPhone we ask for "Always" access; iOS first offers "While Using the App" and may later offer to upgrade, and you can choose either. On Android we ask for access while you use the app and then for "Allow all the time"; Android may also ask for "Physical activity" access, which lets the app notice when you start moving without draining your battery (iPhone asks for "Motion & Fitness" for the same reason). Every feature works with while-in-use access; "Always" only adds occasional "worth a detour" alerts during an active trip.
• What happens in transit: When the app requests nearby discoveries — whether you check what's nearby or the background layer wakes on movement during an active trip — your device's precise coordinates are sent to our servers for that single request, to figure out what's around you.
• When background ("Always") collection actually runs: Even if you've granted "Always" permission, we only collect location in the background on the days of an active trip and while you're in that trip's destination. Background collection stops automatically when the trip ends, is cancelled, or its dates change, and it re-checks this condition regularly. Between trips — or outside the trip window — we collect no background location, even if the OS permission is still granted.
• What we store: We do not keep your raw GPS coordinates. Your position is used only to answer that one request. Apart from the alert and suggestion records below, the most we ever save is a coarse map cell (an "H3" hexagon of about 0.1 km², a few hundred metres across). We save it only when you ask what's nearby in an area we haven't covered yet, so we know which areas to add. It is linked to your account and deleted 12 months after we save it, or when you delete your account if sooner. We cannot turn a cell back into your exact position. When we send you a "worth a detour" or saved-place alert, we also record which place it was about and when, so we don't tell you about the same place twice. Because that shows roughly where you were, we delete that record 30 days after the alert. The same goes for which suggested places we showed you and which you opened, saved or dismissed: we delete that record after 30 days, or when your trip ends if that is later.
• Purpose: Power the "near me" discovery feed and, for the optional "Always" tier, the occasional "worth a detour" alert while you're actively traveling.
• GDPR legal basis: Consent (the OS permission you grant) for using your location; legitimate interest for the coarse cell we keep, which no longer identifies your precise position.
• If you decline or revoke: location-dependent features degrade gracefully rather than breaking — for example, "near me" discovery falls back to a city-level feed. You can revoke either permission at any time in your device settings.

2.3 Trips and preferences

• Trip name, destination, dates, itinerary days, notes you write, and places you've added to a trip.
• Per-trip discovery preferences and topics (Quester does not build a single, standing profile of you — preferences are set per trip).
• How you respond to discoveries and Moments: see "What you do with suggestions" in Section 2.8.
• Purpose: Provide trip planning and personalized discovery within that trip.
• GDPR legal basis: Contract.
• If you ask for a city Quester doesn't offer yet, we save the city name as our assistant understood it — never your message — linked to your account, with the dates you asked. We use it to count how many different people want a city and to decide which cities to add next. Our team sees only the count, never who asked. GDPR legal basis: legitimate interest. You can object at any time by writing to privacy@getquester.com, and we will delete it.

2.4 Imported content ("Collection" / imports)

When you share a TikTok or Instagram link, a Google Maps link, a blog/article URL, a screenshot, or typed notes into Quester, we process that content to find and save places for your personal collection.

• What we collect: the URL or file you shared, and what we fetch and extract from it: the post's caption, speech transcript and on-screen text, its cover image (and, for some TikTok and Instagram links, the video file or the post's images, which we use to read on-screen text and, for TikTok, speech), place names and addresses, and the creator's public handle.
• How we process it: we use third-party scraping providers (see Section 4) to fetch the content, and AI models (Section 6) to identify places mentioned or shown.
• What we keep, and for how long: see the retention table in Section 7 — we do not keep raw social captions/transcripts or creator handles indefinitely.
• Purpose: Build your personal place collection from content you choose to import.
• GDPR legal basis: Contract (you're directing us to process content on your behalf) and, for any personal data about the third-party creator (see 2.5), legitimate interest, balanced against the creator opt-out described in Section 8.

2.5 Content creators' information

If you import a public social media post, we may briefly process and store the creator's public handle and public post content as part of extracting place information. This is not information about you — it's information about the person who made the original post. See Section 8, "Content Creators," for what we do about this and how a creator can ask us to remove it.

2.6 Trip sharing / collaboration

If you invite others to a trip via an invite link, we share your trip's content (itinerary, places, notes) with the people who accept that invite, and they can see edits made by other trip members. We do not share your trip content with anyone outside the trip you've chosen to share it with.

2.7 Conversations with your guide, and what Quester remembers

When you chat with your guide (the in-app trip assistant) or set up a trip with it, your messages are sent to our AI providers to generate a response. See Section 6.

Your guide saves your chats and writes short notes about things you tell it — like the neighbourhood you're staying in or that you prefer small places — so it doesn't have to ask twice. These notes are saved automatically. They can include dietary or access needs you mention (for example, that you're vegetarian or use a wheelchair), because those change what we suggest. Notes about you are kept across trips; notes about a trip are deleted with it. You can see every note, and delete any line at any time, in "What Quester remembers"; deleting a chat also deletes everything we derived from it (its summary and the search index built from it). Past chats are searched only when you ask about something from an earlier conversation, and only your own chats on that trip are searched.

GDPR legal basis: Contract.

2.8 Device and technical data

• Push notification device token, used to deliver trip and discovery notifications you have allowed. GDPR basis: consent (the notification permission you grant on your device).
• Notification history: which notifications we sent you and whether you opened them, so we can keep alerts few and never repeat one. GDPR basis: legitimate interest in running the service without over-notifying you. How long we keep it: Section 7.
• What you do with suggestions: which places we showed you and what you did with them (such as opened, saved, shared, dismissed or set off to), so the app doesn't keep showing you what you've seen or turned down. GDPR basis: legitimate interest in giving you relevant suggestions. How long we keep it: Section 7.
• The time you last used the app, to run the service (for example, deciding when to refresh a trip's places). GDPR basis: legitimate interest in running the service efficiently.
• App usage and crash data (Google Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics). See Section 2.11.
• Install and invite-link measurement data collected by AppsFlyer (Section 2.10). Quester shows no ads, runs no advertising SDK and uses no advertising identifier.
• Server logs. Our servers record technical details of each request (such as time, the address the request came from, and errors) to keep the service running and secure. GDPR basis: legitimate interest in security and reliability.

2.9 Purchase information

If you buy a one-time trip unlock, the purchase itself is handled by Apple's App Store or Google Play. We receive confirmation that a purchase was made, which package, and the store's transaction record, but not your payment card details. GDPR legal basis: contract (to give you what you bought) and legal obligation (tax and accounting law requires us to keep purchase records; see Section 7).

2.10 Invite links and install measurement (AppsFlyer)

Quester lets you invite friends to a trip by sharing a link. To make that link work even when your friend does not have the app yet, so that after installing and signing up they land straight on "Join this trip?" instead of having to find the link again, we use AppsFlyer, a mobile measurement provider that acts as our data processor. AppsFlyer also tells us, in aggregate, which link or marketing campaign an install came from, which is what we will use if we ever run ads for Quester.

What AppsFlyer receives from your device:

• A device identifier: on iOS the IDFV (an identifier Apple gives to all apps from the same developer on your device, which resets when you delete our apps), on Android the Google Play install referrer string; plus an AppsFlyer ID, a random identifier the measurement SDK generates for the install
• Your IP address, and the approximate city or region it implies. We do not send your GPS location to AppsFlyer
• Technical information about your device and app: operating system and version, device model, language, screen size, app version, network type, and basic performance signals used to detect fraudulent installs
• App-open events (that the app was launched, and when) and the invite token contained in the link you or your friend tapped. The invite token identifies a trip, not a person; AppsFlyer never receives your trip contents, notes, saved places, email address or Quester account id

What AppsFlyer does not receive:

• No advertising identifier. Apple's IDFA and Android's advertising ID (GAID) are switched off in our code. That is also why Quester does not show Apple's "Allow app to track" prompt: we do not track you across other companies' apps and websites. On Android we additionally remove the advertising-ID permission from the app entirely
• No precise location, no contacts, no photos, no payment information

If we ever enable advertising identifiers, for example to measure a paid ad campaign more precisely, we will ask for your permission first through your device's tracking prompt, update this policy, and update our App Store and Google Play privacy labels before that version ships. Nothing changes without that.

How long AppsFlyer keeps it: AppsFlyer's own privacy terms commit that it will not retain end-user data for more than 24 months unless we instruct otherwise or the law requires it; in practice most install-level records are deleted sooner.

Your choices: you can stop AppsFlyer collecting data from your device, across every app that uses it, with AppsFlyer's own opt-out at https://www.appsflyer.com/legal/opt-out/. You can also contact us at privacy@getquester.com and we will help you with a deletion request.

Purpose and legal basis: delivering an invitation you or your friend explicitly asked for by tapping an invite link (contract: necessary to provide the sharing feature you used); and measuring installs and detecting fraudulent ones (legitimate interest in understanding where our users come from and in protecting the service, balanced against the fact that no advertising identifier is used and no profile about you is built).

2.11 App analytics and crash reporting (Firebase)

Quester uses Google's Firebase Analytics and Firebase Crashlytics. The app records which screens you open and a short list of actions, such as signing in, creating a trip, saving a place, sending a chat message, opening a notification or completing a purchase. It also sends crash reports: what went wrong, device model, operating system and app version. These records carry your Quester user ID (a random identifier, not your name or email), a scrambled (hashed) form of the trip ID and a city name. They never contain your email, notes, chat text or GPS coordinates. Advertising features are switched off, and this data is not used for ads. They run from first launch, without a separate consent prompt.

• Your choices: you can switch usage data off at any time with "Share usage data" on your Profile screen. It stops both analytics and crash reports.
• Where it goes: Google processes it under Google's Firebase data-processing terms as our processor.
• How long: see Section 7. Deleting your account does not erase analytics data already sent to Firebase; it expires on that schedule, and you can ask us at privacy@getquester.com to delete it sooner.
• Purpose: understand how the app is used and fix problems. GDPR basis: legitimate interest; you can object at any time with that switch.

2.12 Our website

If you leave your email address in the "Get notified" form on getquester.com, we store it with the country your connection comes from (worked out from your IP address by our website host, Cloudflare), so we can tell you when Quester is available where you are. GDPR basis: consent (you chose to sign up). Ask us at privacy@getquester.com and we will delete it.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information above only to:

• Provide and operate trip planning, place collection, and discovery features
• Let your guide plan and chat with you, using our AI providers (Section 6)
• Generate place descriptions, trip suggestions and "why this matters" stories
• Resolve imported links/screenshots into real places
• Secure your account and prevent abuse
• Send you trip-related and discovery notifications (with your consent)
• Deliver trip invitations: make sure a friend who taps an invite link lands on the right "Join this trip?" screen, even when they had to install the app first
• Measure which link or marketing campaign an install came from, in aggregate
• Understand how the app is used and fix crashes (Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics)
• Comply with legal obligations and respond to lawful requests

We do not use your information to serve you ads, build advertising profiles, or sell it to data brokers. Measuring where an install came from is not the same as advertising to you: it tells us that an install happened and which link or campaign preceded it, and it does not use an advertising identifier.

No automated decisions with legal effect. We don't make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on you. Our AI suggests places and plans; you decide what to do with them.

4. Sharing & Third-Party Service Providers

We share the minimum data necessary with the service providers ("subprocessors") below so they can perform specific functions on our behalf. None of these providers may use your data for their own advertising purposes, and each is bound by terms that give your data the same or equal protection as this policy.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not "share" it (as that term is defined under the CCPA/CPRA) for cross-context behavioral advertising.

We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect our rights, or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets (in which case we'll notify you).

5. Imports From Third-Party Platforms

Quester's import feature only processes content you actively choose to share with the app — a link, a screenshot, or a note. We do not independently browse or scrape social media on our own initiative.

When you import a link:

• We fetch the public content behind that link using the providers listed above.
• We use AI to identify places mentioned or shown, so we can add them to your collection.
• We keep an audit trail of what was extracted from what you imported.
• The caption, transcript, creator handle and the raw data our provider returned are automatically deleted 30 days after we fetch them (72 hours for blog and article text). The cover image we keep, so your saved place looks like the post you saw, is deleted 30 days after the link was last imported. After that, what remains is the place information we extracted and a one-way coded marker derived from the creator's handle. The marker can't be turned back into the handle without a secret key we hold. We keep it for 12 months so we can count how many different creators mention a place and honour removal requests.

You represent that you have the right to share any link or content you import into Quester.

6. AI Processing Disclosure

To plan with you, your guide sends what you share (your messages, trip details, saved places and the links and screenshots you import) to external AI models (Google Gemini and OpenAI). It happens through Google's and OpenAI's business services, and only while you plan, chat or save a place. They don't use it to train their models.

• We ask first. Right after you sign in, before anything is sent, Quester shows a one-time notice saying this and asks you to agree. We record when you agreed and to which version of the notice. If we add another AI company, we ask again. Your guide needs this to plan with you, so Quester can't be used without it; to withdraw your agreement, delete your account (Section 10).
• Which features: trip setup and trip plans, the chat with your guide (including summaries of past chats and the search over them), and finding places in the links, screenshots and notes you import. OpenAI is our main provider for the chat and trip setup, and turns your messages and chat summaries into search vectors. Google Gemini makes trip plans and finds places in your imports. Each one covers the chat, trip setup and imports when the other's service is unavailable.
• Training and retention: Under Google Cloud's terms, Google does not use this content to train or fine-tune its AI models without our permission, and we have not given it. Google may keep requests for up to 90 days only to detect abuse and investigate possible policy violations. OpenAI's API terms say content sent through its API is not used to train its models by default, and OpenAI keeps API content for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring. These commitments come from the providers' business terms and do not cover their consumer apps (such as the Gemini app or ChatGPT), which we do not use.
• Where: our Gemini requests are processed on Google's global infrastructure, and OpenAI's on its own; both may be outside the EEA, the UK and the United States (see Section 9).
• Place stories: place descriptions and "why this matters" stories are written by AI from public sources about the place, not from your content.

What this means for accuracy: AI-generated content — including place descriptions, stories, prices, and recommendations — may be inaccurate, outdated, or incomplete. Always verify anything safety-critical or time-sensitive (opening hours, prices, current status of a place) before you travel. AI content in Quester is for inspiration and context, not authoritative travel advice. If an answer from your guide looks wrong or offensive, press and hold it and choose Report this answer.

7. Data Retention

We retain the minimum needed for each purpose above and delete or anonymize data on the schedules described.

8. Content Creators

Quester's import feature lets users bring in content from public social media posts (for example, a TikTok or Instagram post that mentions a great restaurant). If your public post was imported by a Quester user:

• We got this information from the public post a Quester user shared with us. We extract place information from it (such as place names and addresses). We keep the post's cover image so the traveller who saved it can see where the place came from. It is deleted 30 days after the link was last imported.
• We may read the on-screen text of a video, or the images of a post, a user shares, to find the places it names. We keep no video, images, frames or audio from it.
• We automatically delete the caption, transcript, your handle and the raw data our provider returned within 30 days of fetching it. We keep a one-way coded marker derived from your handle for 12 months, so we can count distinct creators and honour removal requests.
• You may request removal: email privacy@getquester.com with a link to your post or profile, and we will remove the associated content, cover images, cached data and attribution. For copyright complaints about any image or text in Quester, email copyright@getquester.com. We acknowledge within 3 days and act within 10 days.

9. Your Rights

If you're in the EEA, UK, or a jurisdiction with similar data protection laws (GDPR / UK GDPR)

You have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Rectify inaccurate data
• Erase your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Restrict or object to certain processing
• Port your data to another service in a structured format
• Withdraw consent at any time (e.g., revoke location permission) without affecting past lawful processing
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority

Your right to object. Where we rely on legitimate interests (the coarse location cell, cities you asked for, notification history, what you do with suggestions, usage and crash data, install measurement, the time you last used the app and server logs), you have the right to object at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation. For usage and crash data you can do it yourself with "Share usage data" on your Profile screen; for the rest, write to privacy@getquester.com and we will stop unless we have compelling legitimate grounds, or need the data to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

What you must give us, and what's optional. Your account information, your trip details and your agreement to the AI notice (Section 6) are needed to provide Quester under our Terms; without them we can't provide the service. Everything else — location, notifications, imports, and usage data — is optional: saying no only turns off the feature that needs it.

Where your data is stored, and international transfers: Quester is run by a US company. We store your account and trip data in the United States, on Google Cloud in the us-central1 (Iowa) region. If you use Quester from outside the US, you send your information directly to us there. Our team may also access it from Israel, which the European Commission, the UK and Switzerland recognise as providing adequate protection. Some providers process data elsewhere: Google and OpenAI handle our AI requests on their own infrastructure, and AppsFlyer stores data in the European Union, with support staff who may access it from other countries. When we send personal data covered by EU, UK or Swiss law to a provider in a country without an adequacy decision, we rely on the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework (with its UK Extension) and the Swiss–U.S. Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, as Google is, and otherwise on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (with the UK Addendum) in our providers' data processing terms. You can ask us for a copy of these safeguards at privacy@getquester.com.

If you're a California resident (CCPA/CPRA)

You have the right to:

• Know what categories of personal information we collect and why (see Section 2)
• Delete your personal information
• Correct inaccurate personal information
• Opt out of sale or sharing — not applicable, as we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising
• Limit use of sensitive personal information — we use sensitive personal information (your precise location while a request is answered, and dietary or access needs you tell your guide) only to provide the service you asked for, which is already the limit this right sets
• Non-discrimination for exercising your rights

Do Not Track. Quester and our website don't respond to "Do Not Track" browser signals, because we don't track you across other companies' apps or websites.

How to exercise your rights

Use the in-app account deletion feature, or contact us at privacy@getquester.com. We will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law.

10. Account Deletion

You can delete your account at any time in the app, under Profile → Delete account. To make sure it's really you, we ask you to sign in again first, and you confirm that you understand deletion cannot be undone. Then:

• Your account is deleted right away. Sign-in to the account is switched off immediately, and your account, trips, saved places, imports, notes, notification and suggestion history, chats with your guide and the notes Quester remembers about you are deleted from our active systems. If a step fails, for example because a service we rely on is briefly unavailable, we retry it automatically in the background. That usually takes minutes and, in rare cases, up to about two days; your account stays switched off in the meantime.
• If you use Sign in with Apple, we also revoke Quester's Sign in with Apple access as part of deletion.
• Trips you share with other travellers stay with them. Places, notes and plan items you added to a shared trip stay with that trip, so the others keep the plan you built together. The traveller who has been on the trip longest becomes its organizer, and the trip's activity shows your past actions as "a former traveller". Trips no one else is on are deleted with your account, and any invite links you created stop working.
• Deletion cannot be undone. We cannot bring back a deleted account. You're welcome to create a new account later; it starts empty.
• What we keep: a few records we need for legal, accounting, safety or security reasons, with the link to your account removed: records of your purchases, which we keep for 7 years from the date of purchase because tax and accounting law requires it; reports you sent us about content, without the text you wrote; and basic technical records of actions in the app. Places, notes and plan items you added to a trip shared with others stay with that trip, as described above.
• Backups: deleted data may stay in our encrypted database backups until those backups expire, at most 30 days. We never use a backup to restore a deleted account.

11. Security

We use industry-standard technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit, access controls on our infrastructure (Google Cloud), and secrets management. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

12. Children's Privacy

Quester is for adults: you must be at least 18 to use it (see our Terms of Service, §2). Quester is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18, including children under 13. We do not ask for or collect age during sign-up. If you believe someone under 18 has given us personal information, contact us at privacy@getquester.com and we will delete it and close the account.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We'll update the "Last updated" date above, and for material changes, we'll provide additional notice (such as an in-app notification) before the change takes effect. If we add another AI company to the ones named in Section 6, we will also ask for your agreement again in the app before your content is sent to it.

14. Contact Us

Questions about this policy or your data:

Alta Via Labs, LLC
2810 N Church St STE 88497, Wilmington, DE 19802, USA
privacy@getquester.com

EU and UK representative: to be appointed before Quester is publicly available in the EEA and UK; details will appear here. Copyright complaints: copyright@getquester.com