Privacy policy
Stayed Worked Went is an app for sharing where you stayed, where you worked from and where you went. This page explains, in plain words, what we collect, what never leaves your phone, and what you can do about it. “We” means Refine By Ltd, the company that runs Stayed Worked Went (see Who we are).
- Your exact location stays on your phone. Only a pin you set when you add a place is sent, as that place’s location. Photos and clips are cleaned on your phone before they upload.
- We never show what you paid for a stay.
- You choose who sees each post: only you, or everyone. Your profile is public.
- You can delete your account in the app at any time.
Who we are
Stayed Worked Went is run by Refine By Ltd. Refine By Ltd is the controller of your personal data: it decides how your data is used and is responsible for looking after it under UK data protection law. You can reach us at hello@stayedworkedwent.com.
What we collect
- Your account. Your email address and the ID from the way you sign in (Sign in with Apple, Google, or email and password), plus the name, handle, bio and photo you choose for your profile.
- Booking confirmations you share with the app. When you import a booking (a PDF, an email file, a screenshot or pasted text), we read the place, the dates, the booking site, the booking reference and the name on the booking to fill in a stay and to check it is yours. We keep a copy of the confirmation text so we can fix imports that go wrong; it may include what you paid, but prices are never shown to anyone. We store the booking reference only as a scrambled code that can’t be turned back into the reference. Screenshots are read on your phone; only the text is sent.
- Photos and clips you upload. Before anything leaves your phone, the app removes the location, camera details and capture time hidden in the file. We then make the smaller copies people see. The file you uploaded is never shown to anyone.
- Places. Every post points to a place, such as a hotel, a café or a sight. We match your booking to a place by its name and area, never by where your phone is. For homes you rent (such as an Airbnb), other people only ever see a rough area on the map, never the address.
- What you do in the app. Your posts and notes, who you follow, posts you save, reports and blocks, and the points, levels and badges you earn.
- Your Activity list. The updates in the app’s Activity tab: where your posts are (for example “On your profile” or “In the feed”), new followers and saves, your level and badges, and our messages to you, with when you read them. A follow or a save is shown as a count, never with who it was. We keep the list, and your notification settings, until you delete your account.
- Notifications. If you allow notifications, we store a push token for each phone you’re signed in on (a code that lets us send a notification to that phone and nothing else), the kind of phone, and its time zone, so we don’t send any during your quiet hours. We use them only to send you the notifications you’ve chosen in Settings → Notifications. A phone’s token is deleted when you sign out on it, when it stops accepting notifications, and with your account.
- Book taps. When you tap a Book button, we record which place it was, when, the app or browser version, the country the request came from, and a scrambled version of your IP address that can’t be turned back into the address. We use this to count taps and to match commissions.
- Earnings. If you reach a level that shares commissions, we keep a record of what you earned. Payouts aren’t available yet.
- Technical data. Server logs (IP address, app version, the page or feature requested and any error) to keep the service running and secure. If the app or our servers hit an error, we may send an error report to our error-tracking provider. Error reports never include your email address, IP address, sign-in details, the content of your requests or any location.
What stays on your phone
- Your location. If you allow location, the app uses it on your phone to check you in at a place or to check that a photo was taken there during your stay. We receive only the result (matched or not, roughly how far away, and the day), never your coordinates. When you search for a place, your approximate position may be sent with that one search so nearby places come first. It isn’t saved to your account. When you pick photos for a post, the app reads where they were taken on your phone, and may send a rough position (rounded to about 1 km) once, to list the places nearby. It is never saved. When you add a place, the pin you set is saved as the place’s location. The map can start where your photo was taken; that spot is sent only if you leave the pin there and tap Add place.
- The hidden details in your photos and clips (location, camera, capture time) are removed on your phone before upload.
- Your photo library. If you give the app access, it can look on your phone for photos taken during a stay, to help you add them or prove you were there. Nothing is uploaded unless you choose it. With “Limited” access it only sees the photos you share with it.
- Screenshots of bookings. The text is read on your phone; the image isn’t uploaded.
What other people see
Your profile is public, whatever your level, and anyone can follow you. Anyone can see your handle, your name, picture, bio and location if you add them, your level, your badges, how many people follow you, and your Public posts and trips.
Your profile also shows counts of your verified visits, for example “14 verified stays · 9 countries · 3 Worked · 5 Went”. These counts include visits in your Private posts, but they never say which places those were, when you went, or anything else about a Private post. Only countries from your Public posts are named or shown with a flag.
Your posts. Private posts are visible to you alone. Public posts appear on your profile. Once a Public post’s visit is verified, and after a short wait, it can also appear in the feed, on the map and on the place’s page. Your email address, your bookings and what you paid are never shown.
Automatic checks
To keep spam, contact details and abuse out of the app, some things are checked automatically:
- Words. What you write (takes, titles, summaries, trip names and intros, places you type in, and your name, bio and location) is checked against a list of words that aren’t allowed each time you save it, Private posts included.
- Contact details. When you make a post or trip Public, and in your profile’s bio and location, the text is also checked for links, web addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.
- Posts hidden after reports. If people report a post, it can be taken out of the feed, or for serious reasons hidden everywhere, automatically until a person on our team has looked at it. Only reports from accounts with a confirmed email count.
The automatic word and contact-detail checks run on our own servers; nothing is sent to another company for them. When a check stops a save, the app tells you which part to change (never which word) and the text it stopped isn’t saved. A hidden post stays in your account, and we tell you when it’s hidden and when it comes back.
A person decides what matters. Automatic checks can stop a save or hide a post for a while, but a person on our team gives every strike and decides every removal and suspension. You can ask for a person to look again at anything that happened automatically: reply to the message we sent you, or email hello@stayedworkedwent.com.
Why we may do this. We run these checks, hide posts after reports, and show the counts on your profile because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the app safe and honest and in stopping spam and fraud, and in helping people judge the posts they read. You can object by emailing us; we’ll look at your situation and tell you what we decide.
What we don’t do
- We don’t sell your data.
- We don’t show ads or use your data to track you across other companies’ apps and websites.
- We don’t read your inbox. We only see the confirmations you choose to share.
Booking links
We may earn a commission when you book. Some places have a Book button that opens a booking site such as Booking.com. If you book there, the site may pay us a commission, and part of it may go to the traveller whose post you came from. It doesn’t change the price you pay. The booking site’s own privacy policy covers what you do on their site.
Who helps us run the service
We use a small number of providers who process data only on our behalf:
- Google Firebase for sign-in.
- Sliplane for our servers (Germany) and Amazon Web Services for file storage and backups (Ireland).
- Cloudflare for our network and for delivering photos and clips quickly.
- Resend for account emails.
- Expo for push notifications: it receives a phone’s push token and the notification’s words, and passes them to Apple’s push service, which shows it on your phone.
- Sentry for error reports, with personal details removed as described above.
- OpenFreeMap serves the map tiles your phone loads directly, so it sees your IP address and the part of the map you are looking at, as any map service would.
Map and place data
Places © Overture Maps Foundation, including Foursquare open data (Apache License 2.0). Base map by OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). We use OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim service to find a place’s area from its address; nothing about you is sent with it.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account in the app under Settings. You are signed out and your profile disappears straight away. Your account, posts, photos, clips, imports, Activity list, push tokens and sign-in are then permanently deleted, and we send a confirmation email. Copies in our encrypted backups are deleted as those backups expire, within 30 days.
Material kept for safety or the law. When we remove a post after a report, suspend an account, or the police ask us to preserve something, we keep a private copy of the material involved (the files and the details of the posts and account), even if the account is then deleted. Only our team can open it, and never if it is child sexual abuse material, which we keep untouched for the authorities. It is deleted after a set time, usually 90 days, unless the police or the law need us to keep it longer. Where telling you could harm the prevention or detection of crime, this copy is left out of your data download and we may not mention it while it is kept, as UK data protection law allows.
A copy of your data
You can download a copy of your data in the app under Settings → Download my data. We email a link to your account’s email address only; it opens one zip file with everything we hold about you, including your photos and clips, and works for up to 7 days. You can also email us to ask for a copy of your data or for it to be corrected or deleted.
Children
Stayed Worked Went is not for anyone under 18.
Changes
If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and its date. For significant changes we’ll also tell you in the app.
Contact
Questions or requests about your data: hello@stayedworkedwent.com.