Privacy

You can use this site without an account and without giving us anything. Search, filters and the map all work signed out.

If you create an account we store your email address, your display name and a hashed password. Passwords are hashed with bcrypt and are never stored or logged in plain text. We use your email only to run the account.

Saved trails are kept in your browser first. If you are signed in they are also stored against your account so they follow you between devices.

Analytics. We count page views on our own servers to see which routes are useful. That record holds the path, the referring site and a coarse country code. It sets no cookies.

Microsoft Clarity. We also use Clarity to see how pages are actually used: anonymised session recordings, heatmaps and scroll depth. It sets cookies and records your interactions with the page, which helps us find the parts of a trail guide that do not work. Clarity masks text input by default, so anything you type is not captured. Microsoft processes this data under its own privacy statement, and you can opt out through your browser’s do-not-track setting or a tracker blocker.

Location. The find-hikes-near-me feature asks for your location only when you press the button. The coordinates are used to answer that one request and are not stored.

Advertising. If advertising is enabled, Google AdSense may set cookies under its own policy. Nothing you save or search is shared with advertisers.

The iOS app

The mobile app is the same directory with less, not more, data collection. It has no accounts, no analytics SDKs, no session recording and no advertising.

Saved trails in the app live only on your device. They are not sent to us, and deleting the app deletes them.

Location is requested only when you tap “use my location” to find trails nearby. Your coordinates are used to answer that one request and are not stored, profiled or shared. The app works fully without granting location access.

Requests from the app go to our own servers to fetch trail data — the same public data this website serves. Map tiles come from OpenFreeMap and terrain relief from AWS open data, which see your IP address like any website you visit does.

To delete your account and everything attached to it, email support@hikingtraildirectory.com and it is done within seven days.