Privacy statement

Who we are

Coverground is a trade name of Jeroen Smeets, registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK) under number 30262340, VAT ID NL001416101B91, based in Houten, the Netherlands. We are the controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at hi@coverground.eu; we answer in English and Dutch.

Who this is about

Three different people meet Coverground, and we hold very different amounts of data about each. Subscribers and their users have accounts. People who follow a published route do not, and we have deliberately built that side so we cannot identify them. Visitors to this website are somewhere in between.

If you have an account

An account belongs to a subscriber — an organisation or a person — and is used by one or more users. We store:

• The subscriber's name, web address and the email address we send account and billing mail to.
• For each user: name, email address, interface language, and a password we store only as a hash. If a user turns on two-factor authentication we also store the secret and the recovery codes for it.
• An invoice address, VAT ID and the invoices themselves, once a paid plan is started. An invoice is a legal document, so what is on it stays on it.
• Sign-in sessions, which include the IP address and browser user agent of the device that signed in. This is what lets us keep you signed in, and what would show that someone else had been in the account.
• Everything you build: routes, route points, descriptions, photos and any GPX files you import.

Photos are worth a separate word. If a photo you upload shows a recognisable person, that is personal data and you are the one who decided to publish it. We store and serve it; deciding whether it may be published is yours.

If you follow a route

You do not need an account, and we do not ask for one. Two things are worth knowing, and both are deliberate.

• Your location and compass direction never leave your device. The map, the "you are here" dot and the arrival detection all run in your browser. We never receive a coordinate from you.
• We do count how routes are used, so subscribers can see whether their routes are being walked. A random identifier is generated in your browser to tie the steps of one walk together. We store which route was opened, how it was reached, which route points were reached, the page language, and the hour it happened — no IP address, no browser user agent, no minute-level timing. That identifier is not linked to you, is not shared, and is not used anywhere else.

These raw events are deleted after 90 days. What remains is a daily count per route — how many times it was opened, started and finished — which is no longer about any individual walk.

If you visit this website

We use Fathom Analytics to count visits to coverground.eu. Fathom does not use cookies, does not build a profile and does not follow you to other websites; it tells us how many people read a page, not who they were.

Why we are allowed to hold it

• To do what you asked — running your account, publishing your routes, taking payment. Without this data there is no service to provide.
• Because the law says so — invoices and the details on them must be kept for the Dutch tax retention period of seven years.
• Because we have a legitimate interest — keeping accounts secure, keeping the service working, and counting route and website use in a form that does not identify anyone.

Who else processes it

We keep this list short on purpose. Each of these does one job, under a processing agreement, and none of them may use your data for their own ends.

• Mollie (the Netherlands) handles payments. Card and bank details are entered on Mollie's own pages and never reach us; we hold only their references to a payment and a mandate.
• Brevo (France) sends our account and billing email.
• DocRaptor (United States) turns an invoice into a PDF. It receives the invoice, including the invoice address, and its account is set to erase both the invoice it was sent and the PDF it made as soon as we have collected it.
• Stadia Maps calculates routes between the points a subscriber places, and looks up addresses in the route builder. It receives coordinates and search terms, not accounts.
• Fathom Analytics counts website visits, as described above.

Map tiles are served from our own servers, so browsing the map does not tell a third party where you are looking.

One thing we cannot switch off

Brevo adds an invisible one-pixel image to the emails it sends for us, which reports back that a message was opened. This is part of their service and we have not found a way to disable it. If you would rather not report that, most email programs can be set to block remote images; doing so also stops this. It has no effect on the content of the email or on your account.

Where it is

Coverground runs on servers in Europe, and your account data and route content stay there. Mollie and Brevo are European companies processing in Europe. Fathom routes European visitors to European servers.

One processor is outside the European Economic Area: DocRaptor, in the United States, which renders invoices. It participates in the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which is what makes that transfer lawful, and a data processing agreement is in place. An invoice reaches it and a PDF comes back; it holds no account of yours.

How long we keep it

• Account and route data — for as long as the account exists. Ask us to delete the account and we remove it and its routes.
• Invoices and payment records — seven years, because Dutch tax law requires it. This is the one thing we cannot delete on request.
• Raw route-following events — 90 days, then deleted automatically.
• Daily route counts — kept, because they are no longer about an individual walk.
• Sign-in sessions — until they expire or you sign out.

Cookies and what is stored in your browser

We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, and there is nothing to consent to. What we do use:

• A session cookie, so that signing in works at all, and — if you ask us to remember you — a cookie that keeps you signed in.
• A cookie holding your language choice, so the site stays in the language you picked.
• On a route page, browser storage holding your progress through the walk and the random walk identifier described above. Clearing your browser data removes it.

What you can ask us to do

You can ask to see what we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to limit what we do with it, to receive it in a portable form, or to object to us holding it. Email hi@coverground.eu and we will answer within a month.

If you follow a route rather than build them, there is nothing for us to look up: we hold nothing that identifies you, so there is no record of yours for us to find, correct or delete.

If you are not happy with how we have handled it, you can complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

Changes

We may update this statement. The date at the top changes with it, and if a change matters to subscribers we tell them in advance, as we do with the terms.

Questions

Ask us anything about your data at hi@coverground.eu. A real person reads it.