Last update 29 October 2026

Privacy Policy — Globetrail

Globetrail is a local-first travel journal: no account, and no server of ours for your data. Countries, places, trips and profile stay on your device and, when syncing is on, in your own iCloud. This policy describes what stays on your device, what passes through your iCloud and which network connections the app actually opens.

Globetrail

1. Data Controller

  • Aumatex SRLS — Via Umberto Biancamano 25, 00185 Rome (RM), Italy. VAT IT15617831001. PEC: aumatex@pec.it.
  • Requests about personal data: privacy@aumatex.it.

2. Data Collected

  • Globetrail requires no sign-up and no login, and there is no Aumatex account: your trips, your photos and your profile are never sent to us.
  • Your device’s location and the place and date of your photos, if you choose to use them, are processed on the device and never leave it (sections 3 and 9).
  • Aumatex does not receive your trips or your profile. While the usage statistics are on, the app sends TelemetryDeck pseudonymous usage events, which contain neither your name nor where you have been (section 6).

3. Data Processed Locally on Device

  • The countries, regions, cities and places you mark as visited, with their dates, the places of your own that you add (name and coordinates of the place, not of your position), the ones you mark “Want to go”, the trophies with their date, the countries you choose to hide, the territories you choose to show and the app preferences stay on the device.
  • The journal: trips with title, dates, stops, notes and cover photo. A trip’s photos stay in your library: Globetrail keeps only a reference to each, the date it was taken and a thumbnail of 300 pixels at most.
  • Your profile: your country of birth, asked at first launch, the country you live in, if you give it, and, if you enter them, first name, last name, date of birth and profile photo. The profile photo is resized (512 pixels at most) and re-encoded before it is saved: the original’s metadata, such as where it was taken, is not kept.
  • The friends saved from a comparison (50 at most, with name and code) stay on this device only: they are neither synced nor exported (section 8).
  • The widgets read a summary of your progress and your trips (countries visited, latest country, counts, trip titles, dates and flags) and, for the “Nearby” widget, how many places are around you, the radius and the name and distance of the nearest one, with no coordinates, from a space shared between the app and its widgets, on the same device. During a trip, the Live Activity shows the trip’s title, dates and flags on the Lock Screen; it can be switched off in Settings › Travelling › Trips on the Lock Screen.
  • The Apple Watch app receives the same summary as the widgets from the iPhone, directly between the two devices; “Delete All My Data” also clears it from the Watch.
  • Countries and catalogue places are indexed in iOS Spotlight search with their visit state (for example “Visited in 2019”), so you can find them from the device’s search: the index stays on the device.
  • Place photos already downloaded stay in a local cache. The safety copies the app makes by itself during database updates also stay on the device.

4. Sync and Export

  • Syncing between your devices uses the private database of your own iCloud account (CloudKit) and covers visited countries, regions, cities and places, your own places, visit status (lived there, transit only), which countries you show or hide, wishes, trophies, profile with photo, journal trips with stops and notes, and the references to trip photos with their thumbnails. Other settings and saved friends are not synced. Syncing is on whenever the device has an iCloud account and can be switched off in Settings › iCloud › Automatic sync: when you switch it off you choose whether to keep the copy on iCloud (“Keep on iCloud”) or erase it (“Delete from iCloud”); the data on the device stays either way.
  • To receive changes made on your other devices, the app receives silent notifications from iCloud: they show nothing and need no permission.
  • Export is something you start, from Settings › Data › Export My Data: Globetrail creates a file with the syncable data, profile photo and thumbnails included, and you deliver it wherever you choose with the share sheet (Files, AirDrop, email…). The file contains your personal data: keep it safe. Import reads only a file you choose.
  • Data in iCloud sits in your account and is processed by Apple under its own policies. Aumatex has no access to that area.
  • “Delete All My Data”, in Settings › Data, erases the data on the device, saved friends included, the data synced to iCloud and any iCloud Drive backup created by earlier versions.

5. Network Connections

  • The app does not send your travel data, your photos or your profile to Aumatex SRLS servers.
  • Sync talks to iCloud (Apple) using your account. If a trip photo is stored only in iCloud Photos, the app has Apple download it in order to show it to you.
  • The Globe and the flat map are drawn on the device from data bundled with the app. The Detail map uses Apple’s MapKit, which downloads map data from Apple’s servers.
  • When you search for a place to add to your own, the text you type and the area of the country you are looking at go to Apple Maps to find results; your location does not.
  • Place photos are downloaded from Wikimedia’s servers when you open a place: Wikimedia receives an ordinary HTTPS request from your IP address, with no idea who you are; the photo then stays cached on the device.
  • At most once a day the app asks the App Store whether our app Geovo is available, with a request that contains only Geovo’s store ID, and checks on the device whether it is already installed, in order to suggest it to you. When you open Settings, at most every 12 hours and only while one of our apps has yet to be released, the app also asks the App Store’s public lookup whether it is available, with a request that contains only the apps’ store IDs and the device’s country, to show it to you under “More from Aumatex”. In both cases Apple receives the device’s IP address and the usual technical data of the request.
  • Purchases go through StoreKit (Apple): payment details never reach us.
  • The privacy policy, the support page and the website open from aumatex.it, as an ordinary visit to the site. Links to places’ official sites (UNESCO, for instance) open only if you tap them.
  • The link for comparing with a friend opens a page on aumatex.it, but the code it contains never reaches the server (section 8).
  • Usage statistics, when on, go to TelemetryDeck (section 6); if you are signed in to Game Center, scores and trophies go to Apple (section 7).

6. Usage Statistics (optional)

  • To understand which features are useful and what to improve, the app sends usage events to TelemetryDeck, an analytics service designed for privacy: the screens opened, the features used (for instance the template chosen for a photo to share), the fact that you marked a country or a place (never which one), the number of countries visited when the PRO offer appears, and PRO purchases.
  • Each event also carries technical data: device model, iOS and app versions, language, time zone and accessibility settings. It contains no name, contacts, location or photos, nor which countries or places you have visited or want to visit.
  • The installation identifier is hashed on the device, a one-way transformation that cannot be reversed, before it is sent. The statistics are therefore pseudonymous, not anonymous: events from the same installation can be linked to one another, but the identifier contains neither your name nor any other data that directly identifies you. According to TelemetryDeck, IP addresses are not stored and its servers are in the European Union.
  • TelemetryDeck GmbH, based in Germany, processes this data as a processor on behalf of Aumatex (Art. 28 GDPR).
  • The statistics are on by default and can be switched off at any time in Settings › Privacy › Anonymous usage statistics: from then on the app sends nothing more.

7. Game Center (optional)

  • If you are signed in to Game Center on the device, the app recognizes you at launch and, whenever they change, sends Apple your leaderboard scores and the progress of your trophies, which become achievements in Game Center.
  • The scores are just numbers: how many countries you have visited worldwide and on each continent, how many territories, wonders, UNESCO sites and places, how many of your wishes have come true. The app does not send which countries or places.
  • The app reads the leaderboards from Game Center, global and among friends, and your rank in each. For the percentile in the PRO statistics it reads your rank and the number of players in the countries, UNESCO sites and wonders leaderboards, and keeps the result on the device.
  • Without a Game Center sign-in, the app neither sends nor reads anything for the leaderboards. Aliases, photos and scores, yours and other players’, are handled by Apple under its own policies and your Game Center settings.

8. Comparing with a Friend

  • The comparison works with a code that you create and you share, as a QR code or a link. The code contains which countries and territories you have visited, how many countries, the continents and the percentage of the world and, if “Show my name” is on (it is by default), your name. It contains no places, dates, photos or identifiers.
  • In the link https://aumatex.it/globetrail/compare#… the code comes after the “#”: the browser never sends it to the server, and the aumatex.it page sends it nowhere; it only passes it to the app.
  • Whoever receives your code sees that data: share it only with people you choose. A friend’s QR code is read with the camera; the image is not saved.
  • The friends you save stay on your device only, with no syncing or export; you delete them one by one or with “Delete All My Data”.

9. Device Permissions

  • Location (optional): with “While Using the App”, Globetrail recognizes the country you are in to suggest marking it and works out “Nearby”; “Always” is requested only if you turn on the arrival alert or the proximity alerts (Settings › Travelling), to recognize, even when the app is closed, your arrival in a new country or near a place. “While Using the App” is also enough for the “Mark Where I Am” control and for Siri and Shortcuts, which read your location only when you use them and mark the country with today’s date. Nearby countries and places are calculated on the device from the borders and coordinates bundled with the app: your location does not leave the device, is not synced and is not sent to Aumatex or to third parties.
  • Camera: to take your profile photo and to read the QR code for comparing with a friend.
  • Photo library (full or limited access, your choice): to import trips from your photos and for “Find the trip’s photos”, Globetrail reads only the date, the place where it was taken and whether it is a favorite from each photo and video, and derives countries and trips from them on the device, without keeping the coordinates. The profile photo and a trip’s cover are picked with the system picker, which hands the app only the image you select.
  • Adding to the photo library: only when you ask, to save the image of your map, the comparison card, photos with an overlay (the saved copy keeps the place and date of the original photo) and the passport, which shows name, date of birth, countries and profile photo. The year video and the poster are shared with the share sheet.
  • Notifications: reminders, the year recap in December and, if you turn them on, the arrival alert and the proximity alerts; they are all scheduled on the device; reminders and the year recap are adjusted in Settings › Reminders, the arrival alert and the proximity alerts in Settings › Travelling.
  • Every permission can be revoked at any time from system settings.

10. No Tracking or Advertising

  • No advertising SDKs, no profiling, no advertising identifier (IDFA): no advertising tracking and no tracking across other companies’ apps or websites.
  • No third-party crash reporting.
  • The only third-party dependency is the TelemetryDeck SDK, for the usage statistics (section 6): everything else is our own code and Apple frameworks.

11. Legal Basis and Retention

  • Your travel, photo and profile data stay on your device and in your iCloud: Aumatex SRLS neither receives them nor has access to them.
  • The usage statistics (section 6) rest on our legitimate interest in improving the app (art. 6.1.f GDPR): you can object at any time by switching them off in the app.
  • If you write to us at supporto@aumatex.it, we use the data in your message only to reply to you (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR); requests to exercise your rights sent to privacy@aumatex.it are handled to comply with a legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR). In both cases we keep the data for 12 months from the last contact.
  • Local data stays until you delete it or uninstall the app; data in iCloud stays until you delete it from the app or from your iCloud settings; an exported file stays for as long as you keep it.

12. Recipients and Transfers Outside the EU

  • We do not sell personal data: only the parties listed in this section receive it, for the purposes described.
  • Apple processes iCloud and iCloud Photos, Game Center, MapKit and Apple Maps, App Store and purchase data under its own policies, within your relationship with Apple, and receives the device’s IP address with the App Store lookups described in section 5; any transfer outside the EU follows its terms.
  • Wikimedia receives the request for the photo of a public place and, as with any web request, the device’s IP address.
  • TelemetryDeck GmbH (Germany) receives, as a processor, the usage statistics described in section 6.

13. Your Rights

  • You can exercise access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability by writing to privacy@aumatex.it.
  • For the data that stays on your device and in your iCloud you exercise those rights directly: you can view, edit, export and delete it in the app, without going through us.
  • You have the right to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority.

14. Minors

  • Globetrail is not specifically directed at children. Aumatex does not receive profile data, date of birth included, and does not knowingly collect personal data about minors.

15. Changes to this Privacy Policy

  • Aumatex SRLS may update this policy: the date at the top of the page marks the latest revision.

16. Contacts

  • Privacy: privacy@aumatex.it.
  • Support: supporto@aumatex.it.
  • Aumatex SRLS — Via Umberto Biancamano 25, 00185 Rome (RM), Italy. VAT IT15617831001. PEC: aumatex@pec.it.