Effective 11 September 2026
Pack Animal is a trip planner for groups. To do that it holds the plan you and the people you're travelling with put into it: your days, places, journeys, costs and chat.
We don't sell your data, we don't share it with advertisers, and there is no advertising or third-party analytics or tracking in the app.
Pack Animal is made and run in the United Kingdom by Richard Smith, an individual developer, who is the data controller for your data under UK GDPR.
The best way to get in touch about anything in this policy — including a request to see, correct or delete your data — is hello@pack-animal.app, which is read and answered personally. If you need a postal address for a formal request, ask and we'll provide one.
Your name, email address, and password (stored only as a salted hash, never in a form we can read). Optionally a profile photo; if you don't upload one we generate an avatar from your email address using Gravatar or UI Avatars. You can also set your home country and currency, and payment details — a free-text note, such as a bank handle, shown to the people you share a trip with so they can settle up.
Trip names and dates, destinations and places, days and their activities, journeys and their times, photos you attach, expenses and who they were split between, and the messages in the trip chat. This is visible to the other members of that trip, and to nobody else.
If you turn on notifications, a push token for your device plus its type and an identifier, so we can send you a notification and stop sending them when you sign out. The app records its version and basic device details with crash reports.
If you allow it, the app shows your current position as a pin on the trip map. That position stays on your device — it is never sent to our servers and never stored. You can refuse or withdraw the permission in your device settings and the rest of the app works as normal.
No advertising identifiers, no behavioural or marketing analytics, no third-party trackers, no cookies on this website.
We don't currently charge for Pack Animal. If we introduce paid features, payment will be handled by an established payment provider or by the App Store or Google Play — we will never see or store your full card number. We'd keep only a record of what you subscribed to and when: enough to give you the right access and to meet the tax and accounting records the law requires us to hold. We'll update this policy and tell you in the app before that starts.
Note that the payment details in your profile are unrelated to this: they're a free-text note you choose to show the people on your trip so they can pay you back. We don't process them, and nothing charges them.
Other members of a trip see what's in that trip, including your name, avatar, messages, the expenses you're part of, and your payment details if you've entered them. That's the point of a shared trip. Beyond that, we use these providers to run the service, and nobody else:
| Provider | What for | What reaches them |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | Hosting, database, file storage, and outbound email | Everything in the service. Servers and data are in the London (eu-west-2) region. |
| Google Firebase | Push notifications and crash reporting | Your device's push token and the contents of a notification; crash diagnostics and device details |
| Google Places | Searching for a place when you add a destination | What you type into the place search |
| Anthropic | The trip assistant, only when someone writes @bot | The recent messages in that trip's chat and the trip details the assistant needs to answer |
| Open-Meteo | The forecast on each day | The coordinates and dates of a destination — never who you are |
| Stadia Maps | Map tiles | The area of the map being displayed |
| Sentry | Server error reporting | Technical details of an error, which can include the account it happened for |
| Cloudflare | Serving this website | Standard web request logs. The website holds no account data. |
Some of these providers are outside the UK. Where data is transferred, it's done under the safeguards the provider offers for UK and EU transfers, such as standard contractual terms. We'd also disclose data if the law genuinely required it.
The chat has an assistant you can call on by writing @bot in a message. Only then is anything sent to Anthropic: the recent messages in that chat and the trip details needed to answer. It can only ever see the one trip it was mentioned in. If nobody mentions it, your chat is never sent to Anthropic at all. Anthropic does not train its models on this content.
We keep your account and your trips for as long as your account exists — a trip you took in 2019 is meant to still be there. Push tokens are removed when you sign out or the device stops accepting them. Crash and error reports are kept for up to 90 days. Email verification links expire after 24 hours.
If we start charging for Pack Animal, billing and transaction records are the one thing we couldn't delete on request: UK tax law requires them to be kept for six years. They'd be kept for that and nothing else.
You can delete your account from the app, or by emailing us — see how to delete your account for the steps. When you do, we erase the personal data attached to it: your name, email address, avatar, payment details, and the devices registered for notifications. You're removed from your trips and can't sign in again. This can't be undone.
One thing to be clear about, because it's a real limit rather than a formality: what you contributed to a shared trip stays in that trip, no longer attached to your name. Messages you sent remain in the group's chat history, and expenses you were part of remain in that trip's accounts. If we removed them, the shared history and everyone else's balances would silently change for the other people on the trip, who never asked for that. If you want particular content taken out as well, email us and we'll deal with it individually.
If we've started charging by then and you've paid us, the billing record of that transaction is the one exception — we're required to keep it for six years (see How long we keep it), and it isn't used for anything else.
Under UK GDPR you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or hand it over in a portable form. Much of this you can do in the app directly; for anything else, email hello@pack-animal.app and we'll respond within 30 days. There's no charge.
If you think we've handled your data badly, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit, and data is encrypted at rest. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. Uploaded photos are held in private storage, reachable only through short-lived links issued to people who are allowed to see them. Access to a trip's contents is checked on every request against your membership of that trip. No system is perfect, and if a breach ever put your rights at risk, we'd tell you and the ICO as the law requires.
Pack Animal isn't aimed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly create accounts for them. If you believe a child has an account, email us and we'll remove it.
Pack Animal is still being actively developed, so this policy will change as the app does. If we change how we handle your data, we'll update this page and the date at the top, and for anything significant we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use Pack Animal after a change means the updated policy applies to you.
