Your walk, your data.

Who runs WalkDots

WalkDots is run by Juraj Kolesár, who is responsible for your data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For anything on this page, write to jurajkolesar1976@gmail.com.

What WalkDots uses, and why

• Your location. To show where you are, find which city you are in, start the tour near you, give directions and start each stop's story when you arrive. The app asks only for location while it is in use, not in the background.
• What you ask for. The settings you choose (length, detail, pace, interests, language), anything you type in your own words, the start and end points you pick, and the places you search for.
• Your email address, if you sign in. Signing in is optional and uses a one-time code sent to your email; there is no password. When you sign up you can also tell WalkDots what to call you and what you like to see (interests and how much detail); both are optional. With an account, these and your past walks are kept with it so the website and the iPhone app start from the same place.
• Questions you ask during a walk. Sent with the stop you are at and your current position, so the answer is about what is in front of you.

The legal basis is that you asked for this: WalkDots cannot build or guide a tour without it (GDPR Article 6(1)(b)). WalkDots does not use your information for anything else, does not sell it, and does not build a profile of you.

Who it is shared with

WalkDots uses these services to do the work. Each receives only what it needs for its part:

• Google (Gemini). Writes the tour and the stories, answers your questions, and voices the narration. It receives your request, including anything you typed, your start and end points, and, for a question, the question and your position.
• Clerk. Runs sign-in if you create an account: it holds your email address (and, if you gave them, your name and preferences), sends the sign-in codes, and keeps you signed in.
• Stadia Maps. Map tiles on the website, place and city search, finding the city you are in, and walking routes. It receives what you search for, coordinates of your start point or current position, and the tour's stops.
• OpenStreetMap (Overpass). Finds trams and buses along the route. It receives the route's points, not who you are.
• Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Photos of the stops. It receives the stop's name and position, never yours. The photo itself is loaded straight from Wikimedia, which sees your device's internet address.
• Apple. In the iPhone app, the map is Apple Maps, and if the city cannot be found otherwise, Apple's own location service names it. Apple handles this under its own privacy policy.
• Hosting. The website and its servers run on Vercel; the walks kept with accounts, the tours WalkDots keeps and the data for prepared tours are in a Neon database, and narration in Cloudflare R2 storage.

Some of these providers are based in the United States, so your data may be processed there. They do this under their own terms and the safeguards the GDPR requires for such transfers, such as the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses.

What is kept, and for how long

• On your device. Your current tour, your settings and your last 30 walks (including what you asked for and where they started), and in the app the narration already played, so it replays without signal. They stay until you delete them: one by one on the profile page, or all at once by clearing the website's data in your browser or deleting the app.
• With your account. If you sign in, your last 30 walks (the same record your device keeps, including what you asked for and where each started) are kept with your account, and Clerk keeps your email address. They stay until you delete them: a walk deleted on the profile page is deleted from your account too, and “Delete account” on the profile page deletes the account and everything kept with it, on the website and in the app.
• Every tour, on WalkDots's servers. Each tour is kept when it is built — what you asked for (including anything typed in your own words), the starting point, the stops and the route — together with the stories written for its stops and the recorded narration, so the same stop is never made twice and a tour can be played again. It is not linked to your account or to who you are. A kept tour may be shown to other people as the demo tour in the app, without the words you typed or the name of your starting point. Kept until it is no longer useful for this; to have a tour removed, write to the address above.
• For prepared tours. When a tour is built from settings alone (nothing typed in your own words) in a city where WalkDots keeps prepared tours, the database records the city, the settings and the starting point rounded to about 100 metres, with no way to tell who asked. This shows which tours to prepare in advance and is kept until it is no longer useful for that.
• Server logs. Like any website, the hosting keeps short-lived technical logs of requests, which can include your internet address and, for searches, what was searched for. WalkDots does not use them except to fix faults.

What WalkDots does not do

No analytics, advertising or tracking of any kind. No selling or renting of your data. The only cookies are the ones that keep you signed in, and only once you sign in. Fonts are part of the site and the app, not fetched from a third party.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask to see the data WalkDots holds about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to its use, and receive it in a portable form. Most of it is on your own device, where you can delete it yourself, and an account can be deleted from the profile page at any time. For anything else, write to jurajkolesar1976@gmail.com. You can also complain to a data protection authority; in Slovakia that is the Úrad na ochranu osobných údajov Slovenskej republiky (dataprotection.gov.sk).

Children

WalkDots is not aimed at children under 16 and does not knowingly collect their information.

Changes

If WalkDots starts handling your information differently, this page will change first, and the date at the top will say when.