Bona Ventura Privacy Policy

Last updated: 29 September 2026

1. Who is responsible

Korhan Çekiç (“we”, “us”) makes the Bona Ventura app and is responsible for the personal data described here. Contact: support@bonaventura.app.

2. In short

• Bona Ventura has no ads, no tracking and no analytics or advertising tools. We do not sell your data or share it with advertisers or data brokers.
• You can use every feature without an account. Your activity then stays on your phone.
• If you create an account, we store your email address and your app activity so that it is kept when you change phones. It is stored by our provider Supabase in Frankfurt, Germany.
• Your location is used on your phone. It leaves your phone only when you choose: if you tap to find the nearest pharmacy, toilet, drinking water or luggage storage, your position is put in the Apple Maps or Google Maps link that opens; if you use “Share my location”, you send a map link to the people you pick. We never receive your position.
• Some features load public information from other services: place photos from Wikipedia, exchange rates, the weather forecast and, for Italian cities, the official strike calendar. These requests contain no account data, but like any internet request they reach those services with your IP address.
• You can delete your account in the app at any time, or ask us by email.

3. Data that stays on your phone

The app saves the following on your phone so it works offline. Without an account, none of it is sent to us:

• the city you picked and your trip plan, including your answers to the planning questions (number of days, kind of trip, what to leave out, food budget, how much walking, who is travelling, pace and food needs such as vegetarian or no alcohol) and, if you set one for the Trip Assistant, the first day of your trip;
• saved places, your star ratings and reviews (stars, tags, text, date), your passport stamps (which place, which date), finished walks (which walk, which date) and up to 30 past trips;
• your profile, if you fill it in: a name and a home city;
• your settings: language, appearance and distance units, and the home currency if you pick one in the currency converter;
• copies of public information the app downloaded, so it can show them without internet: place photos, the last exchange rates, the last weather forecast and the Italian strike calendar.

Points, levels and badges are calculated on your phone from this data. Profile › Settings › Your data › Delete all my data deletes your activity, plan, profile and settings. The downloaded public information and your home currency stay until you uninstall the app.

4. Your account (optional)

You can create an account with an email address and a password, or on iPhone with Sign in with Apple.

Email and password

We store your email address. Your password is stored by our provider in hashed form only. To confirm your address and to reset a forgotten password, we send you an email with a code.

Sign in with Apple

Apple confirms your sign-in and gives us a user identifier for this app and an email address. If you choose “Hide My Email”, we receive an Apple private relay address (ending in privaterelay.appleid.com) and never see your real address. If you let Apple share your name at the first sign-in, we store it with your account, and your first name becomes your profile name when you have not entered one.

At sign-in the app also passes a one-time code from Apple to our server. The server exchanges it at Apple for a token (a “refresh token”) and stores it with your account. We use it only to revoke Bona Ventura’s access to your Apple ID when you delete your account, as Apple asks apps to do. The token stays on our server; the app cannot read it.

What your account holds

• account details kept by our provider: account ID, email address, sign-in method, the name Apple shared (if any), when the account was created and last signed in, and your sign-in sessions;
• for Sign in with Apple: the Apple token described above;
• one record linked to your account ID with the data listed in section 3, except the settings, the home currency and the downloaded public information (these stay on each phone), plus the times your profile and plan last changed.

Your reviews are private. Only you can read them; they are not shown to other people. Access rules on the server let each account read and change its own record only.

Why: to provide the account and keep your data in sync between phones, which you ask for by creating an account (performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

5. Location

The app asks for your location only “while using the app”; it never asks for background location. If you allow it, the app reads your position in these places:

• What’s near me? one reading when you open the screen, to list the guide’s places closest to you;
• Guided walks: while a walk is open, the position is updated as you move (about every 25 metres) to show places around you and, if you turn on “Read aloud when I arrive”, to read a stop aloud when you reach it;
• Public transport directions: while the screen that shows the ways from one point to another is open, the position is updated the same way; when you start from “where you are now”, it is used to find the neighbourhood of the nearest place in the guide for the written directions;
• Backpack › Nearest toilet, Drinking water, Luggage storage and Pharmacy: when you tap the button to open the maps app, one reading is taken and your coordinates are added to the Apple Maps or Google Maps search link, so the map searches around you. Apple or Google then receive your position under their own terms. Without location permission, the link opens without it;
• Backpack › Share my location: when you tap the share button, one reading is taken and a Google Maps link with your coordinates is placed in your phone’s share sheet. You choose the app and the people you send it to; they, the app you use to send it and Google (when the link is opened) receive the position.

In the first three cases your position is compared with the guide’s places on your phone only. The app does not save your position and never sends it to us. Directions links (to a place, a walk stop or by public transport) contain the destination but not your position: when you start from where you are, the maps app finds your position itself. If you do not allow location, everything else in the app still works. Your phone’s operating system determines the position under its own terms.

6. Other connections the app makes

• Place photos: each time the app starts and when you change city, it downloads the photos of the chosen city’s places in the background so they show without internet; it also does this when you open a place or use Backpack › Use without internet. For each photo it asks Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation) for the article’s image address and downloads the image from Wikimedia’s servers. The request contains the article title, a fixed app identifier and, as with any internet request, your IP address and basic device and app information. It contains no account data. The Wikimedia Foundation’s privacy policy applies. City photos on the home screen are built into the app.
• Exchange rates: Backpack › Convert money and the amounts shown in your own currency on place pages use reference rates from Frankfurter (api.frankfurter.dev), a free, open-source exchange-rate service. When you open the converter or a place page, the app asks it for one rate. The request contains only two currency codes: the city’s currency and your home currency (the one you picked, otherwise the currency of your phone’s region setting). Like any internet request, it reaches the service with your IP address. The last rate is kept on your phone.
• Weather: once you have set the first day of your trip in the Trip Assistant, the home screen shows the forecast for your city. The app asks our server (a function hosted by Supabase) with the city centre’s fixed coordinates from the guide (never your position), the app language and the city’s time zone. Our server asks Apple WeatherKit with the same coordinates rounded to about 1 km; Apple does not get your IP address or any account data from that request. Our server keeps each answer for up to 30 minutes and does not store who asked; the last forecast is kept on your phone. To show Apple’s Weather mark, as Apple requires, your phone loads the logo image directly from Apple (weatherkit.apple.com), which receives your IP address.
• Italian strike calendar: when Rome, Milan or Venice is your city, the app downloads the official transport strike calendar from the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (scioperi.mit.gov.it) at most every 6 hours. The request contains nothing about you beyond your IP address and basic device and app information.
• Maps and links: when you tap a directions button, “Open in Google Maps”, a source link, a website or a phone number, the app opens Apple Maps, Google Maps, your browser or your phone app with the destination (the place’s coordinates or its name and address, or the web address or number). The only links that contain your own position are the Backpack searches and the shared location described in section 5. From then on that provider’s privacy policy applies.
• App updates: when the app starts, it asks Expo’s update service (650 Industries, Inc., USA) whether a newer version of the app’s code and content is available. The request includes a random installation ID created by the app, the platform (iOS or Android), the app’s runtime version and, if the previous start failed, a short error message. It contains no account data. Why: to deliver fixes and content updates (legitimate interest, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• Reading aloud: walk stops and Backpack phrases are read with your phone’s own text-to-speech voice. The app does not send the text to us.
• Trip book (PDF): the PDF of your plan is made on your phone. It goes only where you send or save it from the share sheet.
• Server logs: when the app connects to Supabase, Expo or the other services named here, they receive your IP address and technical request data and may keep them in logs for security and operation for a limited time, under their own retention periods.

7. Service providers and other recipients

Where data is transferred outside the EU/EEA, this relies on the safeguards in the provider’s data processing terms, such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

8. How long we keep data

• On your phone: until you delete it in the app or uninstall the app.
• Your account, synced data and the Apple token: as long as your account exists. Deleting your account in the app removes them from the server immediately. If you ask by email, we delete them within 30 days.
• Weather answers on our server: up to 30 minutes; they contain no personal data.
• Provider logs and backups: kept for a limited time under the providers’ own retention periods, then deleted or overwritten.
• Emails you send us: until your request is handled, and afterwards only as long as needed to show that it was handled.

9. Deleting your account and data

• In the app: in the Profile tab, tap Account (also under Profile › Settings › Account › Manage account), then Delete my account, and confirm with Delete my account. This deletes your account, its sessions, all synced data and the stored Apple token from the server, and removes your activity from this phone (settings stay). If you used Sign in with Apple, we first ask Apple to revoke Bona Ventura’s access; if that does not succeed, your account is still deleted and the app tells you how to stop using Sign in with Apple for Bona Ventura in your iPhone’s Settings.
• Clear data but keep the account: Profile › Settings › Your data › Delete all my data. When you are signed in, this also empties the copy in your account.
• Without the app: see our account deletion page or email support@bonaventura.app.

10. Your rights

You have the right to access your data, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to its processing, receive it in a portable format, and withdraw consent. Email us to use these rights; we answer within one month. You can also complain to a data protection authority, for example the one in the country where you live.

11. Security

All connections the app makes use HTTPS encryption. Passwords are stored in hashed form. Server access rules let each account reach its own record only; the Apple tokens can be read only by our server functions.

12. Children

Bona Ventura is a travel guide for a general audience and is not directed at children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

13. Changes

If we change how the app handles data, we will update this page and the date at the top.