Last updated: October 5, 2026
The short version. Your steps, your walks, your location while walking, your health data and the fog you have lifted stay in the app's private storage on your iPhone. None of it is ever uploaded. FogTrail contains no analytics, no advertising, no crash reporting and no third-party tracking SDKs.
If you sign in with Apple, FogTrail creates an account for you on our server. That account holds exactly two things: the name you chose to share and your avatar colour. It holds no walking data of any kind. Signing in is optional, the app works fully without it, and you can delete the account and everything in it from inside the app at any time.
You may also subscribe to FogTrail Pro. That is handled by Apple on its own terms; we never see a payment detail.
.fogtrail file a
friend hands you through Messages, AirDrop, Mail or Files becomes a fogged
card in the app. It travels between two phones directly; it never passes
through our server.All of it lives in the app's container on your phone and is removed when you clear your data or delete the app.
The first screen offers Continue with Apple, Google and Continue with email, and you can skip all of them — "Continue without an account" is always there, and nothing in the app is locked behind signing in.
If you do use it, Apple shows you its own sheet and asks whether to share your name. FogTrail asks Apple for your name and nothing else — in particular we never request your email address from Apple, so no address, real or private-relay, reaches us by that route. The name is written to your walker card on this phone and is used for one thing: labelling you on the board and on any place you choose to send.
Signing in also creates your FogTrail account, which stores that name and your avatar colour so the card follows you. Nothing else is stored with it — no walks, no routes, no steps, no health data, no places. You can delete the account at any time with Me → Settings & privacy → Delete account.
Google sign-in does give us your email address, and this is the one way it differs from Apple. Google's sign-in asks for your name and your email address together — that pairing is not something we can narrow — so if you choose Google, your address is stored with your account.
We use it for one thing: recognising that the account is yours when you sign in again. We do not send you email, we do not add you to a mailing list, and we do not share or sell it. Deleting your account with Me → Settings & privacy → Delete account deletes the address along with everything else.
If you would rather we never held an address, use Continue with Apple instead — it gives us your name only — or skip signing in entirely. Your relationship with Google during its sheet is governed by Google's privacy policy.
Your relationship with Apple during that sheet is governed by Apple's privacy policy. You can review or stop app access to your Apple Account at any time in Settings → your name → Sign in with Apple. Clearing your data in FogTrail (below) removes the name from this phone; deleting your account (also below) removes it from our server and asks Apple to revoke access as well.
FogTrail Pro is an auto-renewing subscription sold through Apple's In-App Purchase. Apple handles the entire transaction. FogTrail never sees or stores your payment details, your Apple Account, a receipt, a purchase history or any identifier from the purchase. The app asks Apple a single question — is there an active subscription on this device right now? — and shows or hides the Pro features on the answer. Nothing about your purchase is recorded by us or sent anywhere by us.
Your purchase, its renewal and any refund are between you and Apple, under Apple's Media Services terms. Manage or cancel in Settings → Apple Account → Subscriptions. See the Terms of Use for the plan lengths and renewal terms.
FogTrail records your path only while a walk session is running. It is used to lift fog as you move, to keep you inside a place's area, and to work out the distance and elevation of your walk. Your path is saved to the walk on your device and is not transmitted.
Because a walk you have started should not stop because you put the phone in your pocket, recording continues while the screen is off for the length of that walk. iOS shows its blue location indicator the whole time. The moment you end the walk, background recording is switched off again. FogTrail never requests "Always" access — it only ever has When In Use.
Outside a running walk, FogTrail reads where you are only when you tap Current Location — once, to measure nearby places or help you choose a Privacy Zone. Distance measurements expire after ten minutes and are not saved or uploaded. A zone you choose is saved on your device.
Everywhere your walks have uncovered — your Fogprint — is stored on your phone only. A Fogprint picture you choose to share leaves out the area around where each walk began and ended, including the walk currently in progress, and shows no map or street names. You can also choose a Privacy Zone in Settings. Shared Fogprint pictures exclude that zone. Place files you create exclude protected route portions, and a destination entirely within the zone cannot be shared. Your personal map stays complete.
With your permission FogTrail reads your step count from Apple Health so your daily totals and step goal are accurate, including steps written to Health by an Apple Watch or another app. FogTrail never writes to Health. Health data is read on your device, displayed to you, and never leaves the phone.
In line with Apple's requirements, we confirm that health data obtained through HealthKit is never used for advertising or marketing, never sold, never shared with third parties, and never used for data mining or any purpose other than showing you your own activity in the app.
If Health access is unavailable or off, FogTrail falls back to the iPhone's pedometer for a daily step total. Same rule: on device, shown to you, not transmitted.
If you do not sign in: nothing. There is no account, and nothing leaves your phone.
If you sign in with Apple, we store one row on our server describing you as a walker:
That is the complete list. We do not receive or store your walks, your routes, your location, your steps, your health data, the fog you have lifted, the places you make, or the photos you attach to them. None of it is sent to us, and we could not produce any of it if asked.
We never ask Apple for your email address. FogTrail requests only your name from Sign in with Apple, so no address — real or private-relay — is given to us. If you use the app's own Continue with email option instead, the address is used on your device to suggest a name and is not saved. Google is the exception, and it is described above: signing in with Google does give us your address, because Google's sign-in supplies the name and the address together.
Subscribing is a transaction between you and Apple. We are not given an advertising identifier, a device identifier, a receipt or a payment detail.
Your account row is stored on infrastructure operated for us by Supabase in Singapore. It is protected by row-level security, so the only account that can read or change your row is yours.
FogTrail does not track you across apps or websites, does not use the advertising identifier, and contains no advertising or analytics SDKs. It does not show the App Tracking Transparency prompt because there is nothing to ask about.
Open Me → Settings & privacy → Export my walks. FogTrail writes your finished walks and saved daily step totals to a JSON file on the device and hands it to the iOS share sheet, so you decide where it goes — Files, a message, or nowhere at all. The file is created locally and is not uploaded by the app. A place you have not cleared appears in the file by its hint rather than its name, exactly as it does in the app.
Export FogTrail backup creates a private JSON restore file with your finished walks and routes, revealed areas, kept and received places, discovery progress, memories, Privacy Zone and local share history. Importing it merges with the data already on your device. This is a manual file backup, not automatic cloud sync. The file is not encrypted by FogTrail and keeps your full routes, including protected areas, so store it somewhere private.
If you signed in, open Me → Settings & privacy → Delete account. This permanently deletes your account row — your name, your avatar colour and the identifier linking them to you — and asks Apple to revoke FogTrail's access to your Apple Account. It cannot be undone, and we keep no backup from which to restore it.
Open Me → Settings & privacy → Clear local data. This deletes every walk in your history, the path each one recorded, the revealed cells those walks earned, your saved daily steps, the places you made or were sent, the photos you attached to them, and your walker name — including the name Apple gave us if you signed in with Apple. The example places and demo circle are then planted again and your profile returns to its seeded starting numbers.
Deleting the app removes everything it stored. You can revoke Location, Health or Motion access at any time in the iOS Settings app, and you can stop FogTrail's access to your Apple Account in Settings → your name → Sign in with Apple.
Clearing your data does not cancel a subscription, because we do not hold your subscription — Apple does. Cancel in Settings → Apple Account → Subscriptions.
FogTrail is for people aged 13 and over, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. Anyone under 19 should use FogTrail only with a parent or guardian's permission (see the Terms of Use). We do not run advertising, we do not track anyone across apps or sites, and we never receive a walker's location, routes, steps or health data, so none of it can be used to profile or contact a young person. The only personal information an account holds is a name you choose, which need not be your real one, an avatar colour and, for Google sign-in, an email address.
If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child under 13 has an account, or you want any account removed, delete it in the app (Me → Settings & privacy → Delete account) or email us and we will remove it. Because place files are sent between phones by the people involved, we recommend that young walkers share them only with people they know and use a Privacy Zone around home and school. See Walking safely.
Privacy laws including Canada's PIPEDA and British Columbia's PIPA give you rights of access, correction and deletion over personal information an organisation holds about you. If you have not signed in we hold nothing about you at all. If you have, we hold only the name, avatar colour and account identifier described above — you can read them on your walker card, correct the name in the app, and delete all of it immediately with Delete account. Your walks, location and health data never reach us, so there is nothing there for us to disclose, correct or delete. If you have a question about this, email us.
FogTrail is offered in selected territories outside the European Union and the European Economic Area. Wherever it is available, the answer above is the same one: your walking is never transmitted to us, and the only information we hold is the account row described above — which you can read, correct and delete yourself from inside the app. If you sign in, that row is stored in Singapore.
Children's and general privacy rules differ by country (for example in the United States, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and Canada). We apply the strictest of them everywhere: no one under 13, no advertising, no tracking, and no walking data collected from anyone.
This policy was rewritten on 6 September 2026, when FogTrail gained hosted accounts: before that version there was no server and no account at all. If FogTrail gains a further feature that sends data anywhere — a real social circle, cloud backup of your walks — this policy will be updated before that version ships, and the app will ask you before any walking data leaves your phone.
Email support@cairnstudio.si.