Your privacy, in plain terms.

What we collect

We collect only what we need to run the check you asked for and to keep the service working and safe.

• The place you ask about. For a listing, that is the web address you paste in. For a destination, that is the city or area you pick. From either, we work out an approximate location so we can look things up around it.
• Your trip details. The dates, who is travelling, and the concerns or interests you select or type in. We use these to focus the briefing.
• Details you choose to type in. Some of our fields let you add your own notes, such as a concern about accessibility, allergies, travelling with children, or safety. Sharing these is optional. We use them only to tailor your briefing, and we do not keep the free text after the briefing is prepared. Please do not include highly sensitive personal details unless they matter for your trip.
• Your email address, only if you give it. Entering an email is optional. If you ask us to email you the finished report, we use your address to send it. If you also opt in to occasional product updates, we note that preference. Both choices are off by default, and each is a separate checkbox.
• Basic technical information. Like most websites, our servers and the services that sit in front of them see the network address (IP address) and browser type of each request. We use these to run the service and to protect it from abuse. Our own database does not keep your IP address in a readable form. See "How we protect the service" below.

We do not ask for medical records, government identification, payment card numbers, or other highly sensitive identifiers. You may choose to mention health, allergy, accessibility, family, or safety-related concerns in the free-text fields. If you do, we use those details only to generate your briefing.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your personal information. We never have and we do not plan to.
• We do not keep the full contents of the listings or destinations we look at. We may briefly hold the place you asked about, the listing address, your selected trip details, and the finished briefing long enough to create and deliver it, and no longer than the limits described in "How long we keep things."
• We do not build advertising profiles about you, and we do not share your information with advertisers.
• We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, and our analytics are cookieless.

How we use what we collect

We use your information to:

• produce the briefing or report you requested;
• send you the report by email, if you asked us to;
• send occasional product updates, only if you opted in;
• keep the service running reliably and protect it from abuse and misuse;
• understand, in aggregate, how the service is used so we can improve it.

AeyoScout uses automation to generate your briefing, but we do not use it to make legal, financial, insurance, employment, housing, credit, or similarly significant decisions about you.

How long we keep things

We keep things for as short a time as is practical.

• Your briefing. A finished report is held briefly so it can be shown to you and, if you asked, opened from the link we email. If you did not give an email, the saved copy is removed within about an hour. If you did, the saved copy is removed after 24 hours, which is how long the emailed link stays live.
• Your email address. If you provide your email, we use it to send your report link or to follow up based on the options you selected. Today, captured email addresses are deleted within 90 days. We do not currently maintain a long-term marketing email list. If we later launch product-update emails that require keeping your email longer, we will update this policy and provide an unsubscribe option. We also keep an anonymous record that a request included an email, for service-health reporting. That record contains no email address and cannot be traced back to you.
• The notes you type. Free-text concerns and interests are used to write the briefing and are not stored in readable form afterwards.
• Technical and usage records. Records we keep to run and protect the service are kept for up to 180 days, unless we need to keep limited records longer for security, abuse-prevention, legal, or accounting reasons.

How we protect the service

Running a free service means guarding against abuse. To do that without holding onto your network address, our application converts each IP address into a one-way fingerprint the moment a request arrives, using a secret that we rotate every month. Our database stores only that fingerprint, never the address itself, and because the secret changes each month, older fingerprints cannot be linked to newer ones. We use these fingerprints, together with your browser type, only to detect and slow down abuse and to keep the service stable. This is a legitimate-interest basis for processing, limited to what security requires.

Separately, the infrastructure and security providers that host and protect AeyoScout, including our hosting provider and Cloudflare, may process IP addresses in their routine operational and security logs, as is normal for any website.

Analytics

We use Plausible, a privacy-friendly analytics service, to understand in aggregate how people use AeyoScout, such as how many people start a briefing or open a section of a report. Plausible is cookieless. It does not place cookies in your browser and does not build a persistent profile of you. It records anonymous, aggregated events only, not personal information.

Service providers we use

To run AeyoScout we rely on a small number of trusted providers. Each one receives only the information it needs to do its job, and nothing more.

We rely on provider terms and, where available or required, data-processing agreements that require our providers to protect your information and use it only to provide services to us.

Public data sources

To fill in environmental, weather, hazard, and map context, we also draw on public and governmental data sources, including FEMA, USGS, USDA, NOAA, and OpenStreetMap. These lookups are based on the destination or approximate coordinates, not on your personal information.

Booking and affiliate links

When your briefing is ready, we may show a few links to book a stay, rent a car, or compare travel insurance for your trip. Some of these are affiliate links. If you click one and book, the partner may pay us a small commission, at no extra cost to you. This is how a free tool supports itself, and it does not affect your briefing.

Clicking an affiliate link passes a referral tag that identifies AeyoScout to the partner, so any resulting booking can be credited to us. It also carries the destination or listing you asked about, and, where relevant, your trip dates and party size, so the partner can show you the right page. We do not send the partner your email address, your notes, or the contents of your briefing. Once you are on the partner's site, their own privacy policy applies.

Your choices

• Email is always optional. You can use AeyoScout without giving us an email address at all.
• Access or delete your data. You can ask us what personal information we hold about you, and ask us to delete it. Because most of what we hold expires on its own within 24 hours to 90 days, in many cases there will be little or nothing left to return or remove. Email [email protected] and we will respond within a reasonable time.
• Unsubscribe. If we send product updates, those emails will include an unsubscribe option. You can also ask us to remove you at any time by emailing [email protected].

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights over your personal information, for example under the laws of the European Union, the United Kingdom, or California. These can include the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict how your information is used, and the right not to be treated differently for exercising those rights. We honor these kinds of requests regardless of where you live. To make a request, email [email protected].

Children

AeyoScout is meant for adults planning travel and is not directed to children under 13, or the equivalent minimum age where you live. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email [email protected] and we will delete it.

Where your information is handled

AeyoScout is operated from the United States, and the providers we work with may process information in the United States and elsewhere. If you use AeyoScout from outside the United States, you understand that your information may be handled in countries whose data-protection laws differ from those where you live.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service evolves. When we make a meaningful change, we will update the date at the top of this page. If the change is significant and we hold your email address, we may also let you know directly.