Privacy

Ooting helps you plan a day or night out. This page explains what we keep, what we send to other services to make that work, and what you can ask us to do with it.

The short version

• You don't need to sign up. We don't ask for your name, email or phone number to use Ooting.
• There are no adverts, no outside analytics and no tracking cookies. We count how many people reach each step ourselves, with nothing that says who they are. We don't sell or share your data for marketing.
• Most of what you do stays on your own phone.
• We only use your exact location if you tap Near me, and your phone asks you first.

Who we are

Ooting is run by Wing Studios Ltd, a company registered in Scotland. We decide how your data is used, so we're the “controller” under UK data protection law. You can reach us at hello@ooting.app.

What stays on your phone

Your answers (where, who's going, when and your budget), the places you liked and skipped, your plan and your light or dark setting are saved in your browser's storage on your device, so you can pick up where you left off. So is a tally of the kinds of places you tend to like or skip, which Ooting uses to put more of what you like first in your next deck. We can't see any of it. Clearing this site's data in your browser removes it.

What we keep, and why

• A guest ID. When you open the app, we create an anonymous account for you with our database provider, Supabase. It's a random ID with no name or email attached. It lets you share plans and, later, keep them.
• How many people reach each step. When you open the home page, see a deck, see a plan, send a link or open one, we note that step with the town, who's going, when, your guest ID (once you have one) and a random visit ID. The visit ID is kept in your browser only until you close the tab, so we can tell how many visits go from the home page to a plan. We don't note which places you liked, and we only look at totals.
• Your email, only if you add one. If you choose to keep your plans with an email address, we store it to send you sign-in codes. We don't use it for marketing.
• Plans you share. When you share a plan, we save it (the place, who it's for, the dates, the budget and the stops) with your guest ID, so the link works. Anyone with the link can see the plan. It doesn't include your name.
• Votes. When you send your picks to a partner or friends, we save the plan, each person's yes or no on each place, and the first name they type (if asked for one). Everyone in that vote can see those names. To recognise you in a vote, we set one cookie, outing_voter, holding a random ID. It lasts a year and isn't used for anything else.
• Vote alerts, only if you turn them on. If you ask to be told when votes are in, your browser gives us a push address for your phone (a web address and keys from its push service), and we keep it with that vote so we can send the alert. The alert says who voted, never how they voted. It's delivered by your browser's push service: Google for Chrome and Android, Apple for Safari and iPhone, Mozilla for Firefox. You can turn alerts off in your phone's settings at any time.
• New places. The first time someone picks a town we don't cover yet, we save its name and centre point so we can build its deck of places once and reuse it. If you used Near me, that centre can be the location your phone gave. Nothing that identifies you is saved with it.
• Businesses that get in touch. If you send the form on our For businesses page, we keep what you write there (your business's name, town, website, what people can do there, your name and email) so we can reply to you about showing your place on Ooting. We don't use it for anything else.
• Server logs. Our hosting provider, Vercel, keeps short-lived technical logs (such as IP addresses and errors) to run the service and keep it secure.

Your location

If you tap Near me, your browser asks your permission first. With it, we send your phone's coordinates to BigDataCloud to find the name of the place you're in. We also use the location to get the weather forecast from Open-Meteo and, for a place we don't cover yet, to find what's around you (see New places above). If you type a place instead, what you type is sent to Open-Meteo to suggest matching places.

To list places in your own country first (so Birmingham means the one you're likely to mean), we look up which country you're in from your IP address. We only use the country, only while you're choosing a place, and we don't store it.

Other services we use

These services help run Ooting. Each gets only what it needs.

• Google Maps. Place photos, details and maps come from Google. Your browser connects to Google directly to show them, so Google sees your IP address and device details. Google's use of that information is covered by the Google Privacy Policy.
• Supabase stores the guest IDs, emails, shared plans and votes described above.
• Vercel hosts the app.
• Open-Meteo (weather and place search) and BigDataCloud (place names for Near me).
• OpenStreetMap (through its public Overpass servers) tells us what places exist around a town, and when they open.
• Ticketmaster lists events for towns other than Glasgow. Our server asks it what's on near the town you picked, on your dates. It gets the town's rough location (to about a kilometre) and the dates, never anything about you. Event pictures load from Ticketmaster's servers, and if you buy tickets, you do that on Ticketmaster's website under its own terms and privacy policy.
• Push services (Google, Apple and Mozilla) deliver vote alerts to phones that turned them on.
• Anthropic writes the descriptions for a new town's places. We send it the town's name and the public list of places found there, never anything about you.
• Unsplash and event organisers. Some photos and posters load straight from their websites, so they see your IP address like any website you visit.

Some of these companies process data outside the UK, including in the United States. Where they do, they use the safeguards UK law requires, such as the UK's approved contract terms.

Our lawful reasons

• Running Ooting and the features you use, like sharing and voting: our legitimate interest in providing the service you asked for.
• Your location: your permission, which you give in your browser and can take back at any time in its settings.
• Vote alerts: your permission, which you give in your browser and can take back at any time in its settings.
• Your email, if you add one: to provide the account you asked for.
• The For businesses form: our legitimate interest in replying to businesses that ask to be on Ooting.
• Server logs: our legitimate interest in keeping Ooting secure and working.

How long we keep it

What's on your phone stays until you clear it. Shared plans, votes and guest IDs stay until you ask us to delete them. Vote links stop working after 18 hours (tonight), 5 days (a weekend) or at the end of the first day (picked dates), but the votes stay stored until deleted. A push address for vote alerts stays with its vote until the vote is deleted, or until your browser's push service tells us it no longer works. Email addresses stay until you ask us to delete your account. What a business sends us through the For businesses form stays until it asks us to delete it, or for two years after we last heard from it.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the data we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to limit how we use it or to stop using it. Email hello@ooting.app and tell us what you'd like, with a link to any shared plan or vote it's about. We'll reply within a month. If you're not happy with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Cookies

We use one cookie, outing_voter, and only when you take part in a vote (see Votes above). It's needed for voting to work, so we don't ask first. Your plan and settings are kept in your browser's storage, not in cookies. We don't use advertising or analytics cookies.

Children

Ooting is for people aged 13 and over. Family plans are made by grown-ups for their family.

Changes

If we change what we collect or how we use it, we'll update this page and the date at the top. For a big change, we'll say so in the app.