Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Portagr is an interactive trip-planning tool for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The data controller for the information described here is:

You can browse and plan trips without an account; some features require you to sign up. We do not sell your personal information for money.

2. Information We Collect

Automatically collected

• Usage data — pages visited and features used, collected by our analytics providers only if you accept analytics cookies. They assign your browser a random identifier and record the pages you view, roughly where you are (city level, from your IP address), and what device you use. This is pseudonymous rather than anonymous: not tied to your name, but tied to an identifier that persists across visits.
• Interaction events — we record when controls we have chosen to measure are clicked, using a label we wrote ourselves. We never record what you type; text you enter into a form is not sent to an analytics provider.
• Log data — standard server logs may include your IP address, browser type, and referring URL. These are used for security and debugging and are not retained longer than 30 days.
• Advertising data — on ad-supported pages, and only if you accept advertising cookies, Google and its partners receive your IP address and set cookies to select and measure ads. See Section 5.

Account & billing (when you sign up)

• Account information — our authentication provider stores your email address and, optionally, your name and profile image, so we can sign you in and operate account features.
• Google sign-in— if you choose “Sign in with Google,” Google shares your Google account’s email address, name, and profile photo with us, through our authentication provider, solely to create and authenticate your account. We do not request any other Google data and do not use it for advertising. See our Limited Use commitment below.
• Content you create — trips, trip plans, logs, reviews and photos you submit while signed in are stored on our servers so they sync to your account. Reviews and photos are shown publicly alongside the display name you choose.
• Billing information — payments are handled by our payment processor. We store your subscription status, plan and billing period, but your card details go straight to them and never reach us.

Stored locally in your browser

• Trip data— your waypoints and route preferences are stored in your browser’s localStorage. This data never leaves your device unless you use the share-link feature, which encodes trip data in the URL only.
• Preferences — UI settings (map style, layer visibility) and your cookie choice are saved in localStorage.

3. Information We Do Not Collect

• If you don’t create an account, we do not collect your name or email address.
• We do not track your precise GPS location.
• We do not send the contents of form fields, search boxes or review text to any analytics or advertising provider.
• We do not use your account information to target ads, and we do not give advertisers your email address.

4. Third-Party Services

Portagr relies on third-party providers to operate. Depending on how you use the Service and what you consent to, your data may be processed by providers in these categories, each of which has its own privacy policy:

Want these providers by name? Write to portagradmin@gmail.com and we will send you the current list.

Limited Use of Google user data

Portagr’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. We use the Google account data you share only to create and authenticate your account. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or share it with third parties except as needed to provide the Service (for example, our authentication provider), to comply with the law, or as part of a merger or acquisition.

International transfers

Portagr is operated from the United States and our providers process data there. If you use the Service from outside the US, your information is transferred to and stored in the US. Our providers rely on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework for those transfers; their own privacy policies set out which.

5. Cookies and Your Choices

We use four categories of cookies and browser storage. The first two are on because the site cannot work without them. The last two are off until you accept them — nothing analytics- or advertising-related loads on your first visit, and if you decline, the Google Analytics and AdSense code is never run at all.

Change your choice

We also honour the Global Privacy Control signal. If your browser sends GPC, we treat it as a decision to decline analytics and advertising cookies and as an opt-out of any sharing of your personal information for advertising — you will not be asked again.

Serving personalised ads to visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland requires a Google-certified consent management platform. Until one is in place, ad personalisation remains off for those visitors.

6. Your Rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to do the things below. Write to portagradmin@gmail.com or use our contact form, and tell us the email address on the account so we can find it. We will not charge you, and we will not treat you differently for asking.

• Know and access — get a copy of the personal information we hold about you and what we do with it.
• Correct — have inaccurate information fixed.
• Delete — have your account and its content erased. You can do this yourself at any time from your account page.
• Port — receive your data in a portable, machine-readable format.
• Object or restrict — object to processing based on our legitimate interests, or ask us to limit it.
• Opt out of sharing for advertising — see Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information.
• Withdraw consent — at any time, without affecting what was done before you withdrew it.

We respond within 30 days (extendable to 45 where the law allows and the request is complex; we will tell you if that happens). If you are in the EEA or the UK you also have the right to complain to your data protection supervisory authority. In California, you may use an authorised agent to make a request on your behalf.

Why we are allowed to process your data (EEA/UK): to perform our contract with you (your account, saved trips, and billing); with your consent (analytics and advertising cookies); and for our legitimate interests in keeping the Service secure and working (server logs, anti-fraud).

7. Data Retention

Trip data stored in your browser persists until you clear your browser storage or use the “Clear Trip” feature. Account data and content you save while signed in are kept until you delete them or delete your account. Server log data is retained for no more than 30 days. Analytics data is retained for 14 months. Messages you send us through the contact form are kept for up to 24 months so we have a record of what was asked and answered — including privacy requests.

8. Children’s Privacy

Portagr is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Our ad units are not configured for child-directed treatment. If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to portagradmin@gmail.com and we will delete it.

9. Security

We use HTTPS everywhere, a strict Content-Security-Policy, and rate limiting on the endpoints that accept uploads and submissions. Authentication and payments are handled by specialist providers rather than by us. No system is perfectly secure; if we discover a breach affecting your personal information we will notify you and the relevant regulator as required by law.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically. The effective date at the top of the page reflects the most recent revision. If we make a material change to what we collect or who we share it with, we will tell you before it takes effect — by email if you have an account, and by asking for your cookie choice again where consent is involved.

11. Contact

Questions or requests regarding this Privacy Policy can be sent to portagradmin@gmail.com or through our contact form.