Privacy Policy
Last updated 23 October 2026
The short version
- You sign in with your mobile number. You don’t need a password.
- Your family circle sees your exact location. Friends see only a rough area (about 1 km), and only if you allow it. Travellers see a wider area, and only if you and they opt in and are both 18 or older. You can turn each of these off.
- We delete location history after 7 days.
- Chats are encrypted while they travel, and stored on our server so they sync across your phones. They are not end-to-end encrypted yet.
- HopWit AI (Claude, made by Anthropic) writes city guides, reads flight details from booking emails you forward, looks at photos you choose for Snap & share or for writing a post, and checks posts so the public feed stays about travel.
- If personalisation is on, HopWit learns what you like to order events and suggestions. Only you see it, and you can clear it or switch it off.
- We don’t sell your information, and we don’t show third-party ads.
- You can delete your account in the app at any time. See how to delete your account.
1. Who we are
The HopWit app and this website (“HopWit”, “we”, “us”) are run from Victoria, Australia. This policy explains how we handle personal information when you use the HopWit app, hopwit.com or hopwit.me. We follow the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Where other privacy laws apply to you, such as the GDPR in Europe or India’s DPDP Act, we respect the rights those laws give you too.
An earlier HopWit app was run by MyLingoz Technologies Private Limited (India) between 2015 and 2018. That app is no longer running, and this policy replaces its old policy.
2. What we collect
Information you give us
| What | Details |
|---|---|
| Account | Your mobile number, which you use to sign in. It is also how people who have your number can find you, unless you turn that off. |
| Profile | Your name, photo, date of birth, home city and bio. You can add interests, a job title and gender if you like. We use your date of birth to check your age. Other people see your age only if you switch on “Show my age”. |
| Trips | Flights you add: flight numbers, airports, dates, times and an optional seat number. You also choose who can see each trip. Each trip can have its own group chat. |
| Booking emails | If you forward a booking email to your personal HopWit address, we receive that email. We store the sender, the subject and the flight details we find in it, so that you can confirm them. |
| Messages and media | Chat messages, photos you send, and requests to people you don’t share a circle with. |
| Posts and activity | Posts, photos, short videos, captions, places, likes, comments, saved posts and follows. It also includes questions and answers about cities. For each post we also store whether HopWit AI judged it travel-related, and whether you wrote it with HopWit AI. |
| Snap & share photos | When you use Snap & share, the photo is uploaded to our server so HopWit AI can look at it. We keep it like your other uploads, even if you don’t post it, until you delete your account. |
| What you like (taste profile) | If Personalise with what I like is on (it is unless you switch it off), we keep short notes from what you do: interests you pick, cities you explore or photograph, events you open, and topics of posts you make or like. You can see them under What HopWit has learned, clear them, or switch this off. |
| Family circle | Circles you create or join, saved places (such as Home or School), and check-ins. |
| Reports and support | Reports you make, people you block, and anything you send us when you ask for help. |
Information from your phone (with your permission)
| What | Details |
|---|---|
| Location | If you allow it, your phone sends us its location, including in the background. This powers the family map, place alerts (“arrived home”), the friends and travellers layers, and welcome alerts when you land or arrive somewhere new. With location sharing on, the app also sends your phone’s battery level, which your family can see on the map. You can pause sharing at any time, or turn location off in your phone’s settings. |
| Contacts | If you allow it, the app sends the phone numbers in your address book to our server to check which of them are on HopWit. We keep only the links to people who are already on HopWit. We don’t keep the rest of your address book, and we don’t keep your contacts’ names. Contacts who aren’t on HopWit show up only on your own phone, on the invite screen. |
| Camera and photos | We only use these when you choose to take or pick a photo or video, for example for Snap & share, a post, a chat or your profile picture. |
| Notifications | A push token, so that we can send you alerts. Notifications show message text only if you turn on “Show message text”. |
| Device and sign-in | The name of the phone you signed in on, and when you signed in. This lets you see the phones signed in to your account and sign out a lost one. |
Information created automatically
Our server keeps short technical logs, such as IP address, time and errors, so that we can keep HopWit running and secure. We also record events your settings depend on, such as arriving at or leaving a saved place, and when messages were delivered and read. We count how many HopWit AI requests each person makes per day, to enforce a fair daily limit.
We don’t use advertising trackers or analytics SDKs in the app.
3. How we use it
- To run HopWit: sign-in, your profile, trips, maps, alerts, chats, the feed, city guides, events, ride links and connections.
- To personalise: if personalisation is on, we use your taste profile to order events and suggestions. It is never shown to other people or used for advertising.
- To connect you with people: we match your contacts, show friends and opted-in travellers, and show people heading to the same city or on the same flight. We do this only within your settings.
- To send you notifications: new messages, family arrivals and check-ins, landing welcomes, trip reminders, likes and comments. You can change all of these in You › Notifications & alerts.
- To keep people safe: HopWit AI checks new posts; we review reports, enforce our Terms, limit message requests, new questions and AI use, and stop spam and abuse.
- To fix and improve HopWit: we use technical logs and your feedback.
- To contact you about your account, or about changes to these terms or this policy.
We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t use it for third-party advertising. We don’t use it to guess sensitive things about you, such as your health, religion or politics.
4. Who can see what
| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| Anyone on HopWit | Your name, photo, home city and bio. Your posts too, if you set them to “Everyone”. Your age and job title only if you switch them on. |
| Your family circle | Your exact live location, when it was last updated, your battery level, and arrivals at and departures from saved places. They also see your check-ins and trips set to Family, and a message when you land. You can pause sharing at any time. |
| Friends | Friends are people you both follow, or who are in each other’s contacts. If “Show me to friends” is on, they see your area from the last day, rounded to about 1 km. They also see trips you set to Friends. |
| Travellers | Only if “Show me to travellers” is on. It’s off unless you turn it on, and both of you must be 18 or older. They see an approximate area (about a 2 km grid), the distance in whole kilometres, and shared interests, from the last 6 hours. |
| Trip connections | People heading to the same city around your dates may see that you’ll be there that week, but not the exact date. This applies only to adults who switch on “Show me in trip Connections”. |
| People you chat with | Your messages, plus read ticks and “online” status, unless you turn those off. |
Blocking someone hides you from each other everywhere in HopWit. Anything you share with other people can be copied or screenshotted by them, so share with care.
5. HopWit AI
Some features are labelled ✨ HopWit AI. They use Claude, an AI model from Anthropic.
| Feature | What we send to Anthropic |
|---|---|
| City guides and Explore | Only the name of the city or place. Guides are the same for everyone, and we keep a copy for each city. |
| Reading booking emails | The text of the email you forward, to find the flight details. You always check and confirm the trip before it’s saved. |
| Snap & share | The photo you take, and the city it was taken in (worked out from your location; we don’t send exact coordinates). It never includes your name or number. |
| Write with HopWit AI | The photos you picked for the post, the place, your trip’s destination and date, the words you typed and any draft caption. |
| Checking new posts | The caption, place and photos of each new post, so HopWit AI can decide if it’s travel-related, off-topic (shared with contacts only) or not allowed. Videos aren’t sent. |
Under its commercial terms, Anthropic processes this data to provide the service to us and doesn’t use it to train its models. AI-written content can be wrong, so check opening hours, prices and travel details yourself. If we add more AI features, we will update this policy and tell you in the app first. HopWit AI never sees your chats, contacts or location history.
6. Services we use
We share information only with these services, only to run HopWit, and only as much as each needs:
| Service | What for | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Twilio (USA) | Texting your sign-in code | Your mobile number |
| Anthropic (USA) | HopWit AI | City names; the text of booking emails you forward; photos, captions and places for Snap & share, Write with HopWit AI and post checks |
| Google (Gmail) | The mailbox that receives forwarded booking emails | Those emails |
| Expo and Apple Push Notification service (Google’s Firebase on Android, later) | Delivering notifications | Your push token and the notification text |
| OpenStreetMap Nominatim | Working out which city a location is in (welcome alerts, Snap & share) | Coordinates, without your name or number |
| Ticketmaster (USA) | Events on your dates | The city and dates you’re looking at, without your name or number |
| Open-Meteo | Weather in welcome alerts | Coordinates, without your name or number |
| Hostinger | The server that runs HopWit and stores its data | All HopWit data, stored on our server |
| Apple Maps (Google Maps on Android, later) | Drawing maps in the app | Map requests from your phone, under Apple’s or Google’s own privacy policy |
Ride apps and ticket sites. When you tap Book a ride or an event, HopWit opens that company’s app or website (for example Uber, Lyft, DiDi, Ola, Grab, Bolt or Ticketmaster). For Uber we fill in the destination you chose. What you do there is covered by that company’s own privacy policy.
We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect someone from serious harm, or to respond to a valid legal request. If HopWit is ever sold or moved to a company, your information would move with it under this policy, and we would tell you first.
7. Where your data is stored
Our server is run by Hostinger and may be outside Australia. Some of the services above are in the USA and other countries. Whenever we send personal information overseas, we take reasonable steps to make sure it is handled in line with the Australian Privacy Principles. We do this by choosing reputable providers and using their data-protection terms.
8. How long we keep it
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Location history | 7 days, then deleted automatically. We keep your most recent point so the map can show “last seen”. It is replaced each time a new one arrives, and deleted with your account |
| Arrive/leave place events | 90 days |
| Sign-in code requests | 2 days |
| Signed-in phones | Until you sign out, or 30 days after a sign-out |
| Profile, trips, posts, saved posts, chats, follows, uploaded photos | Until you delete them or delete your account |
| Taste profile | Until you clear it, switch personalisation off, or delete your account |
| Daily HopWit AI counts | Until you delete your account (they only hold a date, a feature and a number) |
| Forwarded booking emails | Only as long as we need them to create your trip. Ask us any time and we’ll delete them |
| Server logs and backups | Backups are kept for 14 days, then overwritten |
9. Security
All traffic between the app and our server is encrypted (HTTPS/TLS). Our database isn’t reachable from the internet. Sign-in uses one-time codes and short-lived tokens, and you can sign out lost phones remotely. Chats are encrypted while they travel, but they are not end-to-end encrypted yet. We plan to add optional end-to-end encrypted “Private chats” for one-to-one chats. No system is perfectly secure. If a data breach is likely to cause you serious harm, we will tell you and the Australian privacy regulator (the OAIC), as the law requires.
10. Your choices and rights
- Control sharing on the You tab. Each map layer, who can find you, who can message you, read ticks, “online” status and notifications all have their own switch.
- Change phone permissions (location, contacts, camera, notifications) at any time in your phone’s settings.
- See and correct your profile in the app, or ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you.
- Delete posts, trips and places one at a time, or delete your whole account.
- Ask questions or object to how we use your information. Email us and we’ll reply within 30 days.
11. Young people
You must be at least 13 to use HopWit. Under-18s can’t use the travellers layer, can’t appear to strangers in trip connections, and can’t see strangers there either. If you think a child under 13 has an account, tell us and we’ll delete it.
12. This website
hopwit.com doesn’t use cookies, analytics or third-party fonts. Our web server keeps standard access logs (IP address, page and time) for security, and deletes them after a short time.
13. Changes
As HopWit grows, this policy will change. When it does, we’ll update the date at the top. If a change is important, we’ll tell you in the app before it takes effect.
14. Contact and complaints
Email app@hopwit.com with any privacy question, request or complaint. We’ll respond within 30 days. If you’re not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au, or to the privacy regulator where you live.