Privacy Policy

1 Who we are

Desti ("Desti," "we," "us," or "our") is a social travel application operated by Desti LLC, a New York limited liability company. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you use the Desti mobile app and our website at thedesti.app (together, the "Service"), how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have.

By using the Service, you agree to the practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

2 Information we collect

2.1 Information you provide

When you create an account and use Desti, we collect:

• Account & sign-in information. You sign in using Sign in with Apple or Google. We receive your name and email address from that provider, and we create an account for you. We do not use or store passwords.
• Profile information. Your username, display name, first and last name, profile photo, bio, home city and state, travel interests, and any social media handles (for example Instagram, TikTok, or X) you choose to add.
• Your phone number (optional, for Find Friends). If you use Find Friends, you enter your phone number and we text you a code to confirm it is yours. We keep it only in a scrambled form (a keyed hash that cannot be turned back into the number), with its last two digits and its country, so the app can show you "Number ending in 42" and so members who have your number in their contacts can find you. Your number is never shown on your profile. See section 2.6.
• Your travel content. The cities you rank and your head-to-head comparisons, your Elo ratings, sentiment (liked / fine / disliked), visit dates, trip type and budget, highlights, pros and cons, favorite spots, photos you upload, and photo captions or labels.
• Wishlists & saved inspiration. Destinations you save, your notes, and any Instagram or TikTok post links you attach to a city or wishlist item. When you add such a link, we fetch a public preview (thumbnail, caption, and author handle) for that post. With "Find the places this post mentions" switched on when you save it, we also read the caption and the preview image to find the places the post names, and show them to you as a list; the ones you keep are saved as places you saved within the city (below), each linked to the post it came from. Or, when you ask us to, we read the post for the destinations it lists and offer to add the ones you keep to your Want to go list, with the post saved in each. To keep one copy of a video per place, the app may also follow a TikTok link you saved earlier to its video page, directly from your device, without sending TikTok your account information.
• Places you save within a city. The places you save within a city (for example, a restaurant or a museum), and where they are on the map, with the kind of place. A place is on the map where you placed it yourself, or where Google locates it (when you pick it from the search suggestions, or save one of a city's "Top spots"); for a place Google locates, we also keep its address and Google's identifier for it. You can also save a place with no location. A top spot you pick from the suggestions while ranking a city (one of your saved places, a community "Top spot", or a Google suggestion) carries that place's location on your ranking, and is visible wherever your ranking is. If, while ranking a city, you pick a Google suggestion for a top spot that is not yet on the city's map, your pick can also place it there as one of the city's community "Top spots", which everyone sees, without your name (section 6).
• Social connections & activity. The accounts you follow, your follow requests, your likes, friends you tag, and your notification preferences.
• Safety actions. The users you block, and the reports you submit about content or users (including the reason you select and any note you add). We keep reports so we can review them and enforce our Terms.
• How you heard about Desti. If you answer the optional "How did you hear about desti?" question when you set up your profile, we store the answer you pick (for example "A friend" or "Reddit") with your account, where only the Desti team can see it, and also record it with our analytics provider, linked to your account's pseudonymous analytics identifier, to learn which channels bring people to the app. We delete the stored answer with your account; the analytics record is kept as section 7 describes.
• Communications. If you email us, we keep your message and contact details to respond and for our records.

2.2 Information collected automatically

• Usage & analytics data. We use a third-party analytics provider to understand how the app is used, such as which screens you view and actions you take (opening Explore, tapping a recommendation, bookmarking or ranking a city). These events are associated with a pseudonymous identifier linked to your account.
• Place search counts. To prevent abuse of place search and of the post scan, we keep a daily count of the place searches and post scans made from each account (the numbers only, not what was searched or scanned) for 35 days.
• Diagnostics & crash data. We collect technical error and crash information (such as stack traces of software errors) to find and fix bugs.
• Technical & approximate-location data. Like most apps, our analytics and infrastructure providers may automatically receive technical information such as your IP address, device type, and operating-system version. An IP address can be used to estimate a general, city- or region-level location. This is not precise GPS location — see section 2.4.
• Push notification token. If you enable notifications, we store a push token so we can deliver the alerts you've asked for (for example, when someone follows you or likes your ranking).

2.3 Information from third parties

When you sign in with Apple or Google, that provider shares limited profile information with us (your name and email address) so we can create and secure your account. Your use of those sign-in services is also governed by Apple's and Google's own privacy policies.

2.4 What we do not collect

To be clear about the boundaries of our data collection:

• No device GPS location. Desti does not collect your device's precise or approximate GPS location, in the foreground or the background. Maps in the app display the locations of cities (reference data), the places you save within a city, and the community's "Top spots", not your position, and your "home city" is text you type yourself. (Analytics may infer an approximate region from your IP address, as noted above. If you enable the optional places-from-your-photos feature, Desti reads locations already saved inside your photos — see section 2.5 — but it still never reads your device's live position.)
• No camera access. Desti does not capture photos or video with your camera. You add photos by selecting existing images from your photo library.
• No copy of your contacts. We never store your contact list. If you turn on Find Friends, the phone numbers in your contacts are scrambled (hashed) on your device before they are compared with members' confirmed numbers, the names in your contacts never leave your phone, and nothing from your contacts is kept after the comparison (section 2.6). We do not collect phone numbers otherwise, except the one you confirm for Find Friends and a number you choose to include when you email us or in a copyright notice or counter-notice (section 4).
• No payment information. Desti is currently free and does not collect payment or financial information.
• No special-category data sought. We do not ask for sensitive information such as government IDs, health, or precise biometric data.

2.5 Places from your photos (optional)

This section describes a feature introduced in app version 1.0.5. It applies to that version and later; earlier versions of the app do not read photo locations.

If you choose to grant photo-library access, Desti can read the location data already saved in your photos to suggest places you may have visited, so ranking them is faster. Here is exactly how it works:

• Reading happens on your device. The app reads the location saved in a photo's metadata locally. Your photos are never uploaded for this purpose.
• Place-name lookup. To turn coordinates into a place name, the app sends an approximate location, rounded to roughly 1 km, to Photon, a geocoding service operated by Komoot. No photo and no account identifier accompanies these requests.
• Results stay on your device. The suggested places are stored on your device, not on Desti's servers. Our analytics record only aggregate counts (for example, how many places were found) — never the places themselves. A suggested place reaches our servers only if you choose to rank it, at which point it becomes a normal city ranking like any other (section 2.1).
• It is optional. The feature runs only if you grant photo-library access, and you can revoke that at any time in your device's system settings. The rest of the app works without it.

2.6 Find Friends from contacts (optional)

Find Friends is off until you choose to use it. It works in two steps, and each asks you first:

• Confirming your number. You enter your phone number and we text you a one-time code through an SMS provider (section 5). Once confirmed, we keep your number only as a keyed hash, with its last two digits and its country. Members who have your number in their contacts can then find you on desti. You can turn that off ("Let people who have your number find you") or remove the number entirely in Settings > Privacy. A number can be confirmed on one account at a time; confirming it on another account moves it there.
• Checking your contacts. With your permission, the app reads the names and phone numbers in your contacts, on your device. Each number is put into a standard form and scrambled (hashed) on your phone. Only those scrambled values are sent to our systems, where they are compared once with members' confirmed numbers; they are not stored or logged, and the names in your contacts never leave your phone. You see the members who confirmed a matching number and chose to be findable, with the name you saved them under, and can follow them. On iOS 18 and later you can share only selected contacts. You can withdraw contacts access at any time in your phone's Settings.

Inviting someone who is not on desti is your own message, sent from your phone through its share sheet; we do not send invitations and we do not keep the contacts you invite. To protect against misuse, we count how many codes we text and how many contact numbers each account checks per day; those counts are kept for 35 days. Our analytics provider records your number's country and these counts (contacts checked, matches found), never a phone number or a contact's name.

2.7 Age range from your app store

This section describes a feature introduced in app version 1.0.8, on iPhones running iOS 26.2 or later.

Some laws, such as Texas's App Store Accountability Act, require app stores to determine their users' age categories and require apps to use what the app store provides. Desti does not ask your age. Instead:

• Only where the law applies. When you sign in, once after each app update, and when you open a feature that needs it, the app asks Apple whether an age law applies to your Apple Account. Only if Apple says it does, the app asks Apple for your age range (under 13, 13 to 17, or 18 and over). Apple may show you a screen asking to share it.
• It stays on your device. Your age range is used on your device at that moment, to keep the Service for people 13 and older, to ask a parent or guardian to approve a new feature where the law requires it, and to leave out optional questions (such as how you heard about Desti) where the law requires it. It is never sent to Desti's servers, never stored with your account, and never shared, including with our analytics provider.
• What the app remembers. On your device only, the app remembers whether a parent or guardian has approved a new feature (such as Find Friends) or you have acknowledged one, and which app version last ran the check. Deleting the app removes this.
• Parent and guardian approvals. When a parent's or guardian's approval is needed, you send the request through Apple, and your parent or guardian answers on their own device. Apple tells the app the answer. Until they approve, the new feature stays unavailable; the rest of the Service works as before.

3 How we use your information

We use the information described above to:

• Provide and operate the Service — create your account, store your rankings, wishlists, photos, and social connections, and display your profile.
• Power personalized recommendations by comparing your rankings with community and friend rankings to surface destinations matched to your taste. We also use the pros, cons and top spots you write in your own rankings to personalize your own Explore recommendations.
• Send the notifications and communications you've enabled, and respond to your support requests.
• Keep the Service safe — including automated moderation of uploaded images, username screening, review of the reports you submit, enforcement of user blocks, and measures to prevent spam, bots, and abuse.
• Understand usage and improve, debug, and develop new features.
• Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Service.

4 How we share your information

We do not sell your personal information for money, and we do not share it with third-party advertising networks for their own use. If that ever changes, we will update this policy and give you any choice or opt-out the law requires. We share information only in these limited ways:

• With other users, according to your settings. Desti is a social app. Your profile, rankings, and wishlists are visible to others as described in section 6. You control much of this through your privacy settings.
• With service providers ("processors"). We share information with the providers that help us run the Service (described in section 5), who process it on our behalf and under our instructions.
• For legal reasons. We may disclose information if required by law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Desti, our users, or the public.
• Copyright complaints. If someone sends us a copyright notice about content you posted, we may send you a copy of it, which includes their contact details. If you send us a counter-notice, we forward it, including your name, address, and telephone number, to the person who sent the original notice, as the law requires (see section 10 of our Terms of Service).
• In a business transfer. If Desti LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, your information (including personal data) may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any change in ownership or any material change in how your personal information is used.

5 Service providers & third parties

We rely on a small set of trusted third-party providers to operate the Service. They process data only as needed to perform their function for us and under our instructions, and each operates under its own privacy terms. Some are independent public services that apply their own privacy policies, as noted below. They fall into these categories:

• Cloud hosting, database, and file storage
• Sign-in (the Apple or Google account you choose to sign in with)
• Analytics and crash diagnostics
• Push-notification delivery and app updates
• Automated content moderation
• Text-message delivery of Find Friends verification codes (the SMS provider receives the phone number you entered, to text you the code)
• Maps and place search — including Photon, a geocoding service operated by Komoot, which receives the rounded, approximate coordinates described in section 2.5 when you use the optional places-from-your-photos feature. When you ask desti to read a saved post for the destinations it lists, Photon also receives the place names found in that post, with their country, to find them on the map. Photon also receives, directly from your device, the text you type when searching for a city, and your home city when desti looks it up for your profile.
• City map outlines, by OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service, operated by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, which your device asks directly for a city's outline when a city new to desti is added (for example when you rank or save it, or set it as your home city), or when you open a city whose outline desti does not have yet. Those requests carry the city's name, state and country, or its map coordinates from desti's catalog, never your device's location, and, like any request, your device's IP address; they identify the app as desti. The OpenStreetMap Foundation Privacy Policy applies to its processing.
• Place search within a city, by Google Places, a service of Google LLC. When you search for a place to save, or for a top spot while ranking a city, Google receives the text you type, with the area of the city you are searching in, and, when you pick a suggestion, Google's identifier for that place. With the "Find the places this post mentions" switch on, Google also receives the place names found in a post you save to one city, with the city's area. To show the community's "Top spots" on a city's map, Google receives each place's name (without who added it), with the city's area, or Google's identifier for a place a member picked from the suggestions. We later re-check the location of each place Google located, whether a saved place or a "Top spot", using only Google's identifier for it. These requests go to Google from our systems, not from your device, and include no account identifier. The Google Privacy Policy applies to Google's processing.
• Reading the places a saved post names, by Anthropic's Claude API, a service of Anthropic PBC (whose policy is that API inputs and outputs are not used to train its models by default). With the "Find the places this post mentions" switch on, Anthropic receives the post's caption, its preview image, the author's handle, any text your share sheet passed along, and the name of the city you saved it to (when you are saving to one city), and returns the place names it finds. Nothing from your desti account (your notes, reviews, rankings or profile) is sent, and no account identifier. The names it returns are then looked up with Google Places (places in one city) or Photon (several destinations), as described above. The Anthropic Privacy Policy applies to Anthropic's processing.
• AI summarization of community reviews, and of the place names members add to a city's "Top spots" (both sent without who wrote or added them, including for private profiles), to generate the "what travelers say" summaries and the tidied place names shown in the app

Some features also send a request to an outside service to fetch public information on your behalf, such as retrieving the preview of an Instagram or TikTok post you save or that we feature on a city page, or looking up a place when you search. When you tap Open in… (or Google Maps, on Android) on a place on a city's map, the app sends that place's name and its Google place ID, or its location, to the maps app you pick, Google Maps or Apple Maps (Apple Maps receives its name and location). To show a post's preview, your device may load it directly from Instagram or TikTok, which then receive your device's IP address, as with any web page; we do not send them your account information. A featured post is chosen the same way for everyone and never from your personal information (it is hidden only from someone who has blocked, or been blocked by, its creator), and we do not share your personal information with the creators we feature. We store your authentication tokens in your device's encrypted secure storage (Apple Keychain or Android Keystore).

6 Public content & your privacy choices

Desti is a social product, so some information is visible to other people by design:

• By default, your profile, your city rankings, and your wishlists are viewable by other users of the Service.
• The places you save within a city are visible only to you, whatever your profile settings.
• Photos you upload (your profile picture and trip photos) are stored so they can be displayed in the app and are accessible via their image links. Please do not upload photos you wish to keep strictly private.
• You can set your profile to private, which lets you approve followers and limits who can see your content. One exception: the places you add to a city's "Top spots" still appear and are counted for everyone, without your name, face or photos; only your approved followers see that they are yours. You can also choose whether to share your travel "inspiration" posts with your followers.

You control what you share: you can edit or remove your content, change your privacy settings, manage your notification preferences, and unfollow accounts at any time.

7 Data retention

We keep your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service. When you delete your account, we delete or de-identify your personal information within a reasonable period (generally within 90 days), except where we need to retain certain information to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, prevent abuse, or enforce our agreements. Residual copies may persist in routine backups for a limited time before they are overwritten. Aggregated or de-identified data that can no longer be linked to you may be retained. Your confirmed phone number for Find Friends (kept as a keyed hash) stays until you remove it in Settings > Privacy or delete your account; the record of a pending verification code is deleted within two days; daily counts of Find Friends use are kept for 35 days.

8 Your rights & choices

Regardless of where you live, you can:

• Access & review much of your information directly in the app.
• Correct or update your profile and content at any time.
• Delete your content and your account. To delete your account and associated personal data, open Settings → Delete account in the app, or email us at info@thedesti.app and we will process your request.
• Control notifications through the app's notification settings and your device settings.
• Manage permissions (such as photo-library, contacts, and notification access) in your device's system settings.

To make a privacy request, email info@thedesti.app. We may need to verify your identity before acting on certain requests, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.

9 California privacy rights (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended, gives you certain rights regarding your personal information:

• The right to know what personal information we collect, use, and disclose.
• The right to delete personal information we have collected from you.
• The right to correct inaccurate personal information.
• The right to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information, and to limit the use of sensitive personal information.
• The right to non-discrimination for exercising your rights.

In the categories used by the CCPA, we collect identifiers (such as name and email, and a phone number if you use Find Friends), internet and app activity (usage analytics), user-generated content, and — only if you enable the optional places-from-your-photos feature — approximate location information derived from your photos, handled as described in section 2.5. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined under the CCPA. If our practices change, we will update this notice and provide the opt-out the CCPA requires. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16. To exercise your rights, email info@thedesti.app.

10 European & UK privacy rights (GDPR)

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, Desti LLC is the controller of your personal data. We process your data on the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract — to provide the Service you sign up for.
• Legitimate interests — to secure, analyze, and improve the Service and prevent abuse, balanced against your rights.
• Consent — for optional permissions such as push notifications, photo-library access, and contacts access. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation — where we must process data to comply with the law.

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, or object to our processing of your personal data, the right to data portability, and the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. To exercise these rights, email info@thedesti.app.

11 International data transfers

Desti is operated from the United States, and our service providers may process data in the United States and other countries. If you access the Service from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in countries whose data protection laws may differ from those of your country. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards (such as Standard Contractual Clauses) for these transfers.

12 Children's privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact info@thedesti.app and we will take steps to delete it. Some jurisdictions set a higher age of digital consent; where that applies, we rely on the appropriate legal basis or parental consent as required.

Where the law requires it, Desti also uses the age range your app store provides on your device (section 2.7). If Apple tells the app that the Apple Account on a device belongs to someone under 13, the app does not let anyone create an account or stay signed in on that device.

13 Security

We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including encryption of data in transit, storing authentication tokens in your device's encrypted secure storage, access controls on our backend, and automated content moderation. However, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in method and device secure.

14 Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will revise the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, provide additional notice (for example, in the app). Your continued use of the Service after an update means you accept the revised policy.

15 Contact us

If you have questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or your personal information, contact us at:

Desti LLC
New York, USA
Email: info@thedesti.app