Privacy
What Heritage Guide collects, and what it doesn’t.
Heritage Guide has no accounts, sells nothing and shows no ads. This page says what the website and the Android app send, where it goes, and what stays on your device.
Updated October 26, 2026
The website
- Visits
- We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are read. It sets cookies and sends Google your browser’s details, the pages you view and an approximate location worked out from your IP address. How Google handles this
- Search
- What you type in search goes to our server, and from there to OpenAI, which turns it into the figures used to find places with similar descriptions.
- Near me
- If you use Near me, your browser asks your permission first, then sends your position to our server to find the closest places.
- Delivery
- Like any website, our server and Cloudflare, which delivers the site, receive your IP address and the pages you request. Photographs load from our storage at Amazon Web Services.
The Android app
- No tracking
- The app has no account, no ads and no analytics or tracking.
- Location
- With your permission, the app uses your location on your phone to show where you are on the map, find places near you and guide walks and audio tours. It remembers your last position on the phone for the near-me list and widgets. Your position isn’t sent to us.
- Maps
- Map tiles come from basemap.earth, which receives requests for the part of the map you’re looking at.
- Places and photographs
- When you open a place, the app downloads its record from heritageguide.ca and its photographs from our storage at Amazon Web Services. Search works as it does on the website. While the app is open, it checks heritageguide.ca for updated place data, at most every 12 hours.
- Camera and microphone
- Photographs, videos and voice notes are taken only when you ask, for your journal or to retake a register photograph. They stay on your phone and are never uploaded to us. Listen reads text aloud with your phone’s own voice.
- Backup
- If Android backup is on, your visits, lists and settings are included in your phone’s backup to your Google account. Your journal and saved maps aren’t. You can export your journal to a file yourself.
- Sharing and directions
- When you share a list, a place or a card, the app hands it to the app you choose. Directions open in your maps app.
- Deleting
- Uninstalling the app deletes everything it stored. You can also clear its storage in Android’s settings.
Who it’s for
Heritage Guide is for a general audience and isn’t directed at children.
Questions
Heritage Guide is made by Stephen Taylor. If anything here changes, this page and its date change with it. Write to [email protected].