Privacy policy

Frederick James is the data controller responsible for personal information processed by Her Steps. Her Steps is an iPhone walking and fitness app. This policy covers the app and hersteps.app. You can contact us about privacy or your information at freya@frederickjames.net.

We store your Her Steps account and installation identifiers, username, age, and the name and email address Apple provides when you use Sign in with Apple. If you choose Hide My Email, this can be an Apple private relay email address. We also process authentication credentials and session records to keep you signed in.

We store profile photos you choose to upload, friend requests and relationships, blocks, and reports about users, including the reason you provide. If you contact support, we receive your message and contact details. Please avoid including health information or other sensitive details that are not needed to answer your request.

With the relevant Apple Health or Motion & Fitness permission, Her Steps reads steps, walking or running distance, and active energy. We use these readings to show your activity and progress towards your daily step goal.

Your steps, distance, active energy, daily goals and dated history are sent to our backend and linked to your account. A history sync can include up to 90 days at a time. This is a limit on each sync, not a promise that server history is deleted after 90 days. Fitness information does not stay exclusively on your device.

We do not use health or fitness information for advertising. The app’s active flows do not send health metrics or step goals to RevenueCat for targeting, to PostHog, or to Singular.

Other signed-in users can find you by your exact username. Search results and friend requests make your name, username, age, profile photo and joining date available, together with an account identifier and the status of your connection. You do not need to accept a friendship for this profile information to be available.

Accepted friends can also see your step count, daily goal, walking distance, active energy and step streak. The friends feature uses this information to show progress and compare activity. Your Apple email address is not included in these search or friend responses.

You can decline requests, remove friends, report users or block them. Removing a friend ends the accepted connection; blocking also filters each person from the other’s search and friends results and prevents new requests between them. These actions cannot remove screenshots or copies someone has already made. Image links can remain usable until they expire.

Apple handles App Store billing and payment details. Her Steps does not receive your card details. RevenueCat processes your account identifier, purchase and transaction identifiers, subscription product, status and entitlement information to validate purchases and provide access to paid features.

RevenueCat also receives app and platform information, free or paid plan status, onboarding completion and chosen theme. Attribution identifiers connect subscription events with installation measurement, as explained below.

PostHog provides account-linked product and subscription analytics. Events include installation, onboarding screens and progress through onboarding, paywall interactions, and trial or subscription starts. They can include account and installation identifiers, app and device information, product and transaction identifiers, revenue, currency and trial status. These records are not anonymous. We do not enable session replay or automatic crash capture in the app.

Singular measures installs and sessions and helps us understand which advertising brings people to Her Steps. RevenueCat sends subscription events to Singular through its V2 integration, using the Singular device identifier (SDID) to link them. Attribution can involve device and app information, IP addresses, installation identifiers, campaign information and subscription events.

Access to Apple’s advertising identifier (IDFA) requires your App Tracking Transparency (ATT) permission. Declining ATT does not stop essential account, fitness sync or subscription processing. Product analytics and attribution that is permitted without ATT may continue without IDFA. ATT is not a general switch for every form of data collection, and attribution is not required to personalise the app.

Meta advertising is planned, but a Meta integration with Singular is not currently configured. We will update this policy before introducing materially different sharing. Health metrics and step goals are not available for advertising measurement or targeting.

• Account and authentication details let us create and secure your account, identify your records and provide support.
• Fitness readings and goals let us calculate, sync and display progress and provide the friend sharing described above.
• Profile photos, connections, blocks and reports support profiles, friendships and community safety.
• Purchase and entitlement information lets us provide and restore paid access and resolve subscription issues.
• Product analytics helps us understand app use and improve the service. Attribution and subscription measurement help us evaluate advertising performance.
• Technical and security records help us operate the service, investigate faults and abuse, and meet applicable legal obligations.

• Cloudflare Workers, D1 and R2: operate our API, database and image storage, processing account, fitness, social and uploaded-image information. The production D1 database is configured for the EU.
• Apple: provides Sign in with Apple, access to Apple Health, App Store distribution and payment services. Apple’s own services are also subject to Apple’s privacy terms.
• RevenueCat: validates subscriptions, manages entitlements and forwards subscription events for attribution.
• PostHog: processes account-linked product and subscription analytics.
• Singular: processes installation, session and subscription attribution.
• Vercel: hosts the public website and processes requests needed to deliver it.
• OpenAI: processes uploaded photos to check for unsafe content. We send photos to OpenAI for safety moderation and store moderation results to help protect the community.

Uploaded profile photos are stored by Her Steps through Cloudflare.

Information may also be disclosed where required by law, to respond to a valid legal request, or where lawfully necessary to investigate abuse and protect users’ rights or safety. Sharing with other users is described separately above.

You can manage Health access in Apple Health or iOS Settings, Motion & Fitness access in iOS Settings, and tracking permission under Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. Turning off a permission stops future access covered by it; it does not automatically erase information already synced to our backend or held by providers. Without fitness permissions, activity displays may be unavailable or incomplete.

The photo picker lets you choose a profile image to upload. Adding a photo and making friend connections are optional. The current walking app does not use a friends map or request device location for that feature; IP-based location, if enabled by an analytics provider, is a separate matter.

To request deletion of existing information, withdraw a consent or exercise an applicable objection right, contact the privacy email above. See the account deletion and rights sections below.

Visiting hersteps.app is separate from using the iPhone app. The website currently has no configured advertising pixels or client-side analytics SDKs and does not set its own analytics or advertising cookies. The app’s PostHog and Singular integrations are not installed on these website pages.

The hosting service receives technical request information, such as your IP address, requested page, browser information and request time, to deliver and secure the website. Browser caching of pages, images and fonts is separate from advertising tracking. Links to Apple or other websites take you to services with their own privacy practices.

Account, fitness and social records are retained while your account is in use unless deleted. The backend is configured to select accounts for cleanup after 180 days without an account update or step sync and remove their database records and stored images. Cleanup runs in batches, so the threshold is not an exact deletion deadline. Merely viewing the app does not necessarily reset that period.

Profile photos are not subject to the backend’s 24-hour cleanup rule for other image types. Replacing a profile photo does not currently guarantee that earlier uploads are erased immediately. The 90-day history sync limit is not a server retention limit.

To delete your account, open your profile settings and choose Delete account, then confirm. A successful request removes your first-party account and related database records, including synced history, friendships, requests, blocks and reports, and images stored for the account. The app then clears its local account and profile state. If deletion fails, it shows an error so you can retry or contact support. This does not erase your original Apple Health records.

Account deletion does not currently send automatic deletion requests to RevenueCat, PostHog or Singular. Their records, Apple transaction records, and any logs or backups may have different retention and deletion processes. Contact us to request help with those records; we do not promise immediate deletion from every provider.

Deleting your account or the app does not cancel an Apple subscription. Manage cancellation separately in your Apple account’s subscription settings.

The service uses HTTPS connections, authenticated API requests and time-limited signed image links. These measures reduce risk but cannot guarantee complete security. Protect your Apple account and device, and contact us if you suspect misuse.

Providers may process information outside your country, including in the United States. The app is configured to send PostHog events to its US endpoint. EU placement of the D1 database does not mean that all app, website or provider information stays in the EU.

Depending on your location and the applicable law, you may have rights to access and obtain a copy of your information, correct it, request deletion, restrict processing, receive a portable copy, or withdraw consent without affecting earlier lawful processing.

You may also have a right to object to processing based on legitimate interests and to direct marketing. Where applicable, local law may provide rights to opt out of sale, sharing or targeted advertising. Contact us using the details below to exercise an applicable opt-out right.

Email freya@frederickjames.net with your request. We may need information to verify your identity and locate the records. Rights can be subject to legal exceptions. You may complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office or the data protection authority where you live or work.

Her Steps is for people aged 13 and over. If you are below the age of legal majority where you live, you must have a parent or guardian’s approval to use the service. If you believe an underage user has provided information, contact us so we can investigate.

When this policy changes, we will post the updated version here with its effective date and provide additional notice or seek consent where required for material changes.