Privacy Policy
TrailForge is a training app for endurance runners. This page explains exactly what it collects, why it needs it, who else sees it, and how to get it removed. It is written to be read, not to be survived.
The short version. TrailForge contains no analytics, no crash-reporting and no advertising software of any kind. Nothing you do in the app is tracked for marketing, profiling or resale. The only data leaving your phone is what the app needs to work: your training, and the accounts you deliberately connect.
Who we are
TrailForge is developed by Byte-Sized Systems. For any privacy question, or to have your data corrected or deleted, contact support@trailforge.run. We aim to respond within 30 days.
What we collect
Account
You can use TrailForge as a guest, in which case we hold only an anonymous account identifier — no name, no email address. If you sign in with Apple or Google we receive the identifier that provider gives us, plus your email address and, where you allow it, your name. There is no email-and-password sign-in, so we never receive or store a password.
Your athlete profile
Date of birth, gender, body weight and heart-rate zones — all optional, all entered by you. These are used to estimate training zones and to size fuelling recommendations. Body weight in particular is used to scale fluid targets; nothing about it is shared.
Training data
- Activities imported from Garmin or Strava — including GPS route traces, heart rate, pace, elevation, duration and calories.
- Routes you draw — the coordinates of the route and its elevation profile.
- Training plans, sessions and structured workouts you create.
- Fuel plans and fuel logs — what you planned to consume, what you actually consumed, and your self-reported energy and gut-comfort ratings.
- Preferences — units, time zone and the weather conditions you prefer to run in.
Route and activity data is location data, and it is often sensitive: a route that starts at your front door reveals where you live. It is stored against your account and is never published, shared with other users, or made searchable. TrailForge has no social feed, no friends list and no leaderboards.
Notifications
If you allow notifications, Apple issues a device token that we store so we can send you session reminders and trigger background syncing. It identifies the installation, not you.
Device integrity
TrailForge uses Apple's App Attest to confirm that requests come from a genuine, unmodified copy of the app before the server will release configuration such as third-party client identifiers. This produces a cryptographic attestation, not a device fingerprint, and it is not used to identify or track you.
What we deliberately do not collect
- No analytics. There is no Google Analytics, Firebase Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude or equivalent in the app.
- No crash or performance reporting. No Crashlytics, no Sentry.
- No advertising or attribution SDKs. No ad identifiers, no App Tracking Transparency prompt, because there is nothing to track.
- No background location. TrailForge does not record your runs and never follows you. Location is used only while you are actively using the map, to centre it on where you are.
- No Apple Health data. The app does not read from or write to HealthKit.
- No data sales. We do not sell, rent or trade your data, and we do not share it with data brokers.
Who processes your data
| Service | What it handles |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Azure | Hosts the TrailForge backend and database, where your account and training data are stored. |
| Google Firebase Authentication | Verifies who you are. Holds your account identifier and, if you signed in with Apple or Google, your email address. |
| Mapbox | Serves map tiles, snaps drawn routes to real paths, and supplies terrain elevation. Receives the map areas and route coordinates needed to answer those requests. |
| Apple WeatherKit | Supplies forecasts. Receives the coordinates and times of the sessions being forecast. Apple states WeatherKit does not associate requests with a user identity. |
| Apple Push Notification service | Delivers notifications to your device. |
| Garmin / Strava | Only if you connect them. They send us the activities and routes you have recorded there. See below. |
These are processors acting on our instructions, not independent recipients, and none of them receives your data for their own marketing.
Connecting Garmin and Strava
Connecting a provider is entirely optional, and you authorise it on the provider's own screen — TrailForge never sees your Garmin or Strava password.
- Coming in: activities you have recorded, including route, heart rate, pace and elevation, plus routes where the provider supplies them.
- Going out (Garmin only, and opt-in): routes you have drawn can be sent to Garmin Connect as courses, and planned workouts can be sent to your Garmin calendar. Strava is import-only — TrailForge never writes anything to Strava.
- Access tokens are held only on our server, encrypted at rest, and are never stored on your athlete profile or exposed to the app.
- Disconnecting revokes our access at the provider itself, not merely on your phone. Activities already imported remain in your TrailForge account until you delete them.
Legal basis and retention
Where the UK and EU GDPR apply, we process your data to perform the contract you enter into by using the app, and on the basis of your consent for the optional parts — connecting a provider, allowing notifications, allowing location while using maps. Health-related data such as heart rate is processed on the basis of your explicit consent, given by choosing to connect a provider or enter it yourself. You may withdraw consent at any time by disconnecting the provider or contacting us.
We keep your data for as long as your account exists. Delete your account and it is removed from our systems, with routine backups aging out within 30 days.
Your rights
You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or object to that use. You can also complain to your national data protection authority — in Norway, Datatilsynet.
Deleting your account, honestly stated. TrailForge does not yet have an in-app "delete my account" button, and there is no self-service data export. Both are being built. Until they ship, email support@trailforge.run from the address on your account — or, if you are a guest, from the app — and we will delete everything, or send you a copy, within 30 days at no charge.
Children
TrailForge is not intended for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us data, contact us and we will delete it.
International transfers
Our infrastructure is operated in the European Union. Some processors listed above are US-headquartered and may process data outside the EEA under Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent safeguard.
This website
trailforge.run is a static site with no cookies, no analytics, no tracking pixels and no third-party fonts or scripts. Nothing is stored in your browser, so there is no consent banner to dismiss. Our host records standard server access logs, including IP addresses, for security and reliability.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that materially affects you, we will say so in the app before the change takes effect. The date at the top always reflects the current version.