Who we are
Lore is an audio tour app operated by Lore Audio Tours LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company, at 30 N Gould St Ste N, Sheridan, WY 82801-6317, United States. In this policy “Lore”, “we” and “us” mean that company, and “you” means the person using the app.
For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights in section 9, write to nate@loreaudiotours.com. A person reads that address.
This policy covers the Lore mobile app on iOS and Android and this website. It does not cover the App Store, Google Play, or any other site or service we link to.
What we collect, and why
Lore asks for very little, and what it does ask for is what the app is made of: a photograph and a position are the two things a location-based tour cannot work without.
| What | Why we need it | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | To create and sign you into your account, and to reset your password. | Firebase Authentication, and Google or Apple if you sign in with them. If you sign in with Apple and choose to hide your email, we only ever see Apple’s relay address. |
| Display name, username, profile photo | To credit you as the author of tours you publish. All three are optional except the username, which you choose yourself. | Firestore and Cloud Storage. Your name and username are shown publicly on tours you create. |
| Precise location (GPS) | To show stories near you and to pin a tour to the spot you made it. Collected only while the app is open and you are using it. | Stored on the tour document. Coordinates are sent to Google Places to identify what is around you. |
| Photos you take or choose | To identify the building or landmark in front of you. | Uploaded to Cloud Storage and sent to Google’s Gemini model for identification. Kept with the tour it produced. |
| Tours you create | The title, story text, narration audio, photo, place name and coordinates that make up a tour. | Firestore and Cloud Storage. Visible to every signed-in Lore user once complete — see section 4. |
| Tours you finish listening to | To fill in your Passport. | Firestore, in your own account. Private to you. |
| Walks you save | So you can pick a walk up again later. | Firestore: the walk’s name, its stops, its length and the point on the map it starts from — the middle of the map when you built it, which is where you are unless you had moved the map. Visible to every signed-in Lore user, with your app user ID. |
| Purchases | To know which pass you are on, how many tours are left and when it ends. | Apple or Google takes the payment; we never see your card. RevenueCat receives the store receipt and an app-specific user ID. |
| Crash diagnostics | To find and fix crashes. | Firebase Crashlytics: your app user ID, device model, operating system version, app version and a stack trace. Off in development builds. |
| Usage events — only if you allow it | To see where the app is confusing or broken: which screens you open and which buttons you tap; whether creating a tour worked and, if not, why; when a tour is played; when the paywall is opened and whether a purchase went through; and when the app is opened. | PostHog, hosted in the EU, tied to your app user ID, with device and app details such as the device model, operating system, app version, screen size, network type, language and time zone. Never your photos, your location, place names or what your tours say, and IP addresses are discarded. The app asks once; change it any time in Profile → Share usage data. |
| Device integrity tokens | To tell requests from a real copy of the app apart from requests made by a script. | Firebase App Check, using Apple’s App Attest and Google’s Play Integrity. These identify the app, not you. |
What we do not collect
Lore contains no advertising SDK and no cross-app tracking, and its one analytics tool, PostHog, stays off unless you allow it. We do not collect your contacts, your calendar, your microphone, your health data, your browsing history or your advertising identifier. We do not build advertising profiles, and we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising as those terms are used in California law.
Location, specifically
Lore requests location access because it is a location app: without it there is no map, nothing nearby, and nowhere to pin what you make. It is used in three places, and only while the app is in use:
- To show what is around you — your position is used on your device to centre the map, and sent to Google Places to look up what stands nearby.
- To pin a tour you create — the coordinates at the moment you take the photo are saved on the tour, which is what puts it on the map for you and for everyone else.
- To build a walk — a walk starts from the middle of the map, which is your position unless you have moved the map, and a walk you save keeps that starting point.
Because coordinates are stored on every tour you publish, and published tours are public, the position where you made a tour is public too. Do not create a tour at a place you would rather not have associated with your account — your home, for instance.
You can refuse location access, or withdraw it later in your device settings. Browsing and listening still work; creating a tour does not.
What other people can see
This is the part of Lore most worth understanding before you use it.
A tour you create is public to every signed-in Lore user as soon as it finishes generating. That includes the photo you took, the story, the narration, the place name, the coordinates it is pinned to, and the display name and username on your profile. It appears on the map and in Discover, and anyone signed in can play it.
A tour that is still generating, or that failed, is visible only to you.
If you delete your account, tours you published stay on Lore for other people to listen to, but without your name, your username or the position you were standing at. Write to us if you want one taken down.
A walk you save is public in the same way as a tour: any signed-in Lore user can read its name, its stops, the point it starts from and your app user ID.
These stay private to your account: your email address, your Passport of tours you have listened to, your purchase and allowance state, and any accuracy report you file about a tour.
Who else handles your data
We use a small number of service providers. They process data on our instructions in order to run the app, and none of them are permitted to use it for their own purposes.
| Provider | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Google — Firebase | Sign-in, database, file storage, crash reporting, server functions. | Effectively everything described in section 2. |
| Google — Gemini | Identifies the place in your photo and writes the story. | The photo, your coordinates and the nearby-place context. |
| Google — Maps and Places | Draws the map and looks up what is around you. | Your coordinates. |
| Microsoft — Azure Speech | Reads the story aloud. | The story text. Not your identity or your location. |
| RevenueCat | Checks your purchase with the store and tells us what you are entitled to. | The store receipt and an app-specific user ID. |
| PostHog | Usage analytics, only if you allow it. Hosted in the EU (Frankfurt). | Usage events tied to your app user ID, and device and app details. Not your photos, location or tour content. |
| Apple and Google | Take the payment, and sign you in if you choose Sign in with Apple or Google. | Your payment details, under their own privacy policies — we never receive them — and, for sign-in, your name and email address. |
These providers operate globally, so your data may be processed in the United States and in other countries, including outside the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area. Where that involves a transfer out of the UK or EEA, it is made under the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent approved mechanism.
We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to investigate abuse or to protect someone’s safety. If we are ever compelled to hand over your data we will tell you, unless we are legally prohibited from doing so.
Our legal basis (UK and EEA)
If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we rely on:
- Performance of a contract for your account, the tours you create, and your purchases — without these the app cannot do what you asked it to.
- Consent for camera and location access, which your device asks for separately and which you can withdraw at any time in your device settings; and for usage analytics, which the app asks for once and which you can withdraw at any time in Profile.
- Legitimate interests for crash diagnostics and abuse prevention, which we balance against your privacy by keeping both to the minimum that works — crash reports that carry no usage history, and device attestation that identifies the app rather than you.
- Legal obligation for the purchase records we are required to keep.
How long we keep it
Tours, photos and narration are kept until you delete them; if you delete your account, published tours stay up without your name, as section 8 explains. Your Passport is kept for as long as your account exists. Crash reports are kept by Firebase Crashlytics for 90 days. Usage events, if you allowed them, are kept by PostHog for up to 12 months; turning the setting off stops new ones, and deleting your account deletes them. Purchase records are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires, which is generally seven years, and are kept whether or not you delete your account — a deleted account does not erase a transaction that actually happened.
Deleting your data
You do not need to ask us. In the app, go to Profile → Delete Account. That removes, permanently:
- your Passport of visited tours;
- your profile photo and your profile, including your username, which becomes free for someone else to choose;
- walks you saved;
- any tour that had not finished generating, with its photo;
- your sign-in credentials;
- any usage events you allowed PostHog to record.
Tours you published are not deleted. They stay on Lore, and other people can still find and play them, but your user ID, and with it your name and username, is removed from them, as is the position you were standing at when you took the photo. The photo, the story and the narration stay. To have any of them taken down, write to nate@loreaudiotours.com.
What else survives is the purchase record described in section 7, and any accuracy report you filed about a tour (with your user ID removed from it). Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone; there is no grace period and we cannot restore an account afterwards.
To delete a single tour without closing your account, write to nate@loreaudiotours.com and we will remove it.
Your rights
Depending on where you live you may have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to receive a copy in a portable format, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to withdraw consent you have given. Most of these you can exercise directly in the app; for anything else, write to nate@loreaudiotours.com and we will respond within 30 days.
We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights. If you are in the UK or EEA and you think we have handled your data badly, you may complain to your local supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Children
Lore is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to us and we will delete it. Because tours are public and carry a location, we would ask any parent to think carefully before letting a child publish one.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our infrastructure providers. Access to production data is limited to those who need it to operate the service. Server-side rules govern what any given account is allowed to read or write.
No service can promise perfect security, and we do not. If a breach ever affects your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page. If the change is significant — a new category of data, or a new purpose for data we already hold — we will tell you in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use Lore after a change means you accept the updated policy.
Contact
Lore Audio Tours LLC
30 N Gould St Ste N, Sheridan, WY 82801-6317, United States
nate@loreaudiotours.com