Privacy Policy
Last updated: November 4, 2026
1. Introduction
This Privacy Policy explains how we process personal data when you use Mappu, the main purposes of processing, who we may share data with, and the rights you can exercise.
2. Information we collect
We collect the data needed to provide the service and, in some cases, additional data when you enable optional features:
- Account and profile data: email, display name, and profile preferences you choose to save.
- Purchase and billing data: payment references, purchase status, refunds, reversals, and credit balance; full card details are handled by the payment provider.
- Notification data: push tokens or browser subscriptions, platform, and notification preferences if you enable these features.
- Travel and interaction data: travel preferences, itineraries, prompts, chats, guide history, and generated content associated with your account or session.
- Sensitive data entered voluntarily: Mappu is a general travel-planning service and does not normally require data relating to health, allergies, accessibility, religion, or other special-category data. We ask you not to enter them in free-text fields unless a feature clearly requires them. If they are entered voluntarily, we process them only to the extent needed to technically handle the request, assist you, protect the service, or proceed with deletion. Unless a different legal basis or separate explicit consent applies, we do not use them for dedicated sensitive personalization.
- Location data: precise device location when you enable Walk Mode, nearby search, or other location-based guide features, including, on supported native devices, the continuation of an active Walk Mode session in the background while that walk is in progress.
- Approximate location: we use your approximate location (country or city from your connection, or your device’s time zone and, only if you have already allowed it, your device location) to show relevant options; it isn’t stored.
- Media and shared content: optionally uploaded images, invites, collaborator roles, invite messages, and recipient details you provide for sharing.
- Walks and keepsakes: the walks you complete (which walk, its language, the first and last time you walked it) and the keepsake link, if you choose to share it. Anyone with the link sees that walk's map and the month you walked it, until you stop sharing. We don't store your GPS track.
- Support, feedback, and notification data: support requests, reports, feedback, data connected to notifications, and related settings.
- Technical and security data: browser or app type, IP address, session identifiers, short-lived transfer codes, and data needed to prevent abuse or protect the service.
- Clickout and referral data, where applicable: limited records of the opening of some external offers for reconciliation, audit, and fraud prevention.
- With analytics consent, optional diagnostics may include page views, product interactions, app analytics identifiers, masked session replay and heatmaps, errors, and performance. If Ads, offers & app installs is also enabled, we may record limited native-app install attribution. On the website, that category also shares the click identifier of a visit from our Google ads with Google Ads to measure sign-ups and purchases. Raw referral details and attribution tokens are not retained. We also keep a broad record of how you first reached Mappu (source type, landing page and campaign label) with your session, account and purchases.
- Last use: the date you last used the app, saved with your account or session.
- On your device: in the Mappu app, during a walk, the Lock Screen, widgets and, on Android, the Walk Mode notification can show the walk’s title, the place being narrated and the time left; on the Lock Screen, place names follow your phone’s privacy settings. Guides and walks you open can also appear in your phone’s search, widgets and shortcuts. This stays on your device and is removed when the walk ends or when you sign out. On iPhone, the app also adds Mappu’s published guides and walks to your phone’s search: this list is the same for everyone, holds nothing about you and stays after you sign out. Connected headphones, cars or watches receive the narration title for playback controls. If you ask about a guide while your iPhone is offline, Apple’s on-device model (where Apple Intelligence is available and turned on) can answer from the guide text already on your phone: the answer is created on your device and is not sent to Mappu or Apple. During a walk, the question is still sent to Mappu once you are back online, as usual.
Depending on the feature used, we may receive data from these sources:
- Directly from you when you create an account, plan trips, upload content, share itineraries, or contact support.
- From other users when they invite you to collaborate or enter your email address to send you an invitation.
- From your device, browser, or app when you use the service, enable notifications, or use location-based features.
- From payment providers, app stores, security providers, and technical providers that confirm purchases, help protect the service, or provide data needed for the requested feature.
- From map, location, and public or partner sources when needed to generate the results you requested.
3. How we use your information
We use the information collected to:
- Create and manage your account and provide the requested service.
- Manage payments, credit packs, refunds, reversals, and related accounting records.
- Generate itineraries, guide responses, and other travel content based on your inputs and preferences.
- Suggest partner tours and tickets that suit you. In the chat we use the themes you mention (performance of the contract). We use the interests and trip style in your profile only if you turn on "Use my interests to suggest experiences" (consent, which you can withdraw at any time), and only in your own account, never on public pages. Only travel themes from a fixed list, never sensitive data. Partners get only a generic search keyword, never who you are or your interests; we only count total clicks per theme.
- Provide location-based features such as Walk Mode, nearby search, and guide content linked to the area you are in.
- Manage sharing, collaboration, support, feedback, and assistance requests.
- Process optionally uploaded images for multimodal follow-up when you choose to use that feature.
- Send notifications and service communications when needed or when you choose to receive them.
- Protect the service, prevent abuse, and improve reliability, quality, and security.
- Run optional diagnostics and analytics only when the relevant preference is active, to measure page views, reliability, performance, low-cardinality product interactions, and masked replay/heatmaps. This includes which public pages and broad traffic sources lead to sign-ups, walks and purchases.
- Comply with legal obligations and defend our rights.
- Measure, reconcile, and verify the opening of some external offers or referrals, where applicable, also for audit and fraud-prevention purposes.
- With your consent, send you the Mappu newsletter: new walks, cities and travel ideas, about once a month. You opt in with an unticked box at sign-up, the toggle in Profile, or a one-time prompt in the app; we keep a record of when, where and in which language you agreed. You can unsubscribe at any time in Profile or with the link in every email.
- If you buy credits or a walk pass, email you about Mappu's own similar products (walks, guides and credit packs), unless you tick "Don't send me offers by email" at purchase. You can refuse at any time and at no cost, in Profile or with the link in every email. Customers who bought before this notice was added receive these emails only if they opt in to the newsletter.
We process data under different legal bases depending on the feature you use:
- Contract or pre-contract steps: to create and manage the account, generate the requested itineraries, complete credit purchases, provide the main features of the service, and send necessary service communications. Providing the data needed for these purposes is necessary; if you do not provide it, some or all main features may not work. Optional data remains optional.
- Consent: for cookies and optional tools, optional diagnostics, optional notifications when you choose to enable them, and, if introduced in the future, specific features requiring separate explicit consent. You can withdraw consent at any time, without affecting processing carried out before withdrawal.
- Legitimate interests: to protect the service, prevent fraud and abuse, enforce usage limits, diagnose reliability issues, count how many people use the service (in aggregate), and defend our rights.
- Legal obligations: to keep accounting records, respond to lawful requests, and manage privacy requests.
- Direct marketing to customers: for emails about Mappu's own similar products to people who bought from us, our legitimate interest under art. 130(4) of the Italian Privacy Code (Legislative Decree 196/2003) and art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, with the right to object at purchase and in every email. The newsletter itself is based on consent (art. 6(1)(a) GDPR and art. 130(1) of the Italian Privacy Code). We do not share your email address with third parties for their own marketing; marketing emails are sent through our email service provider.
4. How we protect your data
We adopt appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data.
5. Third-party services
We use trusted external providers to deliver the service:
- Infrastructure, authentication, hosting, storage, email, and technical-delivery providers such as AWS.
- Payment providers and app stores such as Stripe, Apple, and Google for purchases, refunds, and related checks.
- AI, maps, location, authentication, and other platform-service providers such as Google and Anthropic (Claude).
- Content delivery (CDN), DNS, security and anti-bot protection providers such as Cloudflare, including Turnstile checks for anonymous access.
- Optional diagnostics and analytics providers such as Sentry, Google Analytics, Firebase Analytics, and Microsoft Clarity when the relevant preference is active. Microsoft Clarity is used only after analytics consent to understand page/app interactions, session replay, and heatmaps with sensitive surfaces masked; custom events/tags must not contain free-text prompts, destinations, exact coordinates, identifiers, or payment data. Google Analytics and Firebase Analytics are configured without Google signals or advertising personalization; mobile Firebase Analytics is also configured without IDFA or Advertising ID collection.
- Notification and technical-communication providers when you enable those features.
- Travel, clickout, and external services you voluntarily choose to open from Mappu.
- YouTube (Google): the video stories on guide pages, in privacy-enhanced mode. The video loads from YouTube only when you press play; Google’s privacy policy then applies.
- Google sign-in (One Tap): when you open the sign-up sheet on the website, we load Google Identity Services to offer a one-tap sign-in with your Google account. If you choose an account, Google sends us your email address and Google account identifier, which we use only to create your Mappu account or sign you in; if you close the prompt, we receive nothing. Google’s privacy policy applies.
- Voice dictation (your browser’s or phone’s speech recognition): when you tap the microphone in the chat, in a guide or in Walk Mode, your browser or phone turns your speech into text with its own speech-recognition service (for example Google’s on Chrome and usually on Android, Apple’s on iPhone and iPad). Mappu receives only the text, not the audio. The browser or operating system picks the service, and its provider handles the audio under its own privacy policy.
- Public and open-data sources useful for geocoding, geospatial context, or destination information.
- Nomad: eSIM affiliate links and click attribution when you choose to open external offers.
- Booking.com and CJ (Commission Junction), our affiliate network: with marketing consent, the stays search from Booking.com and CJ’s tracking, which credits bookings made through it to Mappu. Booking.com and CJ set their own cookies and apply their own privacy policies.
We share data only to the extent necessary to provide the service, comply with legal obligations, protect the platform, or manage features you request.
When you open, book, or purchase an external offer or destination site (for example a hotel, flight, marketplace, experience, or eSIM provider), the relevant provider becomes independently responsible for its own processing under its own privacy notice and terms.
6. Connected AI assistants
You can use Mappu from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity through Mappu’s connector (an MCP server). The assistant is a third-party service governed by its provider’s terms and privacy notice, and that provider decides what it keeps from your conversation. Mappu receives only what the assistant sends to Mappu’s tools; the connector does not ask for or receive your name, email, account, location or payment details.
Trip plans saved by an assistant
- What we store: the trip plan the assistant wrote and sent to Mappu (title, language, destinations, optional dates and, for each day, the stops with times, durations, descriptions and notes). No Mappu account is needed to save it.
- The plan is saved as a draft that opens only with the private link the assistant gives you. Anyone who has the link can view the draft and keep it, so share it only with people you choose.
- Drafts are deleted automatically 7 days after they are saved unless you keep them.
- To prevent abuse, we count daily requests per IP address using a one-way hash of the address, not the address itself; these counters contain no plan content and expire automatically. For 7 days we also keep hashed values that let us return the same draft if the assistant repeats the request.
- If you open the link, choose to keep the plan and sign in, the plan becomes an itinerary in your Mappu account and from then on follows the rules for your itineraries: you can edit or delete it, it is included in your data export and it is deleted with your account. After you keep it, Mappu looks up the plan’s place names, with the area of your trip, in Google Places to put them on the map; you can pick any place it does not find.
- Links returned to the assistant carry campaign parameters showing that they came from an assistant tool. If you have accepted analytics cookies, we use them to count visits that come from assistants; when you keep a plan we record an event that contains no plan content, identifiers or tokens.
Connecting an assistant to your account
- Mappu may also let you connect an assistant to your Mappu account so that it saves plans directly to your trips. This feature is not active yet; until it is, every use of the connector is anonymous. Once it is active, a connection is made only after you sign in and approve the request on Mappu’s own consent page.
- If you approve, we store which assistant you connected (the name and identifier it registers with Mappu), the permission you granted (saving trip plans to your account and staying connected without asking you again), when the connection was created and last used, and its security tokens. Refresh tokens and one-time codes are stored only as hashes; access tokens expire after one hour, and a connection that is not used for 30 days expires and must be approved again.
- You can see and disconnect your connected assistants at any time in Profile > Connected assistants; disconnecting stops the assistant’s access immediately.
- Connections are deleted when you delete your account (access stops as soon as you request deletion), and your data export lists them (assistant name, permissions, creation and last-use dates).
8. Your rights and choices
You have control over your personal information:
- Access: Request a copy of your personal data
- Correction: Update or correct your information
- Deletion: Request deletion of your account and associated data
- Portability: Export your itineraries, travel data, and eligible uploaded files
- Restriction: Ask us to limit certain processing while we assess a request, dispute, or objection
- Objection: Refuse certain data-processing activities
- Withdrawal of Consent: Change your privacy preferences at any time
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at [email protected]
If you live in the EEA, the UK, or another jurisdiction with similar rights, you may also lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
Mappu does not rely on solely automated decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects on you without meaningful human or user involvement. AI outputs are supportive travel suggestions, not decisions on eligibility for credit, employment, insurance, housing, healthcare, or similar rights.
9. Children's privacy
Mappu is not intended for minors who may not use the service under applicable law. In Italy, online consent for information-society services is generally valid from age 14; below that age, authorization from a parent or guardian is required. If you believe a minor has provided us with data in breach of applicable law, please contact us.
10. Data retention
We keep personal data for as long as needed to provide the service, comply with legal obligations, handle disputes, prevent abuse, and defend our rights. In general, account and itinerary data remain linked to the user relationship until deletion or account closure, unless the law requires longer retention; payment and accounting data are kept for the periods required by applicable law; security and anti-abuse logs are kept for limited and proportionate periods; guest sessions and transfer codes have short durations; saved guide history may be kept for up to one year; consent records may be retained for compliance purposes; and clickout or referral records, where present, may be kept for up to 12 months for audit, reconciliation, and fraud prevention.
11. International data transfers
Your information may be transferred to and processed in countries other than your own, including by providers operating globally or from the United States and other jurisdictions. Where required, we rely on an adequacy decision or on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, supplemented where necessary. You can contact us at [email protected] for more information about the relevant transfer mechanism or safeguards.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version will be published on this page.
13. Contact us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, our practices, or your rights, please contact us:
Andrea Fenu, impresa individuale, operating as Mappu / mappu.ai, acts as controller for the processing described in this notice. For privacy matters, you can contact us at [email protected].
Company:
Andrea Fenu, impresa individuale, operating as Mappu / mappu.ai
Email:
[email protected]Address:
Via Giovanni Pascoli 32, 34129 Trieste (TS), Italy
P. IVA:
01414800324
Legal info:
Legal infoAdditional information for Japan and Taiwan
This information adds to the rest of this policy for people in Japan or Taiwan. Where it differs from the rest of the policy, it prevails for them.
For people living in Japan
Under Japan’s Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI), which also applies to businesses abroad that handle the data of people in Japan (Article 171):
- Business operator: Andrea Fenu, sole trader, operating as Mappu / mappu.ai, Via Giovanni Pascoli 32, 34129 Trieste (TS), Italy. Representative: Andrea Fenu. Contact: [email protected].
- Purposes of use: the purposes listed in section 3 of this policy. We use personal data only within those purposes, unless you agree or the law allows otherwise.
- Your requests (Articles 32–35): you can ask us to tell you the purposes of use; to disclose the retained personal data about you and the records of its provision to third parties, including in electronic form; to correct, add to or delete it; and to stop using it, erase it or stop providing it to third parties. Email [email protected] from your account’s email address; we may ask you to confirm your identity. We charge no fee.
- Complaints (Article 40): send questions and complaints about how we handle personal data to [email protected]. We reply in Japanese or English.
- Security measures (Article 23): we have written rules on how personal data is handled; access is limited to those who need it and protected by authentication and access logs; data is encrypted in transit and, on our main infrastructure, at rest; anyone handling data on our behalf is bound to confidentiality; we choose providers able to protect it and bind them by contract.
- Where we handle data: in Italy, where we operate, and in Germany, where our main infrastructure is (Amazon Web Services, Frankfurt). Both are in the European Union, which Japan’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PPC) has recognised as having an equivalent level of protection. Some providers handle data in the United States: Anthropic, Apple, Cloudflare, Google, Stripe, Sentry and Microsoft. The United States has no general federal data protection law, and some laws let authorities access data for national security purposes; we took this into account in choosing the measures described here.
- Provision to third parties in foreign countries (Article 28): when providers outside Japan handle personal data for us, we rely on contracts that require them to take measures equivalent to those the APPI requires (Article 16(i) of the PPC Rules), we check periodically that they keep to them and, on request, we give you information about those measures.
- Cookie identifiers and similar data (Article 31): we let third parties receive cookie or device identifiers, or browsing data, that they might link to your personal data only after you have turned them on in the cookie settings. You can withdraw your choice at any time. What each tool sends is set out in the “External transmissions” section of our Cookie Policy.
- Data breaches (Article 26): if a leak, loss or damage of personal data meets the thresholds of the PPC Rules (Article 7), we report it to the PPC and notify the people affected.
Notice for users in Taiwan
Under Article 8 of Taiwan’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), which also applies to the data of Taiwan nationals handled outside Taiwan (Article 51(2)), we inform you of the following:
- Collecting business: Andrea Fenu, sole trader, operating as Mappu / mappu.ai, Via Giovanni Pascoli 32, 34129 Trieste (TS), Italy, [email protected].
- Purposes (codes from the Ministry of Justice list of specific purposes): 040 marketing (only with your consent); 063 collection, processing and use of personal data by non-government agencies to meet legal obligations; 069 contract, quasi-contract or other legal relationships; 090 consumer and customer management and service; 135 information and communication services; 136 information, communication and database management; 137 information security and management; 148 online shopping and other e-commerce services; 152 management of advertising and commercial activities (only with your consent); 157 surveys, statistics and research analysis.
- Categories of data: C001 data identifying the person (such as name, email, IP address and device identifiers); C002 data identifying finances (payment references; card data stays with the payment provider); C011 personal description (such as language and travel preferences); C093 financial transactions (purchases and credit balance); C132 unclassified data (such as prompts, chats and, when you use Walk Mode, your location).
- Period: as long as your account exists or as each purpose requires, then for the retention periods in section 10. Area: Taiwan, Italy, the European Union, the United States and the other countries where the providers in section 5 operate. Recipients: us, the providers in section 5 and, when you choose to open them, partners. Manner: electronically, by automated and manual processing.
- Your rights (Article 3): to ask whether we process your data and to view it, to get a copy, to supplement or correct it, to ask us to stop collecting, processing or using it, and to ask us to delete it. Email [email protected]. We decide on viewing and copy requests within 15 days and on correction, stopping and deletion requests within 30 days; if we need more time, we may extend each period once, by no longer than the period itself, and tell you why in writing (Article 13). We charge no fee.
- If you don’t give us data: you may choose not to. Without the data needed for an account or a purchase, we can’t provide those features; optional data only affects optional features.
- Data breaches (Article 12): if your personal data is stolen, disclosed, altered or otherwise breached, we tell you in a suitable way once we have established the facts.
- Transfers outside Taiwan: data may be handled outside Taiwan as described above. We follow any restriction the competent authority sets under Article 21.
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