VistaBound

Privacy Policy


Plain-language summary: We collect what we need to plan and save your trips: your email, a display name, the trip details you type in, and any reviews or photos you choose to post. If you use turn-by-turn navigation in our iPhone or Android app, the app uses your device's location to guide you along the route — that location stays on your device and is not sent to us or stored. We don't run ads and we don't sell your information — ever. We do use Google Analytics on our website to understand how the site is used (details below), but we never send it your name, email, or trip details. A few service providers (email delivery, sign-in, AI itinerary generation, campground data, maps and routing) process limited data so the product can work. If you start a free trial or subscribe, a third-party payment processor handles your payment to bill you; we receive limited billing details (like your subscription status and the last four digits of your card) but never your full card number. To keep people from abusing free trials, we also keep a one-way "fingerprint" of your card — a scrambled code that recognizes the same card without revealing the card number — so one card can't be used to open several trial accounts. When you book a campground through the Service, we share the details needed to make the reservation — like your name, email, phone, and billing address — with our booking partner, Spot2Nite; your card is handled by Spot2Nite's processor. VistaBound is a U.S.-only service and isn't directed to people outside the United States. Email support@vista-bound.com to access or delete your data.

1. Who we are and what this covers

VistaBound is operated by Adventuring Enterprises, LLC, a Florida limited liability company doing business as VistaBound ("VistaBound," "we," "us"). This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, share, and protect personal information when you use the VistaBound website, our iPhone and Android apps, and our trip-planning and navigation features (the "Service").

The Service is offered to users in the United States and is for adults 18 and older. The Service is not directed to, or intended for, individuals located outside the United States, and we do not intentionally collect or process personal information subject to non-U.S. privacy regimes (such as the EU/UK GDPR or other foreign data-protection laws) unless and until we support those markets. If you access the Service from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with local law.

For anything in this policy, contact us at legal@vista-bound.com or by mail at 7901 4th St N # 34812, St. Petersburg, FL 33702.

2. Information we collect

Account information. When you create an account: your email address, a display name you choose, and — if you sign up with a password — a scrambled (hashed) version of your password. We never store your actual password. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your email address, name, and an account identifier from that provider; we do not receive or store your Google or Apple password, contacts, or other account data.

Payment and subscription information. If you start a free trial or buy a subscription, payment is handled by a third-party payment processor. You enter your payment-card details directly with that processor; we do not receive or store your full card number, expiration date, or security code. We receive and store limited billing information from the processor — such as your subscription plan and status, billing period, the card type and last four digits, and a processor-assigned customer/transaction identifier — so we can manage your subscription, recognize trial conversions and renewals, and keep records.

To prevent abuse of our free trials, we also store a one-way card "fingerprint" provided by the payment processor. This fingerprint is a scrambled, non-reversible code derived from your card number; it lets us recognize when the same card is used to open more than one account without our ever receiving or storing the card number itself. We use it only to enforce a limit of one free trial per card and to detect duplicate or fraudulent sign-ups. Because it is one-way and stored in hashed form, it cannot be turned back into your card details. Card fingerprinting does not apply to payments made through a mobile wallet (such as Apple Pay or Google Pay), which do not provide this information.

Campground booking information. When you reserve a campground through the Service (using our booking partner, Spot2Nite), we collect the information needed to make the reservation — your name, email address, phone number, and billing address — along with the reservation details (campground, dates, party size, and rig information), and we keep a record of your reservations (such as the campground, dates, amounts, and confirmation or status). As with subscriptions, you enter your payment-card details directly with the payment processor (here, Spot2Nite's); we do not receive or store your full card number.

Trip information. What you enter to plan a trip: starting point, destination, travel dates, trip length, RV length, daily driving limit, and interests — plus the itinerary that gets generated and any edits you make. Saved trips are stored with your account. Locations in your trips are places you type or pick, not readings from your device.

Device location (mobile apps only). When you use turn-by-turn navigation in our iPhone or Android app, the app accesses your device's precise location (GPS) to show where you are on the map and to advance the directions as you drive. This happens on your device — the navigation engine matches your position to the route locally. We do not receive, transmit, or store your device location on our servers. To keep guidance going when the screen is off or the app is in the background, the app uses background location (on iPhone, this is the "Always" location permission; on Android, a foreground service). You can grant, limit, or revoke the app's location access at any time in your device's settings; without it, turn-by-turn navigation won't work, but the rest of the app still does. The website does not collect device location at all.

Reviews and photos. Campground and attraction reviews and photos you choose to post — including content you publish from a trip journal. These are public, shown with your display name. Photos are re-encoded before storage and their embedded metadata (such as the location where a photo was taken) is stripped.

Trip journal and followers. You can add photos and notes to your own trips (a "trip journal") and share a trip by link. People can choose to follow a trip by email to get its updates, and a trip's owner can invite people by email to follow along. When someone follows a trip or is invited, we collect their email address, whether they opted in to hear from VistaBound generally (a separate, optional choice), and records of the confirmation and the emails we send them. We use a double opt-in: a follower receives trip updates only after clicking a confirmation link, and every trip email includes a one-click unsubscribe. If a trip owner enters someone else's email address to invite them, the owner confirms they have a basis to contact that person (see our Terms of Service).

Policy acceptance records. When you accept our Terms and this policy, we record which versions you accepted, when, and from what IP address and browser, so we can prove what you agreed to.

Technical information. Our servers use your IP address temporarily for rate limiting (protecting the Service from abuse); these counters expire within about an hour and are not stored in our database. On our website we use Google Analytics to measure site usage (see Usage analytics below). We do not run advertising trackers or session recording.

Usage analytics. On our website we use Google Analytics (GA4), a service provided by Google, to understand how visitors find and use the site — for example, which pages are viewed, roughly where visitors are (approximate, city-level, derived from IP address, which Google does not retain in this configuration), and general device and browser type. We also tag each visit as coming from a web browser or from inside our mobile app. Google Analytics sets its own cookies (such as _ga) to tell one browser from another across visits. We do not send Google Analytics your name, email address, password, payment details, or the contents of your trips. Google processes this information as our service provider; for more, see Google's Privacy & Terms. You can opt out using Google's browser opt-out add-on, by blocking or clearing cookies in your browser, or by using a browser that sends a Global Privacy Control signal.

Cookies and local storage. We use only cookies that are necessary for the Service to work, plus analytics cookies:

  • a session cookie (rvp_session) that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days;
  • short-lived cookies (about 5–10 minutes) that secure the Google/Apple sign-in handshake;
  • Google Analytics cookies (such as _ga) that measure site usage, described under Usage analytics above.

Your browser's local storage holds a working copy of the trip you're editing and your display name, so your draft survives a page reload. We use analytics cookies (Google Analytics, above) but no advertising cookies. Because VistaBound is a U.S.-only service and we use no advertising cookies, we don't present a cookie-consent banner; you can still opt out of analytics through your browser controls or Google's opt-out tools described above.

3. How we use information

We use the information above to:

  • create and secure your account, and keep you signed in;
  • generate itineraries and save and sync your trips;
  • compute routes and provide turn-by-turn navigation in our apps;
  • process your payments, start and manage your subscription, and recognize trial conversions and renewals;
  • measure and improve how our website is used (Google Analytics, Section 2);
  • show your reviews and photos to other users (that's their purpose);
  • send transactional and service email — such as account verification, password reset, trip-collaboration notices, and confirming a trip you chose to follow;
  • send trip journal updates by email to people who have confirmed they want updates from a specific trip, and invitations to follow a trip on behalf of that trip's owner — each with a one-click unsubscribe;
  • send marketing email (occasional VistaBound news and tips) to people who gave a separate, optional opt-in, with a one-click unsubscribe — we never add you to our general marketing list without that opt-in;
  • send existing subscribers occasional emails about other VistaBound plans and features that may be relevant to their subscription — for example, letting a Campsite Radar subscriber know about the full trip planner — each with a one-click unsubscribe you can use at any time;
  • protect the Service from fraud and abuse — including rate limiting, security monitoring, and using the card fingerprint described in Section 2 to detect when the same payment card is used to open multiple accounts or claim more than one free trial — and enforce our Terms;
  • keep records of policy acceptance;
  • comply with law.

4. AI processing

When you generate an itinerary, the trip details you entered (locations, dates, rig size, daily drive limit, interests) are sent to a third-party AI provider to produce the plan. Your email address, name, and account information are not included in these requests, and the provider does not use your data to train its models.

5. Who we share information with

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We share limited data with service providers that the Service needs to function:

  • An email delivery provider — delivers our account, verification, and password-reset email, and — for the trip journal feature — trip-update emails, invitations, and follow-confirmation emails (it receives the recipient's email address and the message content).
  • A third-party payment processor — processes your free-trial enrollment and subscription payments. It receives the payment-card details you enter and the billing information needed to charge you, acting as our service provider for billing (and as a processor under its own terms). We send it the data needed to set up and charge your subscription (for example, your email and chosen plan); we do not send it your trip details. The processor also applies its own fraud screening to your payment and provides us the one-way card fingerprint we use for trial-abuse prevention (Section 2).
  • Spot2Nite (campground booking) — when you reserve a campground through the Service, we send Spot2Nite the information needed to create and manage that reservation, including your name, email address, phone number, billing address, and reservation details (dates, party size, and rig information). Spot2Nite acts as our service provider for booking and as an independent booking provider under its own terms; you enter your payment-card details directly with Spot2Nite's payment processor, which we do not receive.
  • Google — if you use Google sign-in (the sign-in handshake); and Google's Places service receives campground names and trip-area coordinates to look up ratings, photos, and place suggestions. These lookups are about places, not about you, and aren't tied to your identity.
  • Google Analytics — receives website usage data (pages viewed, approximate location, and device/browser type) to help us measure and improve the site. It does not receive your name, email, trip details, or payment information. (This is a separate Google service from Google sign-in and Google Places, above.)
  • Apple — if you use Apple sign-in, when offered (the sign-in handshake).
  • A third-party AI provider — receives trip details to generate itineraries (Section 4).
  • Recreation.gov / RIDB — receives campground names and coordinates to fetch public facility data.
  • A maps and routing provider — provides our map tiles and computes road routes and drive times. It receives the coordinates of your trip's stops (the places you typed or picked) to calculate routes for planning and navigation. Your device's live location is not sent to it — position tracking during navigation happens on your device.
  • A web-font provider — your browser loads web fonts directly from a third-party server, which sees your IP address, as with any website resource.
  • A cloud hosting and database provider — runs our servers and stores our data on our behalf.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the rights and safety of users or the public, or as part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets (we would notify you in that case).

6. We don't sell or "share" your information

We do not sell personal information, and we do not "share" it for cross-context behavioral advertising as those terms are defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act and comparable comprehensive state privacy laws. We have not done so in the preceding 12 months. Because we don't, there is no need for a "Do Not Sell or Share" opt-out, and we don't process personal information for targeted advertising or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

7. How long we keep information

  • Account information — kept while your account exists; deleted when your account is deleted.
  • Saved trips — kept until you delete them; trips you delete are purged from our systems within about 30 days.
  • Device location — used transiently on your device during navigation and not retained by us; we never receive or store it.
  • Reviews and photos — kept while posted; you can request removal (Section 8). Because reviews are public content, a published review may remain after your account is deleted, with your name removed so it is no longer linked to you.
  • Trip journal followers — a follower's email address and preferences are kept while they are subscribed to a trip; when they unsubscribe we stop emailing that address, and follower records are deleted when the trip or the owner's account is deleted.
  • Sessions — expire after 30 days of inactivity; sign-out deletes them immediately.
  • Email verification and password-reset tokens — expire within 24 hours and 1 hour respectively.
  • Payment and subscription records — billing records and the limited payment information we receive are kept while your subscription is active and afterward for as long as needed for accounting, tax, and legal recordkeeping, even after account deletion where the law requires. The one-way card fingerprint we use for trial-abuse prevention may be retained in hashed form after account deletion, solely to continue preventing the same card from being used to open repeat free-trial accounts.
  • Campground reservation records — the reservation details we keep (campground, dates, amounts, and confirmation or status) are retained while your account is active and afterward as needed for accounting, tax, and legal recordkeeping.
  • Policy acceptance records — kept for as long as we may need to demonstrate acceptance, including after account deletion where the law allows.

8. Your rights and choices

You can correct your display name in the app, and you can sign out of all devices by changing your password.

Depending on your state, you may have rights under a comprehensive state privacy law — including the California Consumer Privacy Act and the comprehensive privacy laws of Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Iowa, Delaware, New Jersey, Nebraska, and New Hampshire, among other states whose laws take effect over time. Where they apply, these laws may give you the right to know/access the personal information we hold about you, get a portable copy, correct it, or delete it. We honor these requests for everyone, regardless of state.

To exercise any of these rights, email support@vista-bound.com from the address on your account (that's how we verify it's you), and tell us what you'd like. We will respond within 45 days. To delete your account, email us the same way; once we confirm the request is yours, we will delete your account and the personal information associated with it. We do not offer in-app self-service deletion at this time, so account deletion is handled through this request.

If you follow a trip by email, you can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any trip email, or by emailing support@vista-bound.com to be removed; unsubscribing stops all further email about that trip. If you opted in to hear from VistaBound generally, you can withdraw that the same way.

We will never discriminate against you — by degrading the Service or otherwise — for exercising a privacy right. If we decline a request, we'll explain why, and you may appeal by replying to our response; we'll have someone other than the original decision-maker review it.

9. Security

We work to protect your information: passwords are hashed with a modern algorithm (scrypt), session and email tokens are stored only as one-way hashes, cookies are inaccessible to scripts (httpOnly), and photo metadata is stripped on upload. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password. If we learn of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you as required by law.

10. Children

The Service is for adults 18 and older. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 — let alone under 13. If we learn that we have, we will delete it. If you believe a minor has an account, contact support@vista-bound.com.

11. Changes to this policy

This policy has a version number and effective date shown at the top. We may update it from time to time; when we make a material change — like a new category of data collected or a new kind of sharing — we will post the updated policy with a new effective date and give you reasonable notice (for example, by email or through the Service). Your continued use of the Service after the update takes effect means you accept it. If you do not agree, your choice is to stop using the Service and, if you wish, ask us to delete your account. Minor clarifications update the "Last updated" date.

12. Contact us

Privacy questions and requests: legal@vista-bound.com

Adventuring Enterprises, LLC d/b/a VistaBound
7901 4th St N # 34812, St. Petersburg, FL 33702

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