Privacy Policy
In short: Tail End Charlie shares your live location with your own ride group while a ride is active, so the group can stay together. If you explicitly create a time-limited safety link, one trusted contact can also see your last-known position, its freshness, ride status, and your help or emergency-stop status until you revoke the link or it expires. That data is encrypted at rest, kept only briefly, and deleted automatically. The app has no analytics, no advertising, no trackers, and does not sell data. Your emergency contact details stay on your phone unless you choose to share them, or opt in to auto-sharing with the ride leader during an emergency-stop alert — both described below. The website ride planner keeps your draft route and preferences in your browser so it is there when you return. If you choose Create app code, an encrypted shared copy is stored for 30 days so the code or emailed link can reopen it. It uses no cookies or tracking storage. You can read the full detail below, or jump straight to your rights or how to delete your data.
Alpha notice: Tail End Charlie is in active development. As we add and change features, what data we collect and how we handle it may change too, so this policy should be treated as preliminary and is likely to be updated frequently during this stage. We'll keep it accurate as the app evolves.
Who we are
Tail End Charlie is a group-riding app for motorcyclists, developed and operated by Holt Racing Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 12633258, registered office Hockford Cottage, Ash Road, Pirbright, Woking, Surrey, England, GU24 0DE). For the purposes of UK data protection law, Holt Racing Limited is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.
Information we collect
Location data
While you have an active ride open, the app uses your device's GPS to show your position to the rest of your ride group, provide turn-by-turn navigation, and detect and warn about route deviations. Location sharing only happens while a ride screen is open and only with the group you are riding with — you can pause or stop it at any time from within the app.
Ride and group data
To keep a ride group coordinated, the app synchronises a small set of ride events between group members: your chosen display name and marker colour, your live position, hazard reports and route-deviation alerts, an emergency-stop alert if you trigger one, and, if a ride leader records one, the reference route for the ride. This data is only visible to people in the same ride (joined using that ride's six-digit code) and, where the app is online, passes through our relay server described below.
Optional safety-contact link
If you explicitly create a safety link, anyone you give that private link to can use a read-only web page to see your single last-known position, when it was recorded, update freshness, whether the ride is waiting, active, paused or ended, and whether you most recently sent a help or emergency-stop status. The link does not show other riders, your location trail, the route, ride code, nearby identifiers, or your ICE contact or medical notes. You choose a duration of up to 24 hours and can revoke it from the app. An old or missing update is not proof that you are safe.
Emergency contact (ICE) sharing
Your in-case-of-emergency contact name, phone number, and any medical notes stay on your device by default and are not included in the ride and group data above. They only reach anyone else in the ride if:
- you explicitly choose to share them with the whole group, from the ride menu; or
- you have switched on the optional setting to share them automatically with whoever currently holds the ride-leader role, which then happens whenever you send an emergency-stop alert.
When shared, the recipient's app tells your app once they've opened it, so you can see it was seen. A copy a leader (or other recipient) receives is deleted automatically when the ride ends, unless they've called or texted the contact from within the app, in which case it's kept so they can follow up.
Other information that stays on your device
The following is stored only in the app's local storage on your phone and is not sent to our relay server, to other riders, or anywhere else unless you explicitly share or create an app code:
- Your distance-unit and display preferences.
- Imported or recorded GPX route files you haven't shared.
Website ride planner
To provide the save-and-return feature you request by using the planner, the browser stores your ride name, stops, route shape, routing preferences, café-layer preference, and most recently generated route in first-party local storage on your device. The draft is ignored after 180 days and removed the next time you open the planner; you can remove it sooner with Clear local data. Place-search results are cached in the same browser storage for up to seven days to avoid repeating the same search and to respect the search provider's usage limits. The website sets no cookies and uses this storage only for the planner features described here, not for analytics, advertising, or tracking.
If you select Create app code, the route name, stops and GPX route shape are sent to our relay and encrypted at rest. The shared copy is deleted automatically after 30 days. Anyone with its short code can load that route in the app or reopen its editable web copy, so treat the code and link as private. Email route opens your own email application with the link and code filled in; the website does not send or receive the email.
If you draft a motorcycle discovery-layer suggestion, the browser also keeps its name, category, reason, evidence link and selected map geometry in first-party local storage. It is not sent automatically when your connection returns: you must confirm submission. Once sent, the relay keeps it in a private moderation queue. Approved suggestions and their audit provenance are retained with the public catalogue; rejected or superseded suggestions are deleted after 90 days. The public map never exposes an unreviewed submission or submitter network information. You can ask us to review an urgent closure or takedown at the contact address below.
The mobile app follows the same confirmation rule. A suggestion is stored as an offline draft in the app's local preferences and remains there until you open the discovery-layer controls and choose to send queued suggestions. A failed send leaves the draft on the device.
The built-in biker café catalogue and its map locations are stored in the website and matched locally in your browser. When a search does not match that catalogue, the search text is sent to the public Nominatim service. When you add two or more route points, their coordinates are sent to the public OSRM routing service so it can calculate a road-following route. Sorting cafés by road time also sends the start point and café coordinates to OSRM. If you select motorway, major-road, toll, or ferry avoidance, route coordinates are instead sent to the public Valhalla motorcycle routing service operated by FOSSGIS/OpenStreetMap.de. Loading the map also connects your browser to OpenFreeMap to retrieve map styles and tiles. As with ordinary web requests, these providers receive your IP address and standard connection information.
The mobile app's Show mapped speed limit setting is on by default and can be turned off. While it is on and you use the map in Great Britain or the Isle of Man, the app periodically sends your current and a recent prior foreground location point, current GPS accuracy, and sampled points up to one kilometre ahead on your active route to a configured Valhalla road-matching service. If there is no active route, those look-ahead points are projected along your current heading. The points are used to identify the current and upcoming roads. Development and alpha builds use the public FOSSGIS/OpenStreetMap.de Valhalla service. This is used only to identify OpenStreetMap roads with explicitly mapped speed limits. Tail End Charlie keeps prefetched answers only in app memory during the ride and does not store the lookup requests. The provider receives your IP address and standard connection information. Mapped limits are not live and can be incomplete or out of date, so roadside signs always apply.
Device identifier
The app generates a random identifier on your device to distinguish participants within a ride's event stream. It is not your name, email address, phone number, or an Apple or Google account identifier — the app does not have user accounts or sign-in at all.
Technical and security information
Our relay server processes your connection's IP address transiently, to apply rate limits and prevent abuse. It is not written to the database alongside ride data. Standard web-server logs (e.g. connection timestamps) may be kept briefly for security and operational purposes.
How we use your information
- To share your position and status with your own ride group.
- If you explicitly opt in, to show your last-known progress to the trusted safety contact who has your private, time-limited link.
- To provide navigation and route-deviation warnings.
- To relay hazard reports, alerts, and emergency-stop signals between riders in the same ride.
- To operate destination search and road routing (see Third parties, below).
- To store and retrieve a planned route when you explicitly create or use a route code.
- To secure the relay service against abuse and misuse.
We do not use your information for advertising, profiling, or analytics, and we do not sell or rent it to anyone.
Our legal bases for processing
Under UK GDPR, we rely on:
- Consent — for location sharing, which the operating system asks you to grant and which you can withdraw at any time in your device settings or by pausing sharing in the app; and for sharing your emergency contact details, which only happens if you take an explicit sharing action or switch on the default-share-with-leader setting yourself.
- Contract — processing ride events is necessary to provide the group-riding feature you're actively using.
- Legitimate interests — for rate-limiting, abuse prevention, and keeping the relay service secure and reliable.
Who we share information with
Maps, destination search and routing. By default, the app and website ride planner send user-requested destination searches to the OpenStreetMap Foundation's public Nominatim service and route coordinates to the public Project OSRM service, or to the public FOSSGIS/OpenStreetMap.de Valhalla service when motorway, major-road, toll, or ferry avoidance is selected. If mapped speed limits are enabled in the mobile app, the current and a recent prior foreground location point, plus sampled points up to one kilometre ahead on the active route or current heading, are also sent to the configured Valhalla service for road matching. The website also loads map styles and tiles from OpenFreeMap. These are independent third-party services. Nominatim is covered by the OpenStreetMap Foundation's privacy policy.
App marketplaces. Apple and Google process installation and device information as part of operating the App Store and Google Play, under their own privacy policies.
Safety-contact maps. The private observer view does not send a rider's last-known viewport to OpenFreeMap. It requests map assets only from the same Tail End Charlie relay that serves the observer snapshot, or shows coordinates when those private map assets are not configured.
We do not use advertising networks, analytics SDKs, crash-reporting services, or any other third-party trackers in the app, and we do not share ride or location data with data brokers. Location is sent to map and routing providers only for the user-requested and opt-in features described above.
How long we keep information
Ride data is kept only as long as it is useful for the ride it belongs to, and is deleted automatically by the relay server:
| Data | Kept for at most |
|---|---|
| Live location updates | 30 minutes |
| Safety-contact access grant | 24 hours, or less if you choose or revoke it |
| Status messages and route-deviation alerts | 2 hours |
| Hazard reports | 24 hours |
| A shared emergency contact, on the server | 2 hours |
| A ride's remaining records, after the ride is ended | 24 hours |
| A ride record overall (if never explicitly ended) | 72 hours from creation |
| A planned route shared with an app code | 30 days from creation |
A cleanup process runs on the server and permanently deletes anything past its expiry — retention limits are enforced automatically, not just promised. Information kept only on your device (see above) is kept until you delete it, uninstall the app, or clear the website's browser storage, as applicable. A planner draft is ignored after 180 days and removed on your next visit; cached searches expire after seven days. A route-code copy is separate from the browser draft and expires after 30 days even if the original draft remains on your device.
How we protect your information
- Connections to the relay server are encrypted in transit (TLS).
- Ride event content is encrypted at rest on the server using AES-256-GCM. This protects stored data against, for example, theft of a database file or backup; it does not mean the data is end-to-end encrypted between riders, since the relay operator holds the key needed to relay events between group members.
- Route-code GPX content is also encrypted at rest. The short code is a bearer secret: anyone who has it can retrieve that shared route until it expires.
- Ride join codes are short-lived, rate-limited, and stored as encrypted, hashed records rather than plain codes.
- Safety-contact access uses three separate high-entropy credentials for management, publishing and read-only viewing. The relay stores only their hashes, automatically expires them, and cannot use them to join a ride or retrieve the ride event feed.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:
- Ask what personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it.
- Ask us to correct inaccurate data.
- Ask us to delete your data (see below).
- Object to or ask us to restrict certain processing.
- Ask for your data in a portable format, where applicable.
- Withdraw consent at any time, for anything we process based on consent, without affecting processing that already happened.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details below. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.
Deleting your information
- Uninstalling the app immediately removes everything stored on your device, including any ICE details and preferences.
- Ride data on the relay server deletes itself automatically on the schedule above — there is nothing you need to do.
- To request earlier deletion of a specific ride's data, or ask any other question about your data, email us at the address below.
Children
Tail End Charlie is not directed at, or intended for use by, children under 16.
International transfers
Our relay server is operated from the United Kingdom. Where the app or website contacts third-party services described above (maps, destination search and routing), those requests may be processed on infrastructure outside the UK, governed by that service's own privacy terms.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the app changes. We'll update the effective date above when we do, and material changes will be reflected here before or when they take effect.
Contact us
Holt Racing Limited · [email protected]