Kinetiq1. Who we are
Kinetiq is a group-travel app operated by Kinetiq Travel LLC. It helps you plan trips day by day, see the people you are travelling with on a live map, stay in touch, and find things to book.
Questions, requests, or complaints: support@kinetiqtravel.com.
2. What we collect
You give us
- Account: name, email, profile photo, and a friend code that others use to add you.
- Trips: destinations, dates, stops, times, notes, bookings and ticket references, packing lists, and shared expenses.
- Content: photos and PDFs you attach (tickets, confirmations), moments you post, and your messages, comments and voice notes.
- Relationships: friends, trip companions, and anyone you designate as family (see §5).
Collected automatically
- Location: see §4. This is the most sensitive thing we handle, and it has its own section.
- Device and diagnostics: app version, device model, OS version, crash reports and performance timings, via Google Crashlytics. Crash reports carry the screen and action involved, never your coordinates, tokens, message contents, or email.
- Product analytics: which screens and features are used, as event names with counts only (never your location, messages, name or email), via Google Analytics for Firebase. We've turned off its collection of your device's advertising ID, and Kinetiq shows no third-party ads.
- Booking activity: when you tap through to a travel partner, we record which surface you tapped from and which partner you were sent to. See §6.
We do not collect: your contact list, or your browsing outside the app. Card details are typed into our payment processor's own form and never reach us (see §6).
3. Why we use it
To run your trips and keep them in sync across your group; to show group members to each other on the map when you choose to share; to deliver messages and notifications; to suggest plans and re-pace your day (see §3.1); to sell and refund eSIM data (see §6); to show travel options and credit referrals to us; to keep the service secure and diagnose crashes; and to meet legal obligations.
Legal bases (UK/EU users): performance of our contract with you (running the app), your consent (location sharing, notifications, marketing), our legitimate interests (security, crash diagnostics, affiliate attribution), and legal obligation.
3.1 AI features
Kinetiq's planning assistant works from your trip's context: destination, dates, the stops already in the plan, your pace and interests, and the weather.
- When you use an AI feature, the text prompts and trip details needed to answer are processed by third-party AI providers (currently Google Vertex AI) acting on our instructions.
- We do not use your personal inputs to train public AI models, and our provider contracts prohibit them from doing so.
- We send only what the request needs. If you scan a menu or a receipt, that photo is sent too. We do not send your coordinates, your messages, your private notes, or other people's personal details to AI providers.
- Map and weather features are different. To find places, work out walking times or suggest a meeting point, we send the locations those features need to Google Maps Platform. Weather forecasts come from Open-Meteo, using the location of places in your plan, not your own position.
- AI output is a draft. You preview Remi's plan before anything is added.
4. Location: the important part
Precise location is the core of Kinetiq's group features, and it is entirely under your control.
- We only share your location with people you have chosen: members of a trip you have joined, and family observers you have added (§5).
- Sharing modes. You can share with everyone on a trip, with a selected subset, or turn sharing off (incognito). When sharing is off we send no coordinates at all: not an approximate position, not an old one. Others simply see "Sharing off".
- Precision. Family observers see an area-level location (neighbourhood and city), not a street address. Trip companions see precise location.
- When we collect it. Only while the app is open and you are sharing on an active trip. We check less often when you are standing still, and collect nothing when sharing is paused or the app is closed. Your group sees your last shared position until you open the app again.
- Retention. Live positions are held briefly and expire automatically within minutes. Separately, we keep a limited history of the countries and cities you have visited for your Footprints map: city-level summaries only, not a trail of coordinates. Footprints summaries are retained until you clear them or delete your account; there is no automatic expiry, because the map is a record you build deliberately.
- You can revoke it at any time in your device settings or in the app; the app remains usable without location, with reduced group features.
4.1 Incognito sends nothing, and there are no exceptions
When you go incognito, your device stops sending coordinates. Not less often, not less precisely. It stops.
Your companions see that you are sharing nothing, and nothing more. No position, no area, no last-known point. The same is true of your family observers, and it is enforced on our servers rather than hidden in the app, so there is no request that returns your location while incognito is on.
There is no override. No feature of Kinetiq sends your location against a setting you have chosen, and none of our staff can turn your sharing back on.
If you want to go further, turn sharing off for your account entirely (Share location: off) or revoke the location permission in your device settings. The app stays usable either way, with reduced group features.
5. Sharing with other people
- Trip companions see the trip plan, shared stops and bookings, and your location per your sharing mode.
- Diets you add to a trip, such as allergies, are shown to the people on that trip.
- Family observers are people you explicitly mark as family. They get a read-only view of your group's location and plans for the trip you are on while that trip is running, at area-level precision. They cannot see past trips or trips you have not started, they cannot see anything once the trip ends, and they can never send, edit or act on anything.
- Moments: you share each moment with Everyone (your friends' Moments feed), Selected friends, or Only me. Reducing a moment's visibility removes it from people who no longer qualify.
- Your account setting (Public, Friends only or Private) decides who outside your friends can see your profile, moments and the countries you've visited. By default, a new account starts at Friends only; existing accounts keep their setting. You can change this in Settings, Privacy.
- Blocking someone stops them seeing your content, your location, and your profile, and prevents them contacting you.
- Private notes stay private to you. Free-time details are never disclosed to others.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers for their own marketing.
6. Bookings, eSIM data and payments
Travel bookings
For stays, flights, experiences and transfers, Kinetiq is not the merchant of record. We show options and link you to partners (for example Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Vrbo, Klook, Aviasales, EKTA and Tiqets) through affiliate networks including CJ Affiliate and Travelpayouts.
- You book on the partner's own site or app, at their price. There is no Kinetiq markup, and for those bookings we never see or store your payment details.
- When you tap through, we pass a tracking code that doesn't identify you. It tells us which part of Kinetiq the tap came from (for example "discover" or "trip plan"), never your name, email or user ID. We record the tap so we can be paid a commission.
- The partner's own privacy policy applies once you're on their site.
- On this website, our marketing pages (the home page, About, Business, For tour operators, and the waitlist confirmation page) load a Travelpayouts affiliate script so that a booking you start from one of our links can be credited to us. It may set cookies or similar identifiers in your browser, governed by Travelpayouts' own privacy policy. It is not loaded on this page, the Terms, the Support page, or the account deletion page.
- Google Places is used to look up places you search for. Those queries are sent to Google and are governed by Google's privacy policy.
eSIM data
For eSIM data, Kinetiq is the merchant of record. When you buy an eSIM data pack or a top-up, you buy it from Kinetiq Travel LLC, and Stripe processes the payment (including Google Pay, which runs through Stripe).
- Your card details go straight to Stripe. You type them into Stripe's own payment form inside the app. Kinetiq never receives, stores or sees your full card number, expiry date or security code.
- What we keep about a purchase: the order (destination, plan, price, date, and whether it was refunded), the card brand and last four digits Stripe sends back so your receipt can name the card, and Stripe's payment and refund IDs so a refund or support request can be matched to the payment.
- Refunds go back to the card you paid with, through Stripe. Points you spent on the purchase are returned, and points it earned are taken back.
- The eSIM itself is issued by a wholesale mobile-data supplier working for us. It receives only the technical details needed to run the eSIM (the eSIM's ID number and the plan) and reports data use back to us. It does not receive your name, email or account details. Data use shown in the app comes from that report and can lag by a few hours.
- Kinetiq points are a reward, not money. You earn them on eSIM purchases, you can spend them only on Kinetiq eSIM data, they have no cash value, they can't be withdrawn or transferred, and they're deleted with your account.
7. Where your data lives, and how long we keep it
Data is stored on Google Cloud (United States) using Cloud SQL, Redis and Cloud Storage. If you are outside the US, your data is transferred there under appropriate safeguards (Standard Contractual Clauses where required).
Service providers that process data for us: Google (cloud hosting, Maps and Places, Vertex AI, Analytics for Firebase and Crashlytics); Stripe (eSIM payments; Stripe's own privacy policy covers the card details you give it); our wholesale eSIM data supplier (technical details only); Resend (sending receipts and account emails); Open-Meteo (weather forecasts, using the location of places in your plan); and CJ Affiliate and Travelpayouts (affiliate tap tracking, with a code that doesn't identify you).
We keep your data while your account is active. Live locations expire within minutes. Footprints city-level summaries are kept until you clear them or delete your account (§4). Trips, moments and messages stay until you delete them or delete your account. eSIM orders, packs and points are deleted with your account; the payment record itself stays with Stripe for as long as financial law requires. Some records (such as affiliate tracking and moderation logs) are kept where the law requires it.
8. Your rights and controls
In the app: change your sharing mode, add or remove family observers, set who sees each moment, block people, edit or delete your content, and delete your account (Me → Settings & account → Settings → Account security).
Deleting your account erases your personal data, including your trips, moments, photos, messages, location history, saved places, follow relationships, eSIM orders and points. A small number of records are kept where the law requires it; those are anonymised so they no longer identify you. We delete your account about 30 days after you ask. To keep it, sign back in and tap Cancel deletion before then. After that, it can't be undone.
You can also request deletion at support@kinetiqtravel.com, or see Delete your account & data.
Depending on where you live you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to our use of your data, to data portability, and to withdraw consent. UK/EU users may complain to their local supervisory authority.
California residents
California residents have rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the right to know what we collect, to delete it, to correct it, and to be free from discrimination for exercising those rights.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are defined under California law. There is therefore nothing to opt out of. If that ever changes, we will publish a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link on this page and in the app before doing so. We also do not collect an advertising identifier.
9. Security
Authentication tokens are held in your device's secure keystore. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Privacy rules (who can see your location, your moments and your trips) are enforced on our servers before data is sent, not merely hidden in the app. Access to production data is restricted and logged.
No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you we will notify you as required by law.
10. Children
Kinetiq is not intended for anyone under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact support@kinetiqtravel.com and we will delete it. Users aged 13–17 should review this policy with a parent or guardian; location sharing in particular should be a family decision.
11. Changes
We will update this page when our practices change, and revise the "Last updated" date. For material changes affecting how we use your location or share your data, we will notify you in the app before the change takes effect.
12. Contact
Kinetiq Travel LLC, support@kinetiqtravel.com