Backpacker

1. Who we are

Backpacker is published by Reconchille Studios, an independent app studio operated by an individual developer, Ege Özçelik, based in Türkiye. For the small amount of personal data described here, Ege Özçelik is the data controller. You can reach us any time at info@reconchillestudios.com.

2. The short version

Backpacker does not have accounts. It does not ask for your name, your email address, your contacts, your photos or your location. Your packing lists are files on your own device.

The only information that leaves your phone is what you type into Backpacker AI — a destination, how many days you are going for, the season, and any notes you add — which is sent to our server so that a language model can write a list from it. That is the whole of it.

3. What stays on your device

The following is written to storage that belongs to the app on your iPhone. It is not transmitted to us, and we have no way to access it:

• Your bags: their names, every item in them, and which items you have ticked off.
• Which templates you have opened and whether you have changed them.
• A flag recording that you have seen the introduction.
• A cached copy of whether your subscription is currently active, so the app still knows you are a subscriber when it is offline.

If you delete the app, all of it goes with it. If your device is set to back up to iCloud, Apple's backup may include this app data; that backup is governed by Apple's privacy policy and is encrypted with your Apple Account, not readable by us.

4. Backpacker AI: what leaves your phone

When — and only when — you tap Generate in Backpacker AI, the app sends the following to a server we operate:

• the destination you entered;
• the number of days;
• the season;
• any free-text notes you wrote, including anything you selected in the optional fine-tuning questions (where you are staying, how you are travelling, luggage, who is coming, activities, laundry).

That server passes your trip description to Google's Gemini API, receives a packing list back, and returns it to your phone. We do not store your request or the resulting list on the server — the request is handled in memory and forgotten when the response is sent. The list is then saved on your device, as a bag, like any other.

Please do not type sensitive personal information into the notes field. It is a free-text box and whatever you write in it is sent to Google to be processed. Describe the trip, not the people.

5. Destination suggestions

The destination field offers place-name suggestions as you type. Those suggestions come from Apple's MapKit, which means the characters you type into that one field are sent to Apple to be matched against place names. This is handled by Apple under Apple's own privacy policy.

Backpacker does not request access to your device's location. The app has no location permission, uses no GPS, and never asks where you physically are — the destination is only ever the text you type.

6. Subscriptions & payment

Backpacker Pro is an auto-renewing subscription sold through the App Store. Apple processes the payment. We never see and never receive your card number, billing address or Apple Account details.

To know whether your subscription is active, the app uses RevenueCat, a subscription-management service. RevenueCat receives an anonymous identifier that the app generates on your device — a random string that is not linked to your name, email or Apple Account — together with the App Store transaction information for the purchase (which product, when it was bought, when it renews). That is enough to answer the only question the app asks: is this device entitled to Pro?

If you restore purchases, the same anonymous identifier is used to look the entitlement up again.

7. Rate limiting and your IP address

To stop the AI feature being abused, our server counts how many requests arrive from a given IP address in the preceding minute and refuses more than a handful. To do that, the IP address is held in memory only, for at most sixty seconds, and is then discarded. It is not written to a database, not linked to your requests, and not used for anything else.

8. Error logs

We want to be straightforward about the one exception to "nothing is stored". If a generation fails — the model is unreachable, or returns something the app cannot read — our server writes a technical error entry to its log so the fault can be diagnosed. In the case of a malformed model response, that entry can contain the text the model produced, which is derived from the trip you described.

These logs are held by our hosting provider for a short retention window (a few days) and are then deleted automatically. Successful generations write nothing.

9. Analytics & tracking

Backpacker contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no attribution or install-tracking software, and does not use the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). We do not track you across other apps or websites, and we do not build advertising profiles. Nothing in this app asks the App Tracking Transparency prompt, because there is nothing to ask about.

Apple provides us with aggregate, anonymous App Store statistics — downloads, crashes, subscriber counts by country — which are calculated by Apple and cannot be traced back to an individual.

10. Who else receives data

These are service providers acting on our instructions, or — in Apple's case — an independent controller for the payment relationship it has with you. We do not sell personal data to anyone, and we have never done so.

11. International transfers

Our server runs in Frankfurt, Germany (EU). Google, Apple and RevenueCat operate globally and process data in the United States among other places. Where personal data is transferred outside the EEA, the UK or Türkiye, those transfers rely on the recipients' own transfer mechanisms, principally the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.

12. How long things are kept

• Your bags: on your device until you delete them or remove the app. We hold no copy and therefore no retention period applies to us.
• AI requests: not retained. Held in memory for the seconds it takes to answer.
• IP address: in memory, at most 60 seconds.
• Error logs: a few days, then deleted automatically by the hosting provider.
• Subscription status: kept by RevenueCat and Apple for as long as the subscription relationship and their own legal and accounting obligations require.

13. Deleting your data

Because there is no account, there is nothing on our side to delete. Deleting a bag inside the app removes it; deleting the app removes everything it stored. If you want your subscription record removed, that is held by Apple and RevenueCat — write to us and we will pass a deletion request to RevenueCat on your behalf.

14. Your rights & legal bases

Depending on where you live, you may have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability under the GDPR, the UK GDPR, or Türkiye's Personal Data Protection Law (KVKK), and similar rights elsewhere. Write to info@reconchillestudios.com and we will answer within the period the applicable law allows.

We must be honest about one thing: we hold almost nothing that could be linked to you. With no account and no stored requests, there is usually nothing for us to find, and we may not be able to identify you from a request alone. That is a consequence of the design, not an attempt to avoid the obligation.

Where we do process personal data, our legal basis is our legitimate interest in providing the feature you asked for and in protecting the service from abuse (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), and the performance of our contract with you for the subscription (Art. 6(1)(b)).

15. Children

Backpacker is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. The app is rated for general audiences and contains no user-generated content that is shared with anyone else.

16. Keeping data safe

All traffic between the app, our server and the model runs over TLS. Our server holds no database of user content, which is the strongest protection available: data that was never stored cannot be breached. Access to our hosting and store accounts is protected by two-factor authentication.

17. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that affects what we do with your information, we will update the date at the top of this page and, for a significant change, say so in the app's release notes. Continuing to use the app after a change means you accept the updated policy.

18. Contact

Questions, requests or complaints about this policy:

If you are in the EEA, the UK or Türkiye you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

See also our Terms of Use.