Privacy Policy

Effective: June 20, 2026 · Last updated: June 20, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what data Strata collects, how we use it, and what choices you have. Strata is a backcountry trip-planning iOS app operated by Highloop LLC ("we", "us"). If you have any question about this policy, email support@highloop.co.

1. What we collect

Information you provide

• Account credentials: your email address and password (the password is stored only as a salted bcrypt hash).
• Your display name, captured at signup. Your display name is shown to companions you tour with inside the app.
• Settings and content you create inside the app: saved routes, planned trips and waypoints, units preference, activity type (ski / hike / mountaineer), notes, and your companion roster.
• In-app feedback messages and any screenshots you attach to them, used solely to respond to your support request.

Location data, with your consent

• Your device location while you have an active tour, used to show your position on the map, record your GPS track, and — if you choose to tour with companions — share your live position with the specific people in that tour. iOS asks for location permission before any of this happens; you can revoke it at any time in iOS Settings.
• Barometric-altitude readings from your device (when available) to improve elevation accuracy on your recorded track.
• Coordinates attached to an SOS alert you trigger, sent to your companions and recorded as an incident marker so help can find you.
• We collect precise location only during an active tour or an SOS. Strata does not track your location in the background when you are not on a tour.

Information generated by your use of Strata

• Routes you view, save, plan, and complete; recorded tour tracks and the recaps built from them.
• App diagnostics (errors, response times, crash reports) collected to improve the product, including the app version and OS version reported by your device. We do not collect device-identifying advertising IDs.
• Push-notification tokens (Apple Push Notification service) used solely to deliver Strata notifications you've opted into — companion check-ins, condition changes, and SOS alerts. Tokens are not shared with any other service.

Apple Health (optional)

If you grant permission, Strata can save your completed tours to Apple Health as workouts, and read recent hike/walk data to suggest routes that match your pace. HealthKit data stays on your device and is exchanged only with Apple Health under your explicit permission; we do not upload your Health data to our servers, and Apple's rules prohibit using it for advertising. You can revoke Health access at any time in iOS Settings → Health.

Information about touring with companions

When you tour with one or more companions:

• Each member's live position is visible to the other members of that tour for its duration, along with their display name.
• If a member's position goes stale, Strata may prompt the group to check in on them.
• An SOS triggered by any member shares that member's location and status with the rest of the group.
• Leaving a tour, or ending it, stops sharing your position with the group immediately.

2. How we use your data

We use your data only to:

• Authenticate you and operate your Strata account.
• Power the features inside the app: route discovery, planning, the conditions ribbon, live tracking, companion awareness, SOS, and tour recaps.
• Generate route-safety analysis through Anthropic's API (the maker of Claude). To produce a verdict we send the route geometry and the relevant public conditions data (avalanche bulletin, slope/aspect, weather) — not your identity. Anthropic acts solely as a data processor on our behalf: it does not use your data to train its models, and retains it only briefly to process the request. See Anthropic's Privacy Policy and Commercial Terms.
• Render maps and terrain through our mapping provider (Mapbox), and fetch public conditions data (weather, avalanche bulletins, air quality, fire perimeters) from the providers listed in §3.
• Send transactional and notification email (account verification, password reset) through our email provider.
• Send push notifications you have opted into via APNs.
• Detect and prevent abuse (sign-up rate limiting, anomaly investigation).
• Comply with legal obligations and respond to valid legal process.

We do not sell, rent, share, or otherwise disclose your personal information to advertisers, data brokers, or marketers. We do not use your location or activity data to build advertising audiences. We do not train external machine-learning models on your data.

3. Third-party services and sub-processors

• Anthropic, PBC — our AI provider; powers route-safety analysis. We send route geometry and public conditions data to generate a verdict. Anthropic acts solely as a data processor under our commercial agreement: it does not use the data to train its models and retains it only as long as needed to return a response. See Anthropic's Privacy Policy.
• Mapbox, Inc. — provides map tiles and terrain rendering. Map requests may include the area you're viewing. See Mapbox's Privacy Policy.
• Public conditions data providers — we fetch avalanche bulletins (CAIC and partner avalanche centers), weather and air quality (Open-Meteo), fire perimeters (NIFC), elevation (USGS 3DEP), and trail/feature metadata (OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia). These are public-data requests for an area; they do not carry your identity.
• Google Cloud (Google LLC) — hosts Strata's backend and database in the United States.
• Email provider — delivers transactional email (account verification, password reset).
• Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.) — collects application error and crash reports to help us diagnose bugs. We configure Sentry to strip request bodies and personal identifiers before they reach Sentry. See Sentry's Privacy Policy.
• Apple Inc. (APNs, StoreKit, App Store, HealthKit) — handles push delivery, subscription billing, and (with your permission) Health data on-device. Strata never receives or stores payment-card information; all subscription billing flows through Apple's systems.

4. Data security

• All connections to Strata use TLS in transit.
• User passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes; we never see your plaintext password.
• Access to production data is limited to authorized engineering staff and is logged.
• Live position sharing is scoped to the members of an active tour and ends when the tour ends.

5. Data retention

We retain your data while your account is active. You can delete individual saved routes, trips, and tour recaps inside the app at any time. To delete your entire account and all associated data, see Delete your account for the full process; deletion completes within 30 days, and a 30-day soft-delete window lets you restore the account before purge if you change your mind.

5a. Cookies and tracking

This website does not set tracking cookies, run analytics pixels, or embed third-party advertising tags. The Strata app does not include third-party SDKs that send data to advertisers or data brokers.

6. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate data.
• Delete your data ("right to erasure" / CCPA "right to delete").
• Port your data to another service.
• Object to or restrict certain processing.

To exercise any of these rights, email support@highloop.co. We may request information to verify your identity before fulfilling the request, and we will respond within 45 days. We do not discriminate against users who exercise these rights.

6a. Your California privacy rights (CCPA / CPRA)

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA") as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act ("CPRA") gives you the rights below. The same or similar rights apply if you live in Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Virginia, or Texas; we honor them in the same way.

Categories of personal information we collect (in CCPA terms):

• Identifiers — display name, email, account ID, IP address.
• Geolocation data — precise location during an active tour or SOS, collected with your consent.
• Internet or network activity — app diagnostics, error logs, push tokens.
• Sensory information — screenshots you attach to a feedback message.
• Health information (with your permission, on-device only) — workout and pace data via Apple HealthKit, which we do not upload to our servers.
• Inferences — route difficulty and safety classifications generated from public conditions data.
• Sensitive personal information (under CPRA) — your account login credentials (bcrypt hash + email) and your precise geolocation.

Sources: directly from you and from your device.

Purposes: operating the Strata service, authentication, billing through Apple, support, safety features, fraud prevention, legal compliance.

Recipients: the sub-processors named in §3. We do not disclose personal information to any other party.

"No sale or share" statement: we do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined under the CCPA / CPRA. We have not done so in the preceding 12 months.

You may submit a verifiable consumer request to know, delete, or correct by emailing support@highloop.co. You may designate an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf; we will require written proof of the agent's authority. We will respond within 45 days as required by law.

7. Children and age

Strata is not directed to anyone under 18 years of age and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. Our Terms of Service require users to be 18 or older. If we learn we have collected personal information from a person under 18, we will delete it.

8. International users

Strata is operated from and offered primarily to residents of the United States, where our trail and conditions coverage lives. By using the app you understand that your data is processed in the U.S.

9. Changes to this policy

We will post any changes to this policy at this URL and update the "Last updated" date above. Material changes will also be notified in-app or by email.

10. Contact

Highloop LLC · support@highloop.co