Wayfarer Steps privacy policy

1. Who we are

Wayfarer Steps is developed and published by Quietfold Studio. You can reach us at quietfold.support@gmail.com. We are the data controller for the information described on this page.

2. Summary

3. What the app records and why

Recorded on your phone (always)

• Steps, pace and distance. Your phone's step sensor drives the game. The app keeps a step log, day totals and the sensor timings it learns from so its counting fits your handset. Distance and calorie figures are estimates.
• Game progress. Your traveller, journeys (treks), achievements, earned gold and chosen appearance.
• Height and weight (optional). Used only for distance and calorie estimates. They are stored on your phone and, when you are signed in with Google, saved privately to your account (so a new phone or a fresh sign-in gets them back). They are never shown to other players and are deleted with your account.

The app never records screenshots, contacts, your address book, other apps, or your location unless you start optional route recording (section 4).

Uploaded if you sign in

Google sign-in is optional. It is needed for cloud backup, friends, party walks, the Shop and the membership. When you sign in, the following is stored under your account:

• Account identity: your Google account user ID, display name and email address, received from Google when you sign in through Firebase Authentication.
• Game records needed by signed-in features: your gold wallet and the appearance you have equipped.
• Public profile: your chosen display name, portrait, level, total distance walked, gold, your daily step totals for the last seven days, up to three pinned achievements, and your skill levels and experience. Any signed-in player can open it, from a party walk you share or by searching for your display name. Your display name and portrait are also kept in a name directory so other signed-in players can find you by name; it can only be searched a few names at a time, never read as a whole.

Shared device learning

The app learns two timings for your phone: how long to wait after you stop before ending a walk, and how much to trust its step estimate between the step sensor's reports. Phones with the same step-sensor hardware can share these, so a new phone starts closer to the right values. Your own walking always takes over once the app has learned enough from it.

• Receiving starting values (everyone, no account needed): the app asks our verification service for values learned by phones like yours, sending only codes that describe your phone's hardware class (maker, model and a one-way fingerprint of its step-sensor and chipset details, the same for every phone of that kind). Nothing about you or your walking is sent.
• Sharing what your phone learned (if you are signed in): once your phone has learned a timing, the app sends your phone's maker, model and chipset model, its Android version, the hardware-class codes above, and the learned timing summaries (the learned values and how many walks and step-sensor reports they came from). It is stored against a one-way hashed version of your account ID, never your account ID itself, your name, email, an installation ID, your steps, your walks' times or your location. Only combined values from several phones are ever given out, and never to other players as yours.
• How to stop it: sharing is on for signed-in players. Sign out and nothing more is sent; the last values you shared stay until you delete your account, which removes them (section 11).

Uploaded whenever you are signed in: cloud backup

Cloud backup is free and does not need a Wayfarer Membership. It is not a separate choice: while you are signed in with Google, the following is stored under your account so you can restore your progress on a new phone:

• Steps and activity: step chunks with their times, journeys and walking sessions, progress snapshots and your current game state.
• Game records: your achievements journal.
• Account summary: a private copy of your display name, friend code, portrait, level, total steps and distance, gold, skill levels, the outfits you own and whether you are a member, kept together on your account so we can help you if you contact support. Only you and we can see it; other players cannot.

If you are not signed in, none of this is uploaded: your progress stays on your phone and is lost if you clear the app's data or uninstall it. Signing out stops any further upload. Backup is not instantaneous: Android may delay background uploads. What was already backed up stays available for you to restore or delete.

Uploaded only if you use friends and party walks

• Your display name and friend code, the friend invitations you send and receive, and your friendships.
• For each party walk you host or join: the walk code, your place in the walk, your step and distance totals for that walk, and which activity you are doing (fighting, fishing, cooking, mining or smithing). This happens for every signed-in player who joins a walk, member or not, because the walk needs your totals. Joining or hosting a walk shares your display name, your totals for that walk and your activity with its other participants, whose screens show you walking or working beside them.
• Gifts: when a member sends a friend a gift, the friend's gift inbox holds the sender's account id and display name, the item, how many and when. Only the friend can read it. It is removed when they open it. The sender's phone keeps a list of the day's gifts so it can apply the daily limit.
• The list of party walks you are hosting, so the app can apply the limit on how many walks you can host at once (one for free players, up to ten for members). Joining walks has no limit.
• Travellers you block: their account id, the display name and portrait they had when you blocked them, and when. Only you can see this list. It stops them sending you friend requests or joining walks you host, and it is not shown to them.
• Reports you send: your account id, the account id and display name of the traveller (or walk) you reported, the reason you picked, anything you typed, which part of the app it came from and when. Reports are read only by us, to decide whether to act (for example changing an offensive name or removing a player from social features). The reported traveller is not told who reported them.

Uploaded only if you choose to upload a diagnostic bundle

Beta diagnostics are off unless you allow them in Privacy settings, and nothing uploads until you press the upload control. A bundle contains compact structured telemetry about how the app and your phone's step sensor behaved over the previous 24 hours, a random installation identifier so we can match bundles from the same installation, and a bundle code you can quote to us. It contains no screenshots, location, contacts or account names.

Recorded only if you buy something or subscribe

For outfit purchases and the Wayfarer Membership, our verification service processes the Google Play purchase token and stores your purchase or subscription status. See section 8. We never see or store your payment card or bank details.

4. What is optional

5. Where data is stored and how it is protected

• Everything recorded on your phone is kept in the app's private storage, which other apps cannot read.
• Cloud data is stored in Google Firebase (Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore) for the Firebase project that belongs to Wayfarer Steps. Purchase and membership verification records are held by the app's own verification service. All connections between the app and these services are encrypted in transit using HTTPS/TLS.
• Data is stored in Google's data centres, which may be outside the United Kingdom. Google is bound by its own data-processing terms as our processor.
• The app uses Firebase App Check with Google Play Integrity. When the app talks to our cloud services, Google checks that the request comes from the genuine Wayfarer Steps app on a genuine Android device. Google handles the information about your device and app install needed for that check; we receive only whether it passed.
• Access to cloud data is restricted by security rules to the signed-in owner, to other signed-in players and friends for the specific profile fields described in section 6, and to a walk's participants for that walk. Membership status can be written only by the verification service, never by the app.

6. Who can see your data

• Other players: only what you have chosen to make visible. Any signed-in player can find you by display name and open your public profile: your display name, portrait, level, total distance walked, gold, your last seven days' step totals, pinned achievements and skill levels and experience. Any signed-in player, including someone on a party walk with you, can also see how your traveller looks: the outfit, colourway, body and portrait frame you have equipped. Participants of a party walk you host or join can see your display name, your step and distance totals for that walk and which activity you are doing. Nobody can see your private step log, journeys, routes, height, weight, gold receipts, purchase history or membership status.
• Service providers: Google (Firebase, Firebase App Check with Play Integrity, Google Sign-In and Google Play Billing) and the hosting provider of the verification service process data on our behalf to run the app.
• Nobody else. We do not sell personal data, do not share it with advertisers or data brokers, do not use advertising or analytics SDKs, and do not run adverts.
• We would disclose data only if required by law.

7. How long data is kept

• On your phone: until you reset the traveller in the app, clear the app's data or uninstall it.
• Cloud backup: for as long as your account exists, so you can still restore or delete it. If we introduce a time limit for keeping backups, we will update this page first.
• Gifts: until the friend opens them. Deleting your account removes gifts waiting for you and gifts you sent that have not been opened.
• Profile, friends and party walk data: for as long as your account exists. Deleting your account removes it (section 11).
• Your block list: until you unblock someone or delete your account.
• Reports: reports you sent are removed when you delete your account. A report made about you is kept for up to 12 months after it is resolved, as a safety record, even if you delete your account.
• Shared device learning: the latest learned timings you shared are kept for as long as your account exists and are removed when you delete your account. Combined values already worked out from many phones do not identify you and stop including yours once it is removed.
• Diagnostic bundles: kept only as long as needed to investigate the problem they were sent for, and removed when you delete your account.
• Purchase and membership records: see section 8 and section 11 for what remains after deletion.

8. Purchases and membership

Wayfarer Steps is free to play. There are no adverts and no paid currency.

Outfits

The app offers optional one-time cosmetic outfits bought through Google Play. Outfits change how your traveller looks and give no gameplay advantage. Outfits you buy stay on your account whether or not you are a member.

Wayfarer Membership

The Wayfarer Membership is an optional Google Play subscription (£4.99 a month or £24.99 a year in the UK; Google Play shows the price for your country before you subscribe). It adds the Mining and Smithing skills (in beta), hosting up to ten party walks at once (including public walks), unlimited saved treks and your full journey history. Cloud backup is not part of it: backup is free for every signed-in player. It renews at the end of each month or year, whichever plan you chose, until you cancel it in Google Play. When it ends, you can host one invite-only walk at a time, new treks stop at five and history older than seven days is locked again; nothing on your phone is deleted and your outfits are not affected.

What we process for purchases and the membership

• Payment is handled entirely by Google Play. We never receive your card, bank or billing address details.
• To confirm an outfit purchase and restore it on a new phone, our verification service stores the Google Play purchase token, the product bought, the order state and an obfuscated (hashed) link to your Wayfarer account. It never stores your name or email.
• To confirm a membership, the app sends the subscription's Google Play purchase token to our verification service, which checks it with Google Play and records your subscription status under your account: whether the membership is active, its state (for example active, in a grace period, on hold, cancelled or expired), when the current period ends and whether it renews. The service stores a one-way hash to bind the token to your account and keeps the token itself in a server-only record so it can check renewals and stop future payments if you delete your account. The token is removed during account deletion. It never stores your name or email, and only the service, not the app, can change your membership status.
• Google Play keeps its own transaction records under Google's terms and privacy policy, which we do not control.

9. Android permissions

• Physical activity (ACTIVITY_RECOGNITION): reads the phone's step counter. Without it the game cannot count steps.
• Notifications and the "health" foreground service: lets the app keep counting while it is closed, with a visible notification so you always know it is running.
• Precise location and the "location" foreground service: used only while you are recording a route for a journey, so the recording continues if you switch apps. Location is never used in the background otherwise, and is never uploaded by backup.
• Run at boot: restarts step counting after a reboot if you had it enabled.

The app has no permission to read your contacts, photos, files, microphone, camera or other apps.

10. Children

Wayfarer Steps is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. Because the app offers Google sign-in, social features, in-app purchases and a subscription, it is intended for people aged 13 and over. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us at quietfold.support@gmail.com and we will delete it.

11. Deleting your data

• On your phone: reset the traveller from the Profile screen, or uninstall the app.
• Your account and cloud data: email quietfold.support@gmail.com from the Google account you sign in with (subject “Wayfarer Steps account deletion”). We confirm the account, then delete it and its server records within 30 days. An anonymised purchase-receipt marker and an opaque deletion marker are kept so a deleted account cannot be restored by a stale upload and a purchase cannot be replayed into another account. Anyone can delete their backed-up data, whether or not their membership is still active.
• Your membership: from app version 1.0.59, in-app account deletion first asks Google Play to stop future subscription payments. If that request fails, your account is kept so we can help resolve the subscription; you will not see a deletion confirmation. On earlier versions, cancel the membership yourself in Google Play (Payments & subscriptions) before deleting the account. A completed cancellation does not refund the current billing period.
• Other rights: you can ask us for a copy of your cloud data, or to correct it, by emailing quietfold.support@gmail.com from the Google account address you signed in with. UK and EU residents also have the right to complain to their data-protection authority.

12. Changes to this policy

If we change what the app collects, we will update this page and its date, and the app will ask for your consent again where a change needs it. The 13 September 2026 update added the Wayfarer Membership and made cloud backup a membership feature. The 18 September 2026 update made cloud backup free again for every signed-in player who turns it on; it is no longer part of the membership. The 19 September 2026 update removed the backup setting: backup now happens whenever you are signed in, and signing out is how you keep everything on your phone.

13. Contact

Quietfold Studio
Email: quietfold.support@gmail.com