Privacy Policy

What you give us

• Your account: a display name, email address and password. Your password is stored as a hash, never as readable text. You can also add a location to your profile.
• Your Swim Passport: your swim logs (your passport stamps), each with the pool, the date and any rating, note or photo you add, and the pools you save as favorites. Only you can see them. Sharing your passport makes an image in your browser for you to send; the link it shares opens our passport page, not yours.
• What you contribute: reviews and ratings, photos, travel tips, new pools and corrections. These are meant to be published, with your display name. The editors also see the name and email address you send with a suggestion. Photos are stored as you upload them, and phone cameras can save where a photo was taken inside the file, so turn that off or remove it first if you don't want to share it.
• Messages: the name, email address, subject and message you send through the Contact form. They go to the Places2Swim editors by email.
• Your location, if you allow it: your browser's location is used only to find pools near you. You can search by city or address instead.

What we record when you use Places2Swim

Our record of signed-in use. When you sign in, we record a session: whether it's the website, the iPhone app or the Android app, the app version, the operating system, the kind or model of device, the browser family, how you signed in, and when the session started, was last used and ended. We count your requests and visits each day, and note what you do (signing up, verifying your email, stamping a swim, saving a favorite, posting a review, uploading a photo, sending a message and similar) with small details such as whether a swim had a note, never what you wrote. These records hold no email address, IP address or full browser identification, and no country. They give the editors usage statistics, such as how many people sign up and come back.

Server logs. Like most websites, our hosting records requests to our servers, including the time, the address requested, your browser type and your IP address or an approximate location worked out from it. We use them to keep the service running and secure. To stop abuse, such as too many sign-in attempts, our servers also count recent requests from each IP address for up to ten minutes, in memory only.

Where the map starts. To open the map near you, our map service on Cloudflare uses Cloudflare's IP address lookup to estimate your city, region or country. The answer is kept in your browser tab only, and we don't store it.

Analytics, only after you choose

We use PostHog to understand how the website is used. The first time you visit, a banner asks you to Accept or Decline. Nothing is sent to PostHog and nothing is stored for it until you choose, and you can change your choice at any time with Cookie settings in the footer or on our Cookies page.

• If you accept, PostHog stores a cookie and browser storage so it can recognize your browser on later visits. We send the pages you view, which buttons and links you use and where on a page you click (never the text on the page or anything you type), and how quickly pages load. If you're signed in, these are linked to your account by an internal ID only, never your name or email address.
• If you decline, PostHog still counts page views, page load speed and when you leave a page, without cookies. It counts each visit with a code it works out on its own servers from your IP address, your browser details and a value that changes every day, so it can't recognize you from one day to the next. Nothing is recorded about the buttons and links you use, and only your choice is stored in your browser.
• Page addresses are trimmed to the page itself and any campaign tags before they are sent: searches, map positions and sign-in links are removed, and so is anything that looks like an email address.
• Recordings, for one month after launch. Until November 21, 2026, if you first accepted within the last seven days, PostHog may record a visit that lasts at least 15 seconds: the layout of each page, where you move and click, scrolling and moving between pages. All text is hidden, typing is never recorded, and images, videos and maps are left out. We never record sign-in, account, settings, Swim Passport or admin pages. Recordings are deleted after 30 days.
• PostHog receives your IP address with each event and keeps it. It uses it to work out your approximate location (country and city).
• PostHog stores this data in the United States. Under our current plan it keeps analytics events for up to seven years.

Error reports. When error reporting is switched on, our website and servers send crash reports to Sentry. A report holds only the kind of error and where in our code it happened: no error message, account details, cookies, request headers or page query strings.

Our iPhone and Android apps don't include PostHog or any other analytics service. Our own record of signed-in use, described above, covers them.

How we use it

• To run Places2Swim: your account, your Swim Passport and favorites, and publishing what you contribute.
• To email you about your account (verifying your address and resetting your password) and to answer your messages.
• To keep the service secure and working, and to stop abuse.
• To understand how Places2Swim is used and make it better.

We don't sell your personal information, we don't show advertising, and we don't send newsletters.

Who helps us run Places2Swim

• Microsoft Azure hosts our website, our API and our database.
• Cloudflare serves our maps, stores and delivers pool photos and the Swim Passport film, and estimates where the map starts.
• PostHog provides the analytics above, after your choice.
• Resend sends our emails: verification, password resets and Contact messages to the editors.
• Google: what you type into a place search goes to Google Places to suggest places. Pool pages show a Google map, and Google may set its own cookies when it loads (see Google's privacy policy). Directions links open Google Maps.
• Sentry receives the error reports above, when error reporting is on.

Some pages also show images from other websites, such as photos of swimming cities. Your browser fetches them from those websites, as it does for any page.

How long we keep it

• Your account, swim logs (your passport stamps), favorites, sign-in sessions and daily activity: until you delete your account.
• What you contributed stays published after you delete your account. If your email address is verified, we first remove your name and email address from it; if it isn't, we can't tell which contributions are yours and they keep them, so verify your address before deleting (see Your Places2Swim account).
• Suggested changes and travel tips are deleted once the editors decide on them. Our record of use keeps a note that one was sent.
• Contact messages are kept as correspondence with the editors.
• The cookie that keeps you signed in lasts 30 days and is renewed while you use the site.
• PostHog recordings: 30 days. Other analytics events: up to seven years.

Your choices

• Use Places2Swim without an account, and without allowing location access.
• Accept or decline analytics, and change your mind with Cookie settings.
• Change your display name and profile location in Settings, and delete your account there at any time. To change your email address, contact us.
• Ask for a copy of your data, a correction or a deletion, or ask anything about your privacy: use the Contact form with the subject Account Help.

Children

Places2Swim is for a general audience and isn't designed for young children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we'll help remove it.

Changes to this policy

When what we collect or how we use it changes, we'll update this page and its date. Read our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy too.