RivAscend Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-11-03. This is a translation of the Chinese policy, which prevails if they differ.

RivAscend (the app) is a riverside riding and running route app made by an individual developer, SUN, for Android, iOS and the web. The app has no accounts and no ads, tracks no one, and sells or shares no data.

1. Location

• The app reads your device's location only when you tap "Find the riverside start nearest me" or a plan's "Route to the start", or when you start following a plan with live progress or "Just record, no route".
• "Route to the start" finds the way on the phone with the street data built into the app: no network, no server, no other app. After you tap "Navigate" and agree, the location is read while navigating, only with the screen on, to tell the next turn; it stops at the start, when you tap "End navigation" or leave the plan, and is neither kept nor uploaded. Only when you choose another maps app does the app hand that app the start's coordinates (not yours).
• Your location is used only in your phone's memory to find the nearest start, match the route and count distance and pace; it is neither kept nor uploaded to any server, and it ends when you stop or leave the plan. "Just record, no route" (riding, running or hiking) likewise counts distance and pace on the phone only, keeps only the distance and time, and sends no plan feedback.
• While recording, it goes on with the screen locked in a pocket, so the distance, time and climb come out whole; meanwhile the iPhone status bar shows the location indicator, and Android shows a notification that it is recording (on Android 13 and later without notification permission, it appears among the active apps in Quick Settings). Tap "End" to stop.
• On iPhone (iOS 18 and later), the Lock Screen, Dynamic Island and a paired Apple Watch show the distance, moving time and current step as a Live Activity, made by the app on the phone, with no location and through no server; turn it off in Settings → RivAscend → Live Activities.
• When you tap "Mark this spot" on the way, the app takes your current location into your diary (section 7): within 200 m of the route it is saved as the nearest point on the route; farther away, or when recording with no route, where you are, on the phone only. This does not keep your track.
• Keep this track (off by default): only if you tick "Keep this track" before starting does the app keep the positions recorded (latitude, longitude and time, no height) as a GPX file on this phone, with every fix the phone reported and its accuracy. It is never uploaded on its own and is never part of feedback. It draws the way you went in your records and pictures (pictures leave out 200 m at each end, so where you set off stays private), lets you export a GPX file to other apps, or share it to improve measuring if you choose (section 8); deleting the outing deletes its track. Without the tick, only the distance and time are kept.

2. Recommendation requests

To rank routes with its model, the app sends the start you picked and your settings (time or distance, purpose, company, riding or running, round trip or one way, map area) to its recommendation service. Requests contain no location. The service's code does not log your IP address; its host (Render) may keep short-lived technical logs under its own policy. To prevent abuse, the service counts requests per minute in memory by a hash of the IP address, writes it to no file or database, and drops it after a minute. Offline, or when the service cannot be reached, the app ranks with the same model built into the phone and sends no request.

3. Plan feedback (optional)

• Only with your consent does the app record which plan you chose, whether it suited you and why, what you marked the route good for (sketching, photos, birding and so on), and the plans and settings you saw, to improve the ranking model. Activity marks are only counted per route.
• With consent, if you record a ride with live progress, ending it also sends how much of the plan you rode and the moving minutes, to learn whether the plans are ridden through and how fast. No location or track is sent; ending a ride does not ask for consent, and without consent nothing is sent.
• With consent, within three days after a chosen plan's time, the start screen asks once "Did you ride it?" the next time you open the app. "All of it" or "Part of it" sends only how much you rode (no time or location); "Didn't go", or closing it, sends nothing and it is not asked again.
• Analysis uses only counts (for example, how often each route was chosen and ridden for a start and setting), never single records. The service sometimes interleaves two rankings to compare which is chosen more; about one list in ten swaps the first card with one of the 2nd–4th, to measure how much being first draws choices, so the model learns from routes, not positions. None of this collects more data.
• Feedback has no location, name, account or device identifier. Each entry carries a random number, only so that an entry resent after a dropped connection is not counted twice; every entry's number differs and cannot link entries to a person. It waits on the phone until uploaded, then is kept in the app's database (Neon) for at most 2 years.
• As feedback holds nothing that identifies you, we cannot find any one person's feedback. Turn off "Feedback: help improve picks" in About at any time: nothing more is recorded, and feedback not yet sent is deleted from the phone.

4. Map

Android, iOS and the web use the same basemap (vector tiles of greater Taipei): built into the app on phones, needing no network; on the web, the parts needed are read from the same map file on this site. No tiles are asked of any third-party map server, and your location goes to no map service. In English, the map's labels come from the app's own table of English place names, alike on all three.

Destination search matches the riverside sights and stations built into the app, on the phone; what you type is not sent. When you choose another maps app, the app opens it (Apple Maps on iPhone, Google Maps elsewhere) with the start's coordinates; from there, location and navigation are that app's, under its privacy policy. The app does not read or send your location for this.

5. Weather

When showing a plan, the app downloads the whole township forecast file for the county of the start (Central Weather Administration open data, hosted in the CWA's public data space on Amazon Web Services) and picks the nearest district on the phone, to warn of rain, heat or wind. The request contains no location, start, account or device identifier; the file host receives your IP address, under the AWS Privacy Notice. Offline, no weather hints are shown.

YouBike live counts: when a plan is opened, the app downloads the whole city's YouBike 2.0 live data from the Taipei and New Taipei open data platforms and picks the stations near the start and end on the phone. The request contains no location, start, account or device identifier; the data hosts receive your IP address. Offline, only the stations' names and distances are shown.

6. Settings and records on the phone

Appearance (light or dark), language, map area, and riding or running preferences are kept on your phone only and cleared when the app is deleted. The app has no paid features for now, and never offers a feature in return for sharing your data.

When you end a recording, the app keeps on your phone the plan's name, date, distance and moving time, and the plan's route line (open route data, not your positions), to list My outings and make share pictures. If you ticked "Keep this track" (section 1), the record also keeps a simplified line of the track, to draw the outing in the list and on the map of My outings; the words you write about the outing are kept in the record too. Records are not uploaded (for tracks you choose to share, see section 8); delete one or all in My outings, or delete the app to clear them. A share picture leaves the phone only when you tap "Share picture" and choose where it goes.

"Back up diary" packs the records, tracks, place diary and photos into one file and hands it to the share sheet for a place you choose (Files or iCloud Drive, say); where it is kept and who gets it is up to you, and the app uploads nothing. "Restore from backup" reads only the file you pick, adding back the records and places the phone does not have.

Heart rate (optional, iPhone): only when you tap "Add heart rate" on an outing's playback, and after iOS asks and you agree, the app reads from Apple Health the heart rates for that outing's time (recorded by an Apple Watch, say) and shows them on the playback and in a video you make. Heart rates are not kept and not uploaded, and nothing is written to Health; turn reading off any time in Settings › Privacy & Security › Health › RivAscend.

Workout routes (optional, iPhone): when an outing's full track was not kept, and only when you tap "Bring back from Apple Health" on that outing's page, after iOS asks and you agree, the app reads from Health the route a watch recorded with its workout during that outing (an Apple Watch outdoor ride or hike, say) and keeps it as that outing's track: like any track you keep, only on your phone, not uploaded and not written to Health; the same setting turns reading off.

7. Place diary and shared marks

• You can mark places on the way (good for sketching or birding, say), with activities, a description, photos and notes, as your own place diary, including words of your own. The diary, photos, notes and your own words stay on your phone and are never uploaded; a photo taken in the app is also saved to the phone's Photos by default (asking only to add photos; turn it off in About), so it stays there if the app is deleted; delete them in My outings, or delete the app. Places marked while recording remember which outing they belong to, on the phone, so My outings lists each outing with its places and photos by date; that link stays on the phone too and is never shared.
• Places can be marked anywhere. Marks within 200 m of the route are saved as the nearest point on it; marks farther away stay where they are, on the phone only and never shareable, so a home is never given away.
• You decide whether each mark is shared anonymously (after agreeing to feedback in section 3). Sharing sends only the activities and description (such as "birding, quiet"), the mark's point on the route (to about 10 m) and the date; no photos, notes, your own words, time, account or device identifier (plus a random number, different for each, only to avoid duplicates on resending). Shared marks are kept in the app's database for at most 2 years.
• Shared marks are used only in aggregate: only when enough gather at one place may it become a suggested place everyone sees; single marks are never published. As they hold nothing that identifies you, a sent mark cannot be traced back to you; delete it before it is sent to take it back. Turning feedback off also unshares marks not yet sent (the diary stays on the phone).

8. Sharing a track to improve measuring (optional)

• An outing whose track was kept offers "Share this track to improve measuring" on its page in My outings. You are asked every time, and nothing is sent unless you tap it; this is separate from the feedback switch in section 3.
• What is sent: the location fixes the phone reported (latitude, longitude, accuracy, seconds from the first fix sent), the kind of outing, iPhone or Android, the distance and moving time the app measured, how many seconds the first precise fix took, and, if you give it, the distance a watch or another app measured. The first and last 200 m stay on the phone, so where you set off and ended stays private; no date, time, name, account or device identifier.
• It has one use: checking real phones against the app's measuring simulation, so distance, pace and auto-pause get more accurate. Analysis uses only per-outing statistics (such as how far fixes stray and how accurate they are); no track is ever published. Shared tracks are kept in the app's database for at most 1 year.
• Each shared track carries a random number kept only on your phone. Tap "Withdraw" on the same page at any time and it is deleted from the server at once; deleting the outing in My outings withdraws it too (if offline, the next time the app opens). Deleting the app deletes the number with it, after which a track cannot be withdrawn: withdraw first, then delete the app.

9. Children

The app is not directed at children under 13.

10. Contact

Questions about this policy: [email protected]

11. Changes

Changes to this policy are posted on this page with a new date.