Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 2, 2026

Introduction

Gritmaps ("we", "us") operates gritmaps.com and the Gritmaps app at app.gritmaps.com. This policy explains what we collect, why, and what you can do about it, under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (nDSG) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We are the controller for this data; contact us at [email protected].

Data We Collect

When you create an account and use the app, we store:

  • Account: your email address, and the account identifier from your sign-in method (email and password, or Google).
  • Athlete profile: your FTP, body weight, bike weights, heart-rate zones and average speed. You enter these, or we read them from Garmin Connect when you connect it.
  • Locations: the start points and saved favourites you create, including any you label as home.
  • Routes and rides: the routes we generate for you, and — for a completed ride we match to one of them — the recorded activity track, which contains position, power and heart-rate samples taken along the way.
  • Feedback: the star rating and free-text notes you leave on a ride.
  • Support messages: what you send us with Send feedback — your message, an email address if you choose to give one, and technical context (app version, the screen you were on, your language and browser). It reaches us as email at [email protected]; we do not attach your account to it, so if you leave the address out we have no way to reply.
  • Connected accounts: the access tokens we receive from Garmin, Strava and Wahoo when you connect them, your Strava athlete identifier and your Wahoo user identifier.
  • Technical data: your language choice, and error reports and diagnostic events from the app and our servers.

What We Don't Do

We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, and we run no third-party analytics or session-replay tag — we deliberately left out real-user-monitoring tooling because it stores a persistent visitor identifier on your device. We do not sell or rent your personal data, we do not share it for anyone else's marketing, and we make no automated decisions that produce legal effects for you. Your language choice is stored on your own device so the site opens in the right language.

Health Data

Your heart rate, heart-rate zones and body weight are health data — a special category under Art. 9 GDPR and Art. 5(c) nDSG. We process them only to plan and score your training, on your explicit consent, given when you enter them or connect Garmin. You can withdraw that consent by clearing the values, closing your account, or writing to [email protected]. Your FTP, and the power figures and targets derived from it, describe your training rather than your health: we need them to plan your routes. Note that free-text ride notes are yours to write and may themselves contain health information.

Connected Services

Connecting a service is always your choice, and each one is separate:

  • Garmin Connect: you enter your Garmin credentials and we sign in on your behalf. We store the resulting access tokens — never your password. We send routes and workouts to your account and device, and read your zones, FTP, devices and completed activities. We have no way to end your Garmin session from our side, so if you want it fully revoked, also sign Gritmaps out from within Garmin Connect.
  • Strava: you authorise us through Strava, which grants us permission to read your activities and to write to them. When an activity matches a ride you planned in Gritmaps, we append a Gritmaps workout report below its description; we never change its title or the text you wrote. This is on by default and can be turned off in Settings. We store the access tokens, your Strava athlete id and the ids of your new activities, queued for matching and deleted after 7 days; we do not store the content of your activities.
  • Wahoo: you authorise us through Wahoo, which grants us permission to read your profile and power zones, to create routes, workout plans and scheduled workouts in your Wahoo account, and to read the rides you record. We send the route you choose, its adapted workout and a workout scheduled on the day you plan to ride. When a recorded ride matches a route we sent, we download its file to compare your ride with the plan. We store the access tokens, your Wahoo user id, the ids of what we sent and, for a matched ride, the recorded activity track.
  • Garmin, Strava and Wahoo can each be disconnected in Settings, which deletes the tokens we hold; closing your account deletes them too. Disconnecting Strava, or removing Gritmaps in your Strava account settings, also withdraws our access on Strava's side and deletes all the Strava data we hold; disconnecting in the app shows a confirmation. We cannot end your Garmin session from our side, so also remove Gritmaps in your Garmin account settings if you want that grant withdrawn. The heart-rate zones and FTP we already took from Garmin remain in your account: they describe your training rather than the connection, and route generation relies on them. Clear those values or write to [email protected] if you want them gone. Disconnecting Wahoo withdraws our access on Wahoo's side and removes the upcoming workouts and plans Gritmaps sent to your Wahoo account.

Legal Basis

We rely on a different basis depending on what we are doing:

  • Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR): running your account, generating routes, matching rides and sending them to your device.
  • Explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR): processing your heart rate, zones and weight.
  • Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR): using your rides and feedback, anonymised (no name, no account) and with heart rate removed, to improve route matching, as covered by the two sharing settings below. You can switch either off at any time in Settings, and switching off stops future use.
  • Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR): keeping the service secure and available, preventing abuse, and diagnosing faults.

Your Sharing Choices

Settings → Data sharing has two switches. New accounts start with both on; on an account created earlier, they stay as you set them. Each one covers:

  • Share completed rides: lets us study how your gritmapped rides actually went, so route matching improves. Your rides are stored either way, because the app needs them to show you your own history — this setting controls whether we may look at them. When we do, we review them anonymised: no name and no account attached.
  • Share ride feedback: lets us read the ratings and notes you leave. Again reviewed anonymised, with no name or account attached.
  • Turning a switch off stops any further use from that point on. It does not delete the underlying rides or notes, which stay in your account until you delete them or the account.

Who Else Processes Your Data

We use a small number of providers to run the service. They act on our instructions, except where noted:

  • Amazon Web Services — application hosting, database and transactional email, in the Frankfurt region (eu-central-1).
  • Cloudflare — DNS and the network edge in front of the site and the app; it sees the IP address and metadata of every request.
  • OpenFreeMap — map tiles, which your browser requests directly. That means it receives your IP address and the areas of the map you look at.
  • Open-Meteo — wind and weather forecasts. We send the coordinates and dates of a planned ride from our servers, never your IP address.
  • Amazon Location Service — turning place searches into coordinates.
  • Better Stack — technical logs and error diagnostics, stored in the EU and kept for three days.
  • Amazon SES — sign-up confirmation, sign-in links and password resets. We send no marketing email.

Storage & Security

Your data is stored in a private database in Amazon's Frankfurt region (eu-central-1), reachable only from within our own network. Traffic is encrypted in transit with TLS, and the database storage is encrypted at rest. Access is limited to Gritmaps administrators. Backups are retained for 30 days and replicated to a second EU region (Ireland) so we can recover from a failure.

Retention

How long we keep things:

  • Account, profile, routes, rides and feedback: for as long as your account is open.
  • Deleting your account in Settings erases it immediately and permanently, together with all the data we store for it: profile, settings, routes, rides, feedback, the access tokens we hold for Garmin, Strava and Wahoo, and your sign-in. It also withdraws our access to your Strava and Wahoo accounts, and we send a confirmation to your email address. Encrypted database backups roll off within 30 days. There is no need to email us.
  • Technical logs and error diagnostics: three days. Aggregate log-volume metrics, which contain no personal data, are kept for 30 days.

Your Rights

Under the nDSG and GDPR, you have the right to:

  • Access the personal data we hold about you
  • Rectify inaccurate data
  • Request erasure of your data
  • Receive your data in a portable format
  • Withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting what came before
  • Ask us to restrict how we process your data
  • Object to processing based on our legitimate interests
  • Lodge a complaint with the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) or your local EU data protection authority

Changes to This Policy

If we change how we handle your data, we will update this page and the date at the top. When a change materially affects you, we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

To exercise any of these rights or for questions about this policy, email us at [email protected].