Privacy

My4wd is an offline-first navigation app, and it is free. There is no free week, no subscription, nothing to pay in order to use it and nothing to cancel: the whole app is open to anyone, with no account, no password and no login, and no card is ever asked for. An email address is only ever collected if you type one — to hear about new regions, or to get a reply — and never to unlock anything. It sets no tracking pixels of its own, and it loads exactly two third parties: Meta's pixel, used only to tell which advert brought somebody here, and Google Analytics, which counts page views and nothing else. The optional tip button is a third, and it is different in kind — it is a plain link, so nothing is loaded from it and nothing is sent to it unless you deliberately tap it. Everything the app itself records is counted on our own server. This page says exactly what it does collect, what it never collects, and who sees anything at all.

What we collect

• Your email address, only if you type it. Nothing needs it to use the app. It comes from the news opt-in inside the app, or from the feedback box, and it is used for exactly what you asked for: news of new regions if you ticked the consent box, or a reply to what you wrote. It is never sold or shared, and it is no longer what starts a trial or restores a licence, because there is no trial and no licence. You can also give a name, only if you choose to give one; that box is optional and can be left empty, and an empty box is stored as empty rather than guessed at. A phone number, only if you type one into the feedback form — used solely to reply, never added to any marketing list. You can leave your address in the app's feedback box, or from the region notice in the app itself — which appears only when the region you are in has no pack yet, and which you can dismiss. Unticking the consent box means you are never emailed at all, and we store what you were shown so that remains provable. Nothing else about you is collected.
• Nothing about your card, unless you choose to tip. The app itself takes no payment and nothing in it is gated — there is no subscription, nothing renews, and no card is ever needed to use My4wd. There is an optional tip jar, and it is entirely voluntary: tapping it takes you off this site to Buy Me a Coffee, which handles the payment and takes your card details on its own site — we never see or store them, and the app holds no card data. Buy Me a Coffee tells us that a payment happened; it does not give us your card or your details. If the button has been pointed at Stripe instead, Stripe plays exactly that role and that is stated here for the same reason. If you never tap it, no payment provider is involved at all, and nothing is withheld from you for that.
• What you wrote. The text of a feedback message or an enquiry, plus the kind of message it is and which region it concerns.
• Whether you opted in to hear from us. If you ticked the consent box, we store the exact wording you agreed to and when. If you did not tick it, we do not contact you.
• Counts of what the app did. An app open, a tab view, a pack download. These are counters on our own server, with no cookies and no IP address stored. A random identifier made on your device lets us count one install rather than many opens — it carries nothing about you and is not connected to anything else. We use the counts to know which regions are worth building next.
• The country the connection came from. Our hosting provider gives us a two-letter country code — and, where it supplies one, a state or province — so we can see which parts of the world are actually using this and decide which regions are worth building. It is derived from your connection at the network edge: the address it comes from is not stored, and nothing more precise than a region is. Read it as a rough signal, not a census — a VPN or a mobile network routing through another state can make it wrong. It is not used to identify anyone, and it is used for nothing except that.
• A scrambled IP address, in one place only. When you join the enquiry list we store a one-way hash of your IP address so the form cannot be flooded. A hash cannot be turned back into an address. Every request also carries the browser's own description of itself, and that is stored with the enquiry for the same reason — to tell a form-filling script from a person.

Changed on 23 September 2026: we began recording the country a connection comes from, which the list above now sets out. The same edit describes the random install identifier plainly, instead of implying there was no identifier at all. A later edit the same day added an optional name box to the fleet enquiry, which the list above now names — the policy said "nothing else identifies you", and adding the box would have made that untrue. Changed on 7 October 2026: the app moved from free to one free week for an email address and then a yearly subscription for the whole app — after the week it stops until it is paid, and the data licence underneath stays open — so the email address is now described as what starts the free week and restores a licence, the account denial is qualified rather than left standing alone, and the payment and Stripe paragraph was added. Changed on 15 October 2026: the app became free and the paywall was removed. There is no free week, no subscription, no renewal, no refund question and no payment provider — so the paragraph about cards and Stripe was replaced with one saying there is no card at all, the email address is no longer described as starting anything, and the fleet enquiry form this page used to name no longer exists. A privacy page that still described a paywall we had removed would have been false in five places. Changed again the same day: an optional tip jar was added, which meant the "no payment provider is involved at all" paragraph became false the moment it shipped — Stripe is involved for anyone who chooses to contribute. It now says the app takes no payment and nothing is gated, that a tip is voluntary, and that card details go to the processor and never to us. Corrected again the same day: the tip buttons point at the existing Buy Me a Coffee page, not Stripe, so naming Stripe as the processor would itself have been false. This page now names Buy Me a Coffee as what handles a contribution, keeps Stripe named for the case where the button is re-pointed at it, and counts the tip as a third party we can SEND you to but never load — a plain link, so nothing reaches them unless you tap it.

What we never collect

• No account, no password and no login. The app needs none of those, and there is nothing to sign into. An email address is only ever given for news or a reply, on purpose, by you — and it unlocks nothing, because there is nothing locked.
• No cookies of ours, and no tracking pixels of ours. The two third parties loaded on these pages — Meta's pixel and Google Analytics — each set their own, and the sections further down name every one of them. The tip button is a plain link and is not one of the two: nothing is loaded from Buy Me a Coffee and nothing is set by them until you tap it.
• No location history. Where you drive, where you camp and where you record a track stays on your device. It is never uploaded, and no server of ours sees it. The rough country code described above is not an exception to this: it is a network signal about the connection, not a record of anywhere you went.
• No analytics beyond our own counters, Google Analytics and Meta's pixel. Those two are the whole third-party list for anything this site LOADS; Buy Me a Coffee is a third party we can send you to, and only if you choose to tap the tip button. The sections further down set out exactly what each receives.
• No advertising identifiers of ours, and no selling or sharing of personal information with anyone, for any purpose. Meta's pixel is an advertising tool and does recognise a browser it has seen before — that identifier is Meta's, not ours, and the section below sets it out.

Who else sees anything

Four things make requests while you use My4wd, and honesty means naming them. Each is a service that has to receive your IP address to answer, in the same way any website does:

• Map tiles come from OpenFreeMap. The map cannot draw without them.
• Weather, sea state and sun times come from Open-Meteo, and rain radar from RainViewer, when those layers are switched on.
• Hosting is Railway, and Cloudflare sits in front of it for DNS and delivery. Both necessarily see requests to the site.
• Meta's pixel counts those same page views for Facebook and Instagram, so that if we advertise there we can tell which advert actually brought somebody to the app. It is described in full below, including the two things it is set not to do.

Those four are everything that runs while you use My4wd. There is one more third party we can send you to and never load: the optional tip button is a plain link, so tapping it takes you to Buy Me a Coffee and nothing whatsoever is requested from them until you do. If you never tap it, they never see you at all.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is loaded on every page of this site and in the app. It is Google's own tool, served from our own domain, and it counts page views: which pages are opened, how people arrived, roughly what country they are in, and what kind of device they used. It sets its own cookies (_ga and _ga_*), which are Google's, not ours, and clearing your browser data removes them. IP addresses are anonymised in our configuration rather than left to Google's default.

It is not given anything you type. It never sees an email address, a licence key, a track, a location or anything from the feedback form. It receives the address of the page and the fact that it was opened, and nothing else about you.

This is a change of position, and it is written down rather than quietly reversed. Google Analytics counted page views from 23 September 2026, was removed on 6 October 2026 because it was the single slowest request on every page — over a second on its own, more than the app's entire map library — and was restored on 12 October 2026 because that reporting was wanted more than the speed was. The counter described under What we collect above was always running and is unaffected by that decision either way.

If you send feedback while a Telegram notification is configured, the message text goes to Telegram so it reaches a human quickly. Nothing else about you does — no address, no device details.

Meta's pixel, specifically

This part of the policy changed on 24 September 2026, when advertising on Facebook and Instagram began. It is written out here rather than left off the list, because the only thing that makes the list above worth reading is that it is true.

• What it collects. Which page you loaded, the address of the page that sent you here, your IP address, and your browser and device type. It also reads the click identifier Facebook adds when somebody arrives from one of its adverts, which is how an advert gets credited with a visit.
• The cookies it sets. Meta's own, named _fbp and _fbc. They are not ours, they exist so Meta can recognise a browser it has seen before, and clearing your browser data removes them.
• Where it goes. To Meta, in the United States. That is the same kind of overseas disclosure, and Meta's handling of it is governed by Meta's privacy policy, not by ours.
• What it is set not to do. Meta's pixel would otherwise read whatever is typed into a form on the page — including the email address and name on the enquiry form. That is switched off in our own code, using Meta's documented setting for it, so the enquiry form still posts only to our own server.
• The one thing we cannot switch off from here. Meta has a setting of their own, "Automatic Advanced Matching", which collects form fields from their side and cannot be disabled by code — only in Meta's dashboard. It is off by default and it is off here. If that ever changes this line stops being true, which is exactly why it is written down.
• Turning it off. Block third-party scripts, or use any content blocker. The app works normally with it blocked — nothing in it depends on the pixel. Meta also shows you what it has matched to your account, and lets you clear it, under "Off-Facebook activity" in your Facebook settings.
• It never runs offline. The pixel is skipped completely when the browser reports no connection, so the app sends nothing at all while you are out of range.

Changed on 24 September 2026, when advertising on Facebook and Instagram began: the list above used to say there were no tracking pixels here, which would now be false, so it was rewritten rather than left standing. Changed again on 6 October 2026, when Google Analytics was removed and every sentence about it above was brought in line with that. Changed again on 12 October 2026, when Google Analytics was restored — the page had said it was gone, and leaving that standing while loading it again would have made this page false, which is the one thing it must never be.

How long we keep it

Feedback and enquiries are kept while they are useful for fixing things and building the right regions. Marketing consent is kept for as long as you are on the list, because we have to be able to prove consent was given.

Getting your data removed

Every email we send has an unsubscribe link, and it works in one click. You can also write to hello@my4wd.app and ask for any information we hold about you to be deleted, or simply ask what we have. We will action it.

Children

My4wd is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date below changes with it.