Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Ember (“we”, “us”) handles information in connection with the Ember mobile app (the “App”) and the website at saunadiscovery.com (together, the “Service”).

The short version: Ember does not require an account, and never asks who you are. Your check-ins, sessions, health data, saved places, and home region stay on your device. The App does send us usage events, tied to a random device ID rather than to you. See App analytics.

No account, no sign-in

Ember has no user accounts, logins, or sign-ups. We do not ask for your name, email address, phone number, or any other identifier to use the Service.

Information stored on your device

As you use the App, it stores the following on your device only:

• Your check-ins (the venue and the date you checked in) and the stamps and streaks they earn
• Your sessions, including any notes, temperature, and photo you add
• The saunas you save, and your lists
• Places of your own you record at, such as a home sauna. These are kept by name only, with no address or coordinates.
• Your chosen home region and whether you've completed onboarding

We have no access to this information. If you delete the App, it is removed with it.

Location

If you choose to grant location access, the App suggests your home region, shows saunas near you, and suggests the venue when you record a session. It also confirms you're near a sauna when you check in.

To work out which country you're in for your stamps, the App asks Apple's location service, built into iOS. Otherwise your location is used in the moment and is never stored on, or sent to, our servers. Location access is optional, and you can change it any time in your device settings.

Apple Health

Ember can record your sauna and cold plunge sessions. If you allow it, the App connects to Apple Health to do this. Health access is optional, and sessions still record without it.

Ember reads your workouts, heart rate, and active energy from Apple Health. It uses them only to build your session history and show how your body responded.

Ember writes each session you record to Apple Health as a workout. Sessions recorded on Apple Watch include the watch's active energy estimate.

Your sessions, and the health figures in them, are stored only on your device. Ember does not sync them to iCloud or send them to our servers. Like the rest of your iPhone, they are included in your own device backups.

Health data is never used for analytics or advertising, and we never share it. A session card you choose to share carries only what is printed on it.

You can change Ember's access at any time in the Health app, or in Settings under Privacy & Security. Deleting a session in Ember also removes the workout it saved to Apple Health. Workouts stay in Apple Health after you delete the App, until you remove them there.

If you use Ember on Apple Watch, the App can notify you when a watch session reaches your iPhone. The notification shows the session type and length, never health data.

The sauna catalog

To show you saunas, the App and website fetch our curated catalog from our hosting provider, Supabase. These are read-only requests for public sauna content; no personal information is sent. As with any internet request, the provider may process technical data such as your device's IP address to deliver the response.

Purchases

Ember Pro subscriptions and region unlocks are sold through the Apple App Store. Apple processes your payment and manages your subscription; we never see or store your payment details. Apple shares only the entitlement (whether a purchase is active), which the App reads on your device.

Website analytics

On saunadiscovery.com we use Vercel Web Analytics to understand aggregate traffic, such as which pages are popular. It measures visits without cookies and without building a profile of you, and does not collect personal information.

App analytics

Ember uses its own analytics tool to understand how the App is used. It is not a third-party SDK, and it does not track you across other apps or websites. The Apple Watch app sends nothing.

The App sends a short record when you do certain things. These include opening the App, viewing or saving a sauna, checking in, logging a session, and opening the paywall. Some records carry one detail, such as the sauna's city or the type of list.

Each record also carries the app version, iOS version, and device model. Records are tied to Apple's identifier for vendor: a random ID shared only by our own apps on your device. It is not the advertising identifier.

Analytics never include your name, email, location, notes, photos, or health data. We don't store your IP address with them, and we never sell analytics data or use it for advertising.

Records go to our own database, hosted by Supabase. We delete them after 90 days. We keep daily totals, and which days each device ID was active, to see how many people come back.

You can turn analytics off at any time in the App, under Settings › Privacy. The App then sends nothing more and clears any records it hasn't sent yet.

Advertising on the website

saunadiscovery.com carries advertising served by Google AdSense, which is what keeps the directory free to browse. Google is a third-party vendor and uses cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet. Other third-party vendors and ad networks may also serve ads here and may use their own cookies or web beacons to do so.

You can opt out of personalised advertising in Google's Ads Settings, or opt out of third-party vendors' use of cookies at aboutads.info and, in the UK and EU, Your Online Choices. More detail on how Google uses data from sites that use its services is in Google's partner-sites policy.

The Ember app carries no advertising. No ad SDK ships in the App, and nothing you record in it is ever used for advertising or shared with an ad network. That covers check-ins, saved places, sessions, location, and health data.

Cookies

The website sets advertising cookies through Google AdSense, as described above. Where UK and EU law requires it, these are only set after you consent, and you can withdraw consent at any time through the cookie controls on this site or your browser settings. Our own analytics are cookie-free. The App does not use cookies at all.

Maps and outbound links

Maps are rendered using Apple Maps in the App, and CARTO with OpenStreetMap data on the website; loading map tiles sends standard technical request data (such as an IP address) to those providers. When you tap a venue's website or booking link, you leave Ember and that destination's own privacy practices apply.

Some guides on the website carry affiliate links, marked where they appear. Following one takes you to Amazon, which sets its own cookies under its own privacy policy, and we may earn a commission on what you buy. We learn nothing about who you are.

Third-party providers

The providers that may process technical data on our behalf or as part of delivering the Service are: Apple (App Store, purchases, Apple Maps, and location lookups), Supabase (catalog and App analytics hosting), Vercel (website hosting and analytics), CARTO/OpenStreetMap (website map tiles), and Google AdSense (website advertising only). We do not sell your data. Beyond the advertising cookies described above, which apply to the website only, we do not share personal information with advertisers.

Children

Ember is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from children.

Your rights

We hold no account data about you. App analytics are tied to a random device ID, not to your name or email, so we can't find a person's records from either. They are deleted after 90 days.

Everything else Ember keeps is on your device, and deleting the App removes it. If you have questions about your rights under laws such as the UK GDPR or GDPR, contact us using the details below.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date above.

Contact

Questions about your privacy? Email us at hello@saunadiscovery.com.