Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how the Ember team (“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 does not collect personal information about you. Your check-ins, saved places, passport, and home region stay on your device. We can't see them, and they are never uploaded to our servers.

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 that build your passport
• The saunas you save
• Your chosen home region and whether you've completed onboarding

This information never leaves your device, and we have no access to it. If you delete the App, this data is removed with it.

Location

If you choose to grant location access, the App uses your location only on your device to confirm you're near a sauna when you check in, and to determine which country you're in for your passport. Your location is used in the moment and is never stored on, or transmitted to, our servers or any third party. Location access is optional and you can change it any time in your device settings.

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. The App itself contains no analytics, tracking, or advertising SDKs.

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 — check-ins, saved places, sessions, location, or health data — is ever used for advertising or shared with an ad network.

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.

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, and Apple Maps), Supabase (catalog 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

Because we don't hold personal information about you on our servers, there is no account data for us to access, correct, or delete. You are in control of the data stored on your device: you can remove it at any time by deleting the App. 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.