Coastory Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-10-28

Coastory is made by Lauren Leppert, doing business as Velocicoder ("Velocicoder", "we"). Questions about this policy or your data: support@coastory.app.

The short version

Coastory is a roller coaster tracking app. Your ride history, ratings, notes, and photos live on your phone. Coastory never uploads your photos to us — the app has no way to. Through Coastory, they leave your phone only when you share or export them yourself; your phone's own backup is separate (below). If you create a Coastory Account, your email address and a text-only copy of your ride history (never photos) are stored on our servers so you can get your history back on a new phone. If the app crashes, a crash report goes to our error-reporting service so we can fix it; that report never contains your photos, notes, or ride history. Crash reporting is on by default. Whether you can turn it off depends on your installed version; see Crash reports below. No ads, and no analytics watching what you do in the app; the crash reporter's only counting is of app opens and how each one ended. We don't sell your data.

What we collect and why

Things you enter. Your display name, ride history, ratings, tags, notes, park visits, any souvenir purchases or game costs you record, and any parks or coasters you add yourself. These stay on your phone. If you create an Account, a text-only copy of what the app keeps is stored on our servers so you can restore it on another phone. Your Account and Profile identifiers link those stored records to you. That copy covers everything above plus your season passes and membership cards — their names, kind, add-ons, meal-plan tracking, order, where each picture sits inside the app, and how it's cropped (never the picture itself, and never a member number you type — those stay on your phone unless you put them in a backup file yourself), your Adventures, Stories and keepsakes, any spreadsheet you've imported (the file's name, how you matched its columns, and the rows you brought in), your app settings, and, for each photo, the text that describes it — which ride or park it belongs to, where the file sits inside the app, how it's cropped, and when you added it. It never includes the photo itself.

Your photos. Stored only on your phone, in the app's private storage. Coastory never uploads them to us, with or without an Account: the app opens them only to show them to you and to build a share or an export you ask for. A photo leaves your phone when you send it somewhere yourself — sharing it, or exporting a Story or a backup — and then it goes only where you sent it. There is no photo upload to our servers; if you lose your phone without a backup, we can't get your photos back. The in-app Backup feature gives you a copy of your history and photos in a file you control.

Your email address, if you create an Account. Sign-in is passwordless: we email you a one-time code, so we never see or store a password. When you sign in, our sign-in service records the IP address of that session and the technical headers the app sends with it (the app's software library and version, and whether you're on Android or an iPhone and your phone's system version string), as sign-in systems normally do.

Reports you choose to send. Coastory has two report forms in the app, Report an Issue and the catalog reports (Suggest a correction, Report something missing and Confirm this is right), and one on our website, the correction form. What travels with a report depends on which form you used and on what you're reporting. Nothing from your ride history or photos is included in any of them unless you type it in.

• "Report an Issue" → something is broken. What you wrote, how bad you said it is, the screen you were on and the few before it, and technical context: app and catalog version, device model, whether you're on Android or an iPhone, OS version, screen size and whether that counts as a phone or a tablet, language, light/dark theme, and network state. The app shows you that technical context before you send.
• "Report an Issue" → suggest an improvement. What you wrote, which area you filed it under, the screen you were on and the few before it, and the app and catalog version. Nothing about your device — an idea isn't a diagnosis, so there's nothing to diagnose it with. The app shows you what's sent before you send.
• "Suggest a correction" and "Report something missing" — the catalog reports. A correction is sent from a park or coaster page, where it names that park or coaster, or from About this catalog in Settings, where it names nothing and carries only what you wrote, any link, and the technical context below. "Report something missing" is sent from a park page — where it names that park — or from a search that came up empty, where there's nothing to name. What travels: what you wrote, any link you added, and — when you're correcting a specific fact — which fact, and the value the catalog holds for it today. Plus app and catalog version, and the same technical context as a broken-app report: device model, whether you're on Android or an iPhone, OS version, screen size and whether that counts as a phone or a tablet, language, light/dark theme, and network state. That last part is so we can tell one rider's report from another's while we work through them. The app shows you that technical context before you send. "Confirm this is right", sent from a park or coaster page, tells us a fact the catalog shows is correct; it names that park or coaster and, if you pick one, which fact, with the value the catalog holds for it, and otherwise carries the same things as a correction. These reports carry no screen trail at all — so when you report something missing from a search, nothing on the report records where in the app you were.
• The correction form on coastory.app. A catalog page on our website links to a form that sends what you wrote, the address of the page you sent it from, and a way to reach you if you add one. We store nothing about your device with it. It is kept and deleted like the reports above.

Every report also carries the date and time you sent it and a random identifier for that one report. A "Report an Issue" report also carries your Account id, written into the report, if you're signed in when you send it; the catalog reports never carry it. No report is sent over your sign-in: the app sends every report the way it would if you were signed out, so a catalog report isn't tied to your Account the way your cloud copy is. Like any request to our servers, it still arrives from your internet connection's IP address, which our provider logs.

Crash reports. If Coastory crashes or hits an unexpected error, a report goes to our error-reporting service, Sentry: the technical details of the error (stack trace), device model and manufacturer, OS version, screen size and orientation, battery, memory and storage levels, similar device-health details (charging and temperature state, processor type, whether the phone is rooted or jailbroken), your phone's timezone and language settings, its accessibility settings (such as bold text, higher contrast or reduced motion), whether it uses a 24-hour clock, its light/dark setting, app version, a short trail of app-level events just before the error (for example, the app going to the background), and the names of the screens you visited before it, with when you opened them — the kind of screen, such as a park's page, never which park or anything you typed. Separately from errors, the same service counts each time the app is opened and how that session ended — normally, after an error, or in a crash — so we can see how often Coastory crashes at all; it also reports the app freezing or hanging. Reports carry a random per-installation identifier created by the reporting library — not your email, your Account, or any advertising or hardware ID — and, on iPhone, a one-way hash of the device identifier Apple gives each app maker. We don't connect either to your Account. They never include your photos, notes, ride history, or a screenshot. Sentry is configured not to store your IP address. It does still record roughly where the report came from — country, region and city — which it works out from the internet connection the report arrives on. That is not your phone's location: a crash report never includes it, and turning the IP off does not turn this off, because they are separate settings at Sentry's end. We would rather say so than let "we don't store your IP address" imply more than it does. In Coastory 0.9.31 (build 54), you can turn crash reports off in Settings → About & help → Send crash reports; they are on until you do. The change takes effect the next time Coastory starts, and from then on nothing is sent to Sentry at all — no error reports, no app-open counting, nothing. Your choice is kept in your Coastory backup and your cloud copy, so it comes with you to a new phone once you've restored it and restarted Coastory; until then, a fresh install starts with crash reports on. Older store builds, including 0.9.9 (build 27), do not offer this setting and send crash reports automatically. This description does not mean build 54 is available in your store yet.

Email you send us. If you write to support@coastory.app, we have your email address and whatever you send, including attachments. We use it to answer you and to act on what you ask.

Nothing else. Coastory has no analytics or advertising code, and never asks your phone for your contacts. It asks for your phone's location in one place only: when you choose to sort My Parks by Distance. Only then does your phone ask you, and if you say no, My Parks sorts by name instead. If you say yes, Coastory reads roughly where you are, uses it on your phone to put your closest parks first, and forgets it when you switch to another tab or leave Coastory. It reads it again each time you come back to My Parks while it is sorted by Distance. Once you have allowed it, Coastory also reads roughly where you are each time you open it or bring it back to the front, to notice when your phone is near a park in its catalog: if it is, it offers I'm here for that park in the bar above the tabs, and nothing is set until you tap it. It never reads your location in the background. If you tap Not now, or say you've left a park, Coastory keeps only the time of that tap on this phone, so it stays quiet until 4 a.m.; it keeps no park and no position from it. You can turn the check off in Settings → About & help → Notice when I'm at a park; off, Coastory reads your location only for the Distance sort. Your location is never stored, never in your Coastory backup or your cloud copy, and never sent to us or anyone else. It reads a file or picture from elsewhere on your phone only when you pick it yourself — a photo, a spreadsheet to import, or a backup to restore. Apart from the Distance sort and that check, nothing in the app reads where your phone is. The only place Coastory knows you are is a park you tell it — with I'm at this park on that park's page, by starting or moving an Adventure there, or by tapping I'm here on that offer — and that you're here now marker stays on this phone: it isn't in your Coastory backup or your cloud copy, and is forgotten when you say you've left, by 4 a.m. the next day — or, if an Adventure you started is still running then, once it ends — or when you erase the app's data. The days and rides you log record their park, and an Adventure records its date. Those records travel in your Account's text-only cloud copy and are linked to that Account; this includes the parks and specific rides you recorded visiting. Separately, our crash reporter derives the approximate area described above from your internet connection, not from your phone's location — we count that as collecting your rough location, and we declare it as such on the app stores. Four things in the app reach other companies directly. Tips are handled entirely by Apple or Google: the app asks the store for the price and hands the purchase to it, and we never see your payment details and keep no record of the tip. "Learn more about this ride", on a coaster's page, opens a DuckDuckGo web search in your browser, so DuckDuckGo receives the coaster's name and its park's name — including a name you typed yourself for a coaster you added; nothing is sent until you tap it. "Choose from the web", on a ride's or park's page, sends the ride's name and its park's name (or the park's name, on a park's page) to Openverse and Wikimedia Commons when you tap it — including a name you typed yourself — then loads photos from the sites that host them; nothing else about you goes with it, other than your device's internet address, as with any web request. Live waits, on a park's page or a coaster's page, asks ThemeParks.wiki for that park's current ride waits only for parks and coasters it covers, when the page opens and every few minutes while it stays on screen, so ThemeParks.wiki receives which park you are looking at and your device's internet address, as with any web request; nothing else about you goes with it, the waits are not saved, and you can turn it off in Settings, after which nothing is sent. If anything else ever changes, this policy will change first.

Permissions. Camera and photo library are requested only when you choose to take or pick a photo, or to save something the app made into your Photos, and the image stays on your phone. If you turn on "Also save to my Photos" in Settings, the app also writes copies to your own photo library; that's off unless you choose it. Internet is used for Account sign-in, the optional cloud copy, the reports you send, crash reports while they're on, tips you choose to give through the app store, choosing a photo from the web, and live waits on a park's page or a coaster's page unless you turn them off. When you choose a photo from the web, Coastory sends the ride's name and its park's name (or the park's name, on a park's page) to Openverse and Wikimedia Commons to search their libraries, and loads the photos from the sites that host them. Nothing else about you goes with it, other than your device's internet address, as with any web request.

Notifications. Coastory can notify you about two things you start: when a meal timer you set on a pass runs out, and once if a day you started is still open a day later. Notifications are made on your phone; Coastory sends nothing about them anywhere. Coastory asks for permission the first time you start a timer or a day, never when you first open the app. You can turn them off in Settings → About & help → Allow notifications.

Your phone's own backup

Separately from Coastory, your phone may back up app data to your Google or Apple account, or move it to a new phone. On Android, Coastory allows its database into that backup and keeps photos out so the backup stays small enough to succeed; a direct phone-to-phone transfer carries everything. On iPhone, an iCloud or computer backup of your phone includes Coastory's data, photos too, unless you turn iCloud Backup off for Coastory (a backup to a computer can't leave one app out). That data goes to your own Google or Apple account under their terms — we never see it. The in-app Backup feature is the copy you control.

Who handles your data

• Nobody, by default. Coastory has no public profiles, feeds, or leaderboards. Another rider can see your history only if you share it yourself.
• Our service providers, who process data only to run the app for us: Supabase (Account sign-in and the cloud copy of your history, hosted in the United States), Sentry (crash reports, hosted in the United States), Google (the mailbox that receives email sent to support@coastory.app), Anthropic and OpenAI (AI tools that help us read and act on the reports and email you send us), and the email service that delivers your sign-in codes. If you give a tip, Apple or Google processes it under their own terms. When you choose a photo from the web, Openverse and Wikimedia Commons receive the ride's and its park's names you are searching for (or the park's name), and the sites that host the photos serve them to your phone — none of them receives anything else about you, other than your device's internet address, as with any web request. We don't share your data with anyone else, and we don't sell it.
• Us, when we read the reports you send to fix the app and the catalog, and crash reports to fix crashes.
• If the law requires it — for example, a valid subpoena. We expect that to be rare.

How long we keep it

• Account data (email, cloud copy, sign-in records): while your Account exists. Deleting your Account removes it (below).
• Reports you send us: 90 days after each one reaches us, then deleted from our servers automatically; we may keep a summary of what was wrong and what we changed.
• Sending limits for the website form: to limit how often one internet connection can send, our server keeps a one-way code made from your IP address, apart from your report, and deletes it automatically within 20 minutes.
• Email you send to support@coastory.app: deleted within 90 days of the conversation's last message; copies can remain in Google's routine backups for the period Google's terms set. We may keep a summary of what was wrong and what we changed.
• What our AI tools handle: when Anthropic's or OpenAI's tools help us read a report or an email, their copies are kept for the period their terms set, apart from the periods above.
• Crash reports: Sentry keeps them for up to 90 days, then deletes them.
• On your phone: until you delete it in the app or uninstall.

Your choices

• No Account needed. Everything in the core app — logging rides, rating, tagging, photos, your history — works without an Account, and the app won't nag you to create one.
• Turn crash reports off in supported versions. In Coastory 0.9.31 (build 54), use Settings → About & help → Send crash reports. From the next time Coastory starts, nothing is sent to our error-reporting service; turn it back on the same way. Build 27 does not offer this setting. See Crash reports above for the version distinction.
• Erase your phone's data. Settings → Data & account → Erase everything removes every record and photo Coastory has on the phone, including its copies of reports you've sent us; a report you wrote but hadn't sent yet is dropped rather than sent. Reports that already reached us aren't affected — see Delete your Account below for how to ask us to remove them. If you're signed in, you choose in the same place whether to empty the cloud copy too; if Coastory is still signed in on another phone, that phone will send its history to your cloud copy again, so erase it or sign out there as well. Uninstalling removes everything Coastory stored inside the app. Files you exported and pictures you saved to your Photos are yours, outside the app, and stay where you put them.
• Delete your Account. Settings → Data & account → Backup & restore → Delete Account deletes your Account, your email address, your sign-in records, and every record stored on our servers. It doesn't touch what's on your phone unless you ask it to: that screen asks what should happen to the history on the device, and keeping it is the default — leaving an Account says nothing about the record of what you rode. You can also request deletion by emailing support@coastory.app from the Account's address, or via https://coastory.app/delete-account/. Deletion is immediate on our side; copies can remain in our provider's routine database backups for up to 30 days before those roll off. The reports you send us aren't part of your Account and aren't deleted with it; each one is deleted automatically 90 days after it reaches us. To have them removed sooner, email us and tell us roughly what you sent and when, since catalog reports carry no Account id to find them by. Email you sent us follows the 90-day rule above. Crash reports were never linked to your Account and expire on their own. We don't keep anything for legal reasons today; if that changes, we'll say so here.
• Get a copy or fix something. Settings → Data & account → Backup & restore → Back up now gives you your complete history including photos, any time. Everything you've recorded is yours to edit or delete in the app. For anything else about your data — access, correction, a copy, deletion — email support@coastory.app and we'll do it.

Children

Coastory isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. We don't ask for your age. If we learn that a child under 13 has created an Account, we'll delete it and its data — tell us at support@coastory.app.

Security

Everything between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit, and each rider's cloud data is readable only by the signed-in Account that wrote it. Keeping so little is part of how we keep it safe.

Changes

If we materially change what we collect or how we use it, we'll update this page and the date above, and tell you in the app where practical.

Contact: support@coastory.app