Privacy Policy
Horient is operated by Horient LTD. (赫里恩有限公司), a limited company registered in Taiwan, Republic of China (Company No. 統一編號 62161557), registered office in Keelung City 201003, Taiwan. Horient LTD. is the data controller for the purposes of this policy. Contact: support@horient.app.
Horient is a communication and safety app for travelers, sailors, aviators and explorers. This policy explains what data the app handles, how it is protected, and what choices you have. The short version: your private messages and live location are end-to-end encrypted, we show no ads, and we do not sell or share your data with advertisers — ever.
1. Data you provide
- Account — email address, username, display name, and the avatar / profile details you choose to add. Public profile fields are visible to other users; personal profile fields only to your accepted contacts.
- Messages & media — direct messages, crew (group) messages, and attached photos/voice notes are end-to-end encrypted: they are encrypted on your device and can only be decrypted by the intended recipients. We cannot read them, and neither can our AI features.
- Content you publish — public map pins and discovery posts you explicitly choose to share are visible to other users by design.
2. Location
Location powers the map, the Helm navigation view, trails, and the SOS feature. Your stored live position and trail history are end-to-end encrypted — only contacts you have authorized can decrypt them; our servers store ciphertext only. You control location sharing per contact (blocked by default), and background location is a separate opt-in you can disable at any time in Settings. Triggering SOS shares your coordinates only with the emergency contacts you designated.
Weather features send roundedcoordinates (~11 km precision) to the MET Norway weather service — never your exact position.
To turn coordinates into place names, and to auto-detect whether you are at sea, in the air, or on land, the app uses your device's built-in geocoder (Apple or Google) and, for sea-vs-shore detection, LocationIQ. These lookups are sent directly from your deviceto those services — they never pass through our servers, and we do not store them. Asking the assistant "where am I" is answered on your device this same way: your position is never sent to us or to the AI. You can stop all of this by denying the app location permission, and terrain auto-detection only runs while you leave the auto-detect setting on.
3. Live video & calls
Live camera streams, group calls and voice/video calls are transmitted through LiveKit (our real-time media provider) using encrypted transport (WebRTC/DTLS-SRTP). Streams are not recorded by us. Access to your stream is controlled by you: contacts-only, optional PIN, viewer limits and join approval.
4. AI assistant
The optional AI assistant processes the questions you type to it, using Anthropic's Claude API. It can access your own account data (your pins, your profile, your stats) to answer you, but it cannot read your encrypted messages or your stored location. Conversations with the assistant are not used to train AI models.
5. What we technically collect
- Push notification tokens (to deliver messages, calls and SOS alerts).
- Online/last-seen status and an optional liveness heartbeat you can turn off.
- Basic operational logs (errors, service health). We use no advertising SDKs, no third-party analytics trackers, and no in-app usage tracking — no Google Analytics, no ad networks, no cross-app tracking, and nothing that records which screens or buttons you use.
- Your network operator, to judge connection quality. So the app can tell you whether your link is good, weak or offline — and recognise satellite connections such as Starlink, which behave very differently from mobile data — it looks up which network operator (ASN) your device is connected through, via ipwho.is or ipapi.co. Making that request necessarily reveals your device's IP address to that service. We read only the operator name and network number. We do not store your IP address, and the approximate location those services return is discarded unread.
- Aggregate statistics. To understand how Horient is doing overall, we count things we already store to run the app — for example how many accounts have a satellite tracker set up, or how many voyages exist in total. These are counts only: we look at totals and percentages across all users, never at an individual's behaviour, and no separate tracking or profiling is involved.
6. Service providers
We use Supabase (database, authentication and storage — hosted infrastructure), LiveKit (real-time audio/video), Anthropic (AI assistant), Expo (app updates and push delivery), Apple/Google push services, your device's OS geocoder and LocationIQ (turning coordinates into place/terrain names), ipwho.is and ipapi.co (identifying your network operator so the app can show connection quality), and open data sources for maps, weather (MET Norway) and ship traffic (AIS). Each receives only what is technically necessary to provide its function. None of them are permitted to use your data for advertising.
7. Data retention & deletion
Your data is kept while your account is active. You can delete individual messages, pins, and location history in the app. To delete your account and all associated data, contact us at support@horient.app — deletion is completed within 30 days.
8. Payments & subscriptions
Optional paid subscriptions (e.g. Helm Pro) are processed entirely by Apple's App Store or Google Play — we never see or store your card details. We receive only the subscription status needed to unlock features (via RevenueCat, our subscription-management provider). You can cancel anytime in your store account settings; refunds follow Apple/Google policy.
9. Children
Horient is not directed at children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country), and we do not knowingly collect data from them.
10. Changes
We will update this page when the policy changes and note the date at the top. Material changes will be announced in the app.
11. Contact
Questions or requests: support@horient.app