Who we are
GoTripping is a group trip planning app built and operated by Karthik Balakrishnan, an individual developer based in India. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean him.
This policy covers the GoTripping app and gotripping.app, for users in India and the United States. Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, we act as the Data Fiduciary for the data described below.
What we collect
Your phone number, the people you travel with, what your trip costs, and any documents you choose to store. We don't read your SMS or trip chats, or track your location in the background.
- Account information — your mobile number, which is how you sign in, and your name.
- The people you travel with — names and the share weight you assign each of them (adult, child, elder, or a custom percentage).
- Trip information — destinations, dates, activities, and who's attending what.
- Expense information — amounts, descriptions, who paid, how it splits, details extracted from receipts you scan, and any bank messages you paste in.
- Documents you upload — tickets, bookings and similar files you put in the trip's Vault.
- Website information — like most websites, the hosting behind gotripping.app may keep standard server logs, such as IP address and browser type, to keep the site running and secure.
- Technical information — device model, operating system, app version, region, and diagnostic and crash data, so the app works and we can fix it when it doesn't.
What we don't collect
- We don't read your SMS or your trip chats. The bank and UPI expense feature works only on text you paste in yourself. GoTripping doesn't ask for permission to read your SMS or your notifications. The one exception is a chat message someone reports to us for safety reasons: we then see that message and who sent it, so we can act on it.
- We don't collect continuous or background location.
- We don't sell or rent your data, and we don't share it for advertising. There is no advertising in GoTripping.
- We don't collect payment handles such as UPI IDs or payment-app usernames.
- We never ask for your banking credentials — no card numbers, no UPI PIN, no payment-app passwords. If something claiming to be GoTripping asks for these, it isn't us.
- We don't use your trips, expenses or documents to train machine-learning models.
Receipt scanning and AI
Receipts are read on your phone. The AI feature is switched off, and it will never touch a document without your explicit yes.
Receipt scanning happens on your device. The app uses your phone's on-device AI when it has one. If it doesn't, the app reads the receipt with Google ML Kit and rules that are bundled inside the app. The expense details you save, such as amount and description, then sync with your trip like any other expense.
The external AI integration is off. GoTripping includes an AI integration that is disabled in the current version. While it is off, nothing you add is sent to an external AI service.
Our commitment for when it is turned on. Before any document can be sent to an external AI service, the app first checks, on your device, whether the document appears to contain sensitive personal information, such as government ID or passport details. If it does, the app tells you so and asks whether you still want to send it. Nothing is sent unless you say yes. If you say no, the document is not sent. We will update this policy before the feature is switched on, and tell you in the app.
Why we use it
To run your trip and share it with your group, to calculate fair splits and balances, to sign you in, to send you notifications about your own trips, to operate Trip Pass, to keep accounts secure, to fix and improve the app, and to meet legal obligations.
In India, we do this on the basis of the consent you give when you sign up and turn on a feature, and for the limited legitimate uses the DPDP Act permits. You can withdraw consent at any time, and it's as easy to withdraw as it was to give.
Who else sees it
The people on your trip. GoTripping is a shared workspace. Everyone on a trip sees that trip's plan, expenses and balances, and the shared Vault folder. Assume anything you add to a trip is visible to the whole group.
Service providers who help us run the app — hosting and storage, sending sign-in codes, push notifications, and crash diagnostics. They process data only on our instructions and are contractually required to keep it secure.
Apple and Google, who process Trip Pass purchases. We receive confirmation of the purchase, not your card details.
We'll also disclose data if a valid legal order requires it, or to protect our users. If GoTripping is ever acquired, data may transfer as part of that, and we'll tell you first.
Money
GoTripping never holds or moves your money. We work out who owes what; you settle up in your own payment app.
GoTripping calculates each person's share and shows the amounts to be settled. You then settle those amounts yourselves, using external or third-party payment apps of your choice. We are not a bank, payment aggregator, gateway or escrow service, we hold no funds at any point, and we never see your PIN or card details. Balances in GoTripping are a record of what your group agreed among yourselves — not a statement from a financial institution.
Children
You must be 18 or older to hold a GoTripping account. Children appear on a trip only as travellers an adult adds, so that the split is fair — they don't get accounts, can't sign in, and we don't collect their contact details.
By adding a child, you confirm you are their parent or lawful guardian, or that you have a parent or guardian's permission. We never use a child's data for tracking or advertising. If you believe a child's data has been added without permission, write to us and we'll remove it.
Documents and security
Everything you store with us is encrypted in transit and at rest, sign-in is passwordless, and travellers only ever see the trips they're on.
Vault documents are end-to-end encrypted. They are encrypted on your device, and they can't be read outside the app — not by us, and not by our hosting providers. Only active members of the trip, including the family or group members on it, can open them.
No system is perfectly secure. We do what's reasonable for a product of this size, and if a breach affects you we'll tell you promptly — within 72 hours of becoming aware of it — along with what happened and what you can do.
How long we keep it
We keep your account data while your account is active, and your trip data for as long as the trip exists. Diagnostics are kept for a short period. Purchase and tax records are kept as long as the law requires.
A trip is shared, so if you delete your account while others are still using a trip, their record of it — including expenses involving you — remains, because it's their data too. Where we can, we replace your identifying details with a placeholder.
Your rights
Whether you're in India or the United States, you can ask us to:
- tell you what data we hold about you and who we've shared it with;
- correct or complete anything that's wrong — including a name or weight someone else entered;
- delete your data, subject to the shared-trip and legal limits above;
- stop processing, by withdrawing your consent.
You can export your ledger as a spreadsheet and your itinerary as a PDF or calendar file from inside the app, at any time. Under the DPDP Act you can also nominate someone to exercise these rights for you if you die or are incapacitated — write to us to register a nominee.
We may need to verify a request is genuinely yours before acting on it.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account from inside the app: go to Profile > Settings. No email required.
Where your data lives
GoTripping operates in India and the United States, and a single trip can include travellers in both. Your data is stored on servers operated by our hosting providers in those regions, and may be processed in a country other than your own as a result.
If you're in the United States
We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Depending on your state you may have rights to know, delete, correct and obtain a copy of your data, and not to be treated differently for exercising them. The contacts below, and the in-app deletion path above, cover all of these.
Changes to this policy
We'll update this page as the product changes. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we'll tell you in the app or by message before it takes effect, and ask for fresh consent where the law requires it. The date at the top always reflects the current version.
Contact us
Grievance Officer: Karthik Balakrishnan
Privacy and grievances: grievance@gotripping.app
General support: plan@gotripping.app
If you're not satisfied with how we've handled a complaint, you can escalate to the Data Protection Board of India.