Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 21, 2026
This Privacy Policy is provided in English. In the event of any conflict between a translated version and this English text, the English version controls.
1. Who We Are
LanternScout is operated by LanternScout Technologies Inc. (BC Registration No. BC1595355) ("LanternScout", "we", "us", or "our"), a British Columbia corporation. We provide an AI-assisted activity discovery service that helps people of any age discover local classes, camps, activities, and experiences — including adults using it on behalf of a child. Our Privacy Officer can be reached at admin@lanternscout.com.
2. What We Collect and Why
We collect only what is necessary to operate the Service. We do not require you to create an account, and we do not collect your name or payment card details. If you subscribe to LanternScout+, payment is handled entirely by Stripe (see section 7). If you use "Restore access", the email address you type is used only to find your subscription and send you a one-time link — we do not store it (see 2e).
2a. Information you submit in a Scout search
(Information you enter in the Day Planner is described separately in 2d.)
| What | Why | Stored by LanternScout? |
|---|---|---|
| Age range | To suggest age-appropriate activities | Yes — anonymously in aggregate analytics (see below) |
| Interests / description | To generate activity suggestions via Google Gemini AI | No — used only while your search runs, then discarded |
| Approximate area (city or postal code) | To search for nearby activities via Google Places | City and province only — street and postal code are stripped before storage |
| Search radius | To limit how far results are returned | No |
| Device location (if you tap "Use my location") | To convert GPS coordinates to an approximate address | Not in our database — coordinates are used to look up an address and are not saved, but they may appear in request logs (see section 3A) |
2b. Anonymous analytics we store
To understand how the Service is used and improve it, we store the following anonymous records. None of these records contain your name, email, IP address, or full location. Where a session identifier is stored, it is used only to group events within one visit — see the session identifier row below for what it is and when it's used. For visitors from the EU, EEA, or UK, we do not store that identifier with these records at all.
| What | Why | Linked to you? |
|---|---|---|
| Random session identifier | To group events within one session (so we can tell "one visit did X then Y" from "two separate visits"), to keep an active session working, and to detect abuse patterns. This is a random string generated fresh each time you open the app — it is not linked to any account, name, or device identifier, and it does not persist once you close the tab. For visitors from the EU, the EEA, or the UK, the identifier is still generated in the browser so the Service can keep the current session coherent, but it is not stored with any analytics or feedback record. | Not an account, name, or persistent device identifier — random, resets each session; not stored at all with your records if you are visiting from the EU, EEA, or UK |
| Age range selected | To understand which age groups use the Service | No |
| Approximate city or region | To understand where people use the Service. We keep only the city and province — the street, house number and postal code are removed before storing. | No |
| Activity categories returned | To understand what kinds of searches are common | No |
| Number of results returned | To monitor search quality | No |
| Language setting | To understand which languages are used | No |
| Usage events (e.g. "opened Google Maps link", "clicked a provider website", "AI summary feedback", "started a search or a plan", "reordered/swapped/removed a stop", "viewed the upgrade option") | To understand how the Service is used, and where in the process people stop | No — event type, activity category, and the place's Google place ID only (when you open a place's website or map), no personal info |
| Referring website (once, at the start of a visit) | To understand which sites send visitors to LanternScout | No — only the domain (e.g. "google.com"), never the full address or anything you typed on that site. Not recorded if you arrived directly or from within LanternScout itself. |
| Campaign tag (only if you followed one of our own links, e.g. from a post we made) | To understand which of our own posts or campaigns bring visitors | No |
| Device type (phone, tablet, or computer) | To understand what devices to design for | No |
| Country (derived from network) | To understand where people use the Service | No |
| Day Planner plan feedback (Yes / Somewhat / Not really) | To understand whether plans are useful | No — the answer and, where applicable, the random session identifier only. For visitors from the EU, EEA, or UK, the session identifier is not stored. |
| The places suggested in a Scout search or a Day Planner plan (the results shown, a plan's menu, and the places in the day it built), as Google place IDs | To understand which suggestions are useful, and to count how often each place is suggested and opened | No — a place ID is Google's public identifier for a business, not information about you. It is kept with the same anonymous record as the search or plan (city, country, language, and, where applicable, the session identifier), never with your description, note, or ages. |
| The shape of each day the Day Planner builds: the plan date, the city, the age groups you chose, how you travel, whether our AI or our backup builder made it, and for each stop its time, length, type (such as lunch or an outdoor activity) and the place's Google place ID | To review the plans we suggest and improve them | No — not linked to a session or to you, and it never includes your note, the ages you typed, or any text written about your group |
| AI summary source (e.g. Gemini or fallback) | To monitor search quality | No |
Statistics we may share with businesses. We may share aggregated counts about a business's own listing with that business — for example, how many times it was suggested or opened through LanternScout in a month. These counts never include anything about an individual visitor.
2c. Feedback you submit (optional)
If you choose to submit feedback, we store:
- Your star rating (1–5)
- Your optional written comment
- Whether you chose to allow anonymous sharing of your feedback on the LanternScout website
- The random session identifier, where applicable. For visitors from the EU, EEA, or UK, this identifier is not stored with the feedback record.
Feedback is stored to improve the Service. If you checked the option to share your feedback, you allow us to use your comment anonymously to improve the Service and in future LanternScout promotional materials (such as our website or social media). We review shared comments before any publication. You can withdraw consent to sharing at any time by emailing admin@lanternscout.com — we will remove your comment.
Do not include your name, your child's name, your address, or any sensitive personal information in a feedback comment.
2d. Day Planner: what you enter and where it goes
The Day Planner does not save the details you enter — your location, ages, note, or food preferences — in our database. For the activities and food stops on your menu and in your day, we keep only their Google place IDs, and an anonymous outline of the day built (times, stop types and place IDs; see 2b). They are used to build your plan and are sent to the services shown below to do that. (Ordinary technical logs and short-lived memory caches are described in sections 3A and 8.)
| What you enter | Why | Sent to |
|---|---|---|
| Your location — typed, or detected if you tap "Use my location" | To find nearby places, work out travel times, and get the weather | Google (Geocoding, Places, Routes), Open-Meteo (weather), Ticketmaster (local events) |
| The address text as you type it | To offer address suggestions | Google Places (autocomplete) — partial text is sent as you type |
| The plan day: the day you pick on the form, or, if you don't pick one, the next weekend day or public holiday at your location (by its own date and time) | Weather, events, and season-appropriate suggestions | Open-Meteo, Ticketmaster, Google Gemini |
| Ages of the people going (which may include adults) | To favor age-appropriate places and steer away from age-restricted content — an automated best-effort filter, not a guarantee; see our Terms | Google Gemini |
| "What sounds fun?" (your note) | To tailor ideas to what you asked for | Google Gemini |
| Food preferences (vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher, gluten-free) | To shape the lunch search | Google Places, as search words. Not sent to Google Gemini. |
| The activities and food stops you pick | To order your stops and work out travel times (by car, public transport, or on foot), and to draw the map | Google Routes (venue addresses and coordinates and your starting point), Google Maps (the map) |
| Plan feedback (Yes / Somewhat / Not really, stars, comment) | To improve the Service | Stored by us, as described in 2b and 2c |
Keep entries general. Some entries can reveal sensitive information about you or someone else — for example a child's needs or sensitivities, a health-related requirement, or a religious dietary practice. We do not ask for this information and do not use it to profile anyone, but anything you type in your note is sent to Google Gemini. Please describe what you like ("somewhere quiet with room to run") rather than a diagnosis, a condition, or a name, and do not include names, schools, or exact addresses. Food preference options are optional; only choose them if you are comfortable with them being used as search words.
Because the plan is built using several third-party services, information you enter is processed by each of them under its own terms and privacy policy.
2e. Free-use limits and LanternScout+ subscriptions
| What | Why | Where it goes / how long |
|---|---|---|
| A one-way, salted hash of a random browser code, with a monthly usage counter (one count shared by Scout and the Day Planner) | Your free lanterns are counted against a random code your browser keeps (see section 4) as well as against your network (below), so the number left stays the same when your IP address changes, for example when your phone moves between Wi-Fi and mobile data. We store only a one-way, salted hash of that code. It contains no name, email, or device details, and is not linked to your searches, analytics, or feedback. | Stored in our database; counters are deleted automatically after 3 months |
| A one-way, salted hash of your IP address, with a monthly usage counter (for Scout and for the Day Planner) | To count free uses per network, so that other browsers on the same connection share one allowance, and to count free uses when a browser does not send its code, we store a one-way, salted hash of your IP address — not the address itself. A hash is not reversible back into an IP address by computing it in the other direction, but it can still recognize the same network again, which is why we treat it the same way we'd treat other identifying information and delete the counter after 3 months rather than keeping it indefinitely. | Stored in our database; counters are deleted automatically after 3 months |
| If you subscribe: your Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, the subscription status and renewal date, a hash of the private access code kept in your browser (up to 5 devices), and the number of lanterns (searches and plans) used this month (for the monthly allowance) | To recognise your subscription and apply its allowance, and to let you manage or cancel it | Stored in our database while the subscription is active and afterwards as needed for accounting, disputes and legal obligations. Payment card details and your name are handled by Stripe and never reach us. |
| If you use "Restore access": the email address you type | To look up your subscription with Stripe and email you a one-time link (valid for 15 minutes) | Sent to Stripe (lookup) and Resend (email delivery). We keep only a one-way hash of it, to limit how often links can be requested; the address itself is not stored by us. |
3. IP Addresses and Rate Limiting
We apply rate limits (a maximum number of searches per day per network) and a monthly free-use allowance to protect the Service from abuse and keep it available for all users. To enforce them, your IP address is processed briefly by our server on each request. We do not store your IP address itself. To limit free uses per network we store a one-way, salted hash of it — a scrambled value that cannot be turned back into your IP address — together with a counter for the current month (see 2e); these counters are deleted automatically after 3 months. Otherwise, IP addresses are processed in memory only and are not retained after the request is evaluated.
Our network infrastructure provider, Cloudflare (see section 7), may independently process and log IP addresses as part of its traffic management and security services.
3A. Web Addresses, Request Logs, and Server Logs
Some features load information through web addresses (URLs) that carry data in them. For example: the partial address you type while we suggest addresses; the coordinates of your device when you tap "Use my location" (sent so we can look up an address); the coordinates and names of venues used to draw a route map or fetch a venue photo; and the location shown on an embedded map. Web addresses like these can appear in request logs kept by our hosting provider (Google Cloud), by Cloudflare, and by your own network or browser. Our own application logs do not record the address you type or the coordinates we look up for it.
We use logs to keep the Service secure and working and to fix problems. We do not use them to build profiles of people, and we do not sell them. They are kept for a limited period that is set by our providers' settings and policies, which we do not fully control. Because of this, please do not type an exact home address or any information you would not want to appear in a technical log; a city or neighbourhood is enough.
4. Your Browser: Local Storage and Session Storage
LanternScout itself does not set cookies. We use your browser's built-in storage mechanisms instead. This does not extend to third-party content embedded in the page — the route map loaded directly from Google (section 6) may set its own cookies or storage under Google's control, not ours.
- Session storage (cleared when you close the browser tab): the anonymous session identifier; a marker recording that this session's one "someone arrived" signal has already been sent, so it isn't sent twice; a temporary draft of your search form (including your description) so you don't lose your input if you switch away; and the day plan you are looking at (what you asked for, the plan and any changes you made to it), so it is still there if the page reloads. It never leaves your browser and is gone when you close the tab.
- Local storage (persists across sessions until cleared): your language preference (if you have selected one), whether you dismissed a tip, a random code used only to count this browser's free lanterns (see 2e), and — if you subscribe to LanternScout+ — a private random access code that recognises your subscription in this browser (it contains no name or email).
- Service worker cache (if you install or revisit the app): static files such as styles, scripts, and legal pages may be cached on your device for faster loading and limited offline access. This cache does not contain your search descriptions.
Apart from the plan you are viewing (kept only until you close its tab, as above), the Day Planner does not save your form or your choices in your browser.
Human check. When you start a search or a plan, a Cloudflare Turnstile check may run in your browser (see section 7). It is loaded from Cloudflare and works under Cloudflare's policies, not ours.
Embedded maps. Route maps are displayed using Google Maps content that your browser loads directly from Google. Google may use cookies, local storage, or similar technologies, and may receive your IP address, device details, and the map's coordinates (which can include your starting location). LanternScout does not control these and does not set them; Google's own policies apply.
You can clear the data we store in your browser at any time through your browser settings. None of these values directly contains your name or email address — but some of them (the session identifier, and the subscription access code if you subscribe) are identifiers used to operate the Service, not simply preferences.
5. Children's Privacy
LanternScout is intended for adults. Children may not use the Service directly. Adults may use LanternScout on behalf of a child and may provide limited, general information such as an age range and interests. We ask adults not to provide a child's name, precise location, school, health information, photograph, or other identifying information — see the warnings in sections 2a and 6. We have designed the Service around this adult-directed, limited-information model; we do not operate accounts or any feature aimed at collecting information directly from a child. This description reflects how the Service is designed and does not represent a legal conclusion about which children's-privacy laws apply to it in every jurisdiction where it is used.
The Day Planner asks for the ages of the people in your group, which may include adults. It does not ask for names, and you should not enter any.
We do not intentionally collect or store a child's name, photograph, precise location, date of birth, school, medical information, or other identifying personal information. We do not build persistent profiles of children. We do not sell, share for advertising purposes, or otherwise monetize any information about children.
If you believe a child has submitted personal information through the Service without authorization, please contact us at admin@lanternscout.com and we will take prompt steps to address it.
6. How Your Information Reaches Third-Party AI and Search Services
To generate activity suggestions, the child's description and age range you submit are sent to Google Gemini API. To find nearby activity providers, the activity category and your approximate location are sent to Google Places API. These are the core third-party services the app depends on to work.
Google's current documentation for paid API usage states that prompts and responses are not used to train its AI models, and that Google may retain data for limited periods for safety and abuse monitoring. Google's retention and handling practices may change — see Google's current policies for the latest details: Google's Privacy Policy.
Day Planner. To build a plan, we send the following to these services:
- Google Gemini — the ages of the people going, the date, your note, the name of your area or city, a summary of the weather, and a list of nearby venues and events, so it can suggest activities, choose events for your plan, and work out how your group is likely to get around (by car, public transport, or on foot) from what you wrote and where you are.
- Google Places — address text as you type it (autocomplete); searches for venues and for lunch and coffee or treat stops around a location, including any food-preference words you chose; venue details and photos.
- Google Geocoding — the address you typed (to find its coordinates), or your device's coordinates (to find an address).
- Google Routes — your starting location and the addresses or coordinates of venues, to work out travel times and distances by car, public transport, or on foot.
- Google Maps — the route map shown in your plan. Your browser loads this directly from Google, so Google may receive the map's coordinates (which can include your starting location) and your IP address.
- Open-Meteo — the coordinates of your area, to fetch the weather forecast, the local time and sunset.
- Ticketmaster — the coordinates of your area, a search radius, and the date, to find local events.
Each of these services handles information under its own terms and privacy policy, not ours.
Because your description is sent to Google Gemini, you should treat the prompt box as if it were shared with a third party. Do not submit a child's full name, school, exact address, medical diagnosis, or other sensitive identifying information.
7. Other Service Providers
We use the following additional service providers to operate LanternScout:
- Google Cloud — application hosting and database. Our servers (Cloud Run) and anonymous analytics database (Cloud SQL) run on Google Cloud infrastructure. A copy of the same anonymous analytics records (never your child's description, and never a payment identifier) is also mirrored into BigQuery, another Google Cloud service, so we can build our own usage reports in Looker Studio. No additional data is collected for this — it is the same records described in sections 2b and 2c (and, for feedback, only whether a comment was left, never the comment text itself), copied to a second place we control.
- Cloudflare — DNS, content delivery, and DDoS protection. Traffic to LanternScout passes through Cloudflare's network. Cloudflare may process IP addresses and other request metadata under its own privacy policy. When you start a Scout search or a plan, Cloudflare's Turnstile check may also run in your browser to tell people from automated programs (which protects the free allowance from abuse). It reads technical signals such as your IP address and browser details, under Cloudflare's privacy policy; we receive only whether the check passed. It is not used for advertising and is not linked to anything you type.
- Google Fonts — fonts used in the interface are loaded from Google's servers, which may log request metadata (including IP address) under Google's privacy policy.
- Open-Meteo and Ticketmaster — used by the Day Planner for weather and local events, as described in section 6.
- Stripe — if you subscribe to LanternScout+ or make an optional voluntary contribution, you interact with Stripe's platform directly, and Stripe handles your payment details, receipts and cancellations. If you use "Restore access", the email you type is sent to Stripe to find your subscription. Stripe's own terms and privacy policy apply.
- Resend — email delivery. It is used to send you a one-time "Restore access" link if you ask for one and, if you are a subscriber and ask us to email you a plan or your Scout results, that message (in both cases it receives the address you typed, which we do not store), and, if you submit feedback and we have email forwarding configured, to transmit your rating and comment to our team.
Each of these providers processes information under its own terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for their data-handling practices once data is transmitted to them.
8. Data Retention
Analytics records (searches, events) and feedback records contain no name, email address, IP address, or account identifier, and we do not link them to any of those. We currently retain them indefinitely to help us understand how the Service is used over time; as the Service grows, we are reviewing whether a defined retention period would be more appropriate. The copy of these same records in BigQuery (section 7) follows the same retention approach as the records described here — it is not a separate, longer-lived copy, just a second place holding the same data.
Your child's description and exact location are not stored in our database after the request completes. When the optional place-review feature is used, general (child-agnostic) summaries of provider websites may be cached in our database by Google place ID for up to 30 days to reduce repeated AI processing — these summaries do not contain your child's description.
The Day Planner does not save your inputs. To make it faster and reduce repeated lookups, our server keeps one short-lived cache in memory: drawn route lines for up to one hour (the coordinates of the stops, which may include your starting point, without anything else about you). Memory caches are cleared when the server restarts. We do not keep a copy of the venue details we receive from Google Maps: venues are looked up live for each plan.
Local events. We save public one-off events listed on city websites (such as name, date, venue, and address), with a map location for each from Google, and record which cities we have looked up (city name and time). None of this is linked to you. Events are deleted once they are over, or 30 days after we found them, whichever comes first; a city's events are looked up again after that.
Server and hosting logs (e.g. on Google Cloud) may retain IP addresses, request metadata, web addresses (see section 3A), and error details for a limited period under our providers' policies.
Free-use counters and subscriptions. Hashed monthly free-use counters are deleted automatically after 3 months. Subscription records (Stripe identifiers, status, hashed access codes and monthly usage cost) are kept while your subscription is active and afterwards as needed for accounting, disputes and legal obligations. Records of one-time "Restore access" links are kept only as hashes and expire after 15 minutes.
If you submitted feedback containing personal information and wish to have it deleted, contact us at admin@lanternscout.com.
9. Security
We implement reasonable technical and organizational safeguards to protect the data we store. All data is transmitted over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Our database is not publicly accessible.
No online service can guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data security incident affecting personal information, we will fulfill our notification and mitigation obligations under applicable law, including BC's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) and Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
10. International Processing
LanternScout is operated from British Columbia, Canada, but our infrastructure providers and the third-party services listed in section 6 (including Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Open-Meteo, and Ticketmaster) may process data in the United States or other countries. By using the Service, you acknowledge that your information may be processed outside your province or country, where data protection laws may differ from those in your jurisdiction.
11. Your Privacy Rights
Legal basis (EEA/UK users): We process your search inputs to perform the Service you request (contract/legitimate steps). Anonymous analytics and abuse prevention (rate limiting) are based on our legitimate interest in operating and improving LanternScout. Feedback you choose to submit is processed based on your consent.
Depending on where you are located, you may have rights under applicable privacy law:
- Canada (PIPEDA / BC PIPA): You may request access to or correction of personal information we hold about you, and you may withdraw consent to processing where consent is the legal basis.
- European Economic Area / UK (GDPR / UK GDPR): You may have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.
- California (CCPA / CPRA): You have the right to know what personal information is collected, to delete it, and to opt out of sale or sharing. We do not sell personal information.
- Other jurisdictions: Additional rights may apply under local law.
Our analytics records are not tied to a name, email address, or account, and we do not keep a way to map a session identifier back to a specific person. Because of this, once a session ends we are generally unable to find or delete a specific record on request — there is no name or account to search by. For feedback records, contact us at admin@lanternscout.com and we will delete your submission.
12. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Your continued use of the Service after the updated policy takes effect constitutes your acknowledgement of those changes.
Privacy questions, requests, or complaints? Contact our Privacy Officer at admin@lanternscout.com.