How Meridian Dispatch collects, uses, discloses, retains, and otherwise processes information in connection with the Meridian Dispatch iOS application and any related services.
This Privacy Policy ("Policy") describes how Meridian Dispatch ("Meridian Dispatch," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, discloses, retains, and otherwise processes information in connection with the Meridian Dispatch iOS application and any related services (collectively, the "Service").
By downloading, installing, accessing, or using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to this Policy and to our Terms of Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. Your continued use of the Service following any update to this Policy constitutes your acceptance of the updated Policy.
Your photos and the journals made from them never reach our servers. To identify places and write your journal, we receive the coordinates of groups of photos, dates and place names, never the photos themselves. If you are signed in, the trips you plan and your travel preferences are stored with your account, so you can read and edit your plans on our website, and an AI assistant can use them once you sign in through it and allow it. See Sections 2(e), 2(f), 2(k), 2(l) and 2(m).
This Policy applies only to information processed by Meridian Dispatch. It does not apply to information processed by Apple, your email provider, or any other third party, including third parties whose links or services may be accessed through the Service.
For questions, contact: dispatch@meridiandispatch.com.
You represent and warrant that:
If you do not meet these requirements, you are not authorized to use the Service.
We may collect, generate, receive, or otherwise process the following categories of information ("Information"). The categories below are illustrative and not exhaustive; the Service may evolve, and this Policy will be updated to reflect material changes.
When you sign in via Sign in with Apple, Apple provides us with an opaque user identifier (the "sub" claim of the identity token), and may provide an authorization code we exchange with Apple for a refresh token used to revoke the association at your request. With your consent at sign-in, Sign in with Apple also provides us your email address. If you choose "Hide My Email," this will be an Apple private-relay forwarding address (ending in @privaterelay.appleid.com) rather than your personal address. We store the email address associated with your account and use it to identify your account, to contact you about the Service (such as service and security notices, responses to your inquiries, and occasional news about the Service; every such email includes an unsubscribe link), and for the related purposes described in Section 3. We do not use it for third-party advertising, and we do not sell it. The app does not request your name. If you sign in on our website, Sign in with Apple may also provide your name the first time you do so; we store it with your account and show it only to you, for example to confirm which account you are signed in to when you approve an AI assistant (Section 2(m)). We assign you a forwarding inbox address and a device token used to authenticate your app's requests.
When you forward an email to your assigned inbox address, our infrastructure receives the message, including the sender, subject line, body content, and any attachments (including PDFs). We process this content, including by transmitting it to our artificial intelligence service provider (currently Anthropic), to extract structured reservation details. We retain a structured derivative of the email contents (the parsed reservation fields, sender address, and subject line) for the life of your account so that the in-app Inbox view remains accurate and so that we can demonstrate the parse outcome of any email you forwarded. We do not retain the full original body text or attachment contents after parsing, except as may be present in transient caches and in routine system backups and audit logs described in Section 6 below.
If you become a paid member, Apple processes the transaction and provides us with verification of your subscription status. We do not receive your payment method, card number, or billing address.
We may collect technical information automatically generated through your use of the Service, including but not limited to: device tokens, IP address, request timestamps, app version, iOS version, device model, daily and aggregate counts of features used (such as artificial intelligence calls), error and crash diagnostics, and similar telemetry. The app also records product analytics: which screens are opened and which features are used, sent to our analytics provider (currently HeyCatch) with a random identifier generated for the installation. These events do not include your photos, your trips, your forwarded reservations, your name or your email address, and they are not used for advertising or to track you across other companies' apps or websites.
The Service reads your iOS photo library locally on your device when you grant permission, including photo timestamps, GPS coordinates embedded in photo metadata, and image previews used for display in the journal. Your photos, videos, and image previews are never uploaded or transmitted to us. Trip detection and photo ranking are performed on your device. To identify the places you visited and to write your journal, the Service transmits limited information derived from your photo metadata to our servers and, through them, to our artificial intelligence service provider: the central coordinates of groups of photos taken close together, dates and times of day, the names of the countries, cities, and neighborhoods you visited, the names and categories of candidate places, and short scene labels generated on your device (for example, "beach" or "museum"). Apple's iCloud Photo Library may sync your photos between your own devices independently of the Service; we have no access to that sync.
Your trips and journal entries may sync between your devices via Apple's iCloud (CloudKit). This data is stored in your private iCloud database under Apple's terms. We do not have access to iCloud-synced data. The one exception is trips you plan, a copy of which we store with your account as described in Section 2(k); trips and journals made from your photos are never sent to us.
We may receive information about you from service providers, fraud-prevention vendors, and others as reasonably necessary to operate, secure, and improve the Service.
When you, or an AI assistant acting on your request, create an itinerary import link, or when you open one, we store the itinerary it carries on our servers so the link works: its title, summary, days, places, times of day, hotels and any dates. This record is not linked to your account, your device or your Apple ID, and we do not record who created or opened a link; we keep only counts of how often each link is opened and added, the name of the software that created it (for example, which AI assistant), a running count of place names in new links that we have no guide for, kept separately from any link and used to decide what to cover next, and a short-lived counter of links created from each network address, used to limit abuse and deleted within about two hours. Before storing an itinerary we remove email addresses, phone numbers and booking references. Anyone who has a link can view its itinerary and add it to their own plan, so do not put personal details in a trip you share. When you add a shared itinerary, the trip is saved in the app on your device like any other plan.
We may create aggregated, anonymized, statistical, or de-identified data from any of the categories above. Such data does not identify you and is not subject to the restrictions of this Policy. We reserve the right to use, share, license, sell, or commercialize aggregated and de-identified information for any lawful purpose, including but not limited to research, analytics, product development, marketing, and disclosure to third parties, without additional notice or consent.
If you send us a photograph through the Correspondents page on our website, we receive and store: the photograph, the name you want credited, the link to your work you provide (if any), your email address, the place you say it shows, any note you add, and, if the photograph carried them, the GPS coordinates and the date it was taken, which are read in your browser before upload. Your browser re-saves the photograph before sending it, which removes the rest of its embedded metadata (such as the camera and its serial number). We use the coordinates only to check the photograph shows the place it is offered for, and your email address only to tell you about your submission; neither is ever published. If we publish your photograph, we show it with the name you gave and, where you gave a link, your link and the profile picture that link displays publicly, which we copy to our own servers so that the credit does not depend on a third party. To limit abuse we count submissions from each network address using a one-way hash of the address, deleted within a day; we do not store the address itself. Submissions are made only through our website. The Meridian Dispatch app never uploads your photos, including for this program.
If you are signed in, the app sends us a copy of each trip you plan, so that you can read it on our website after signing in there with the same Apple ID. The copy holds the trip's title, countries and dates; each day's date, town and summary; the places and activities on each day with their times, the notes and descriptions shown with them and any official ticket link; your arrival and departure airports; and, for reservations you forwarded or entered, their type, name, dates and times, city and country, and the address, airline and flight number, origin and destination, company, room type and number of nights where the reservation states them. It does not include booking references, seat numbers, guest names, your photos, or the map coordinates of the places in your plan. The copy is linked to your account, is used only to show your plans to you, and is shown only to a browser signed in to your account. It is updated when you change the plan in the app and deleted from our servers when you delete the trip in the app. Trips and journals made from your photos are never sent to us.
You can also change your plans, create new ones and delete them on our website when signed in, or through an AI assistant you have connected (Section 2(m)). We store each such change with your account (what was changed, when, and whether it came from the website or an assistant) until the app has applied it to the plan on your device, and then delete the record of the change. A plan deleted on the website or by an assistant is kept as a deletion marker, without its contents, until the app has removed it too, and is then deleted from our servers.
The app keeps a summary of how you like to travel, shown under "How you like to travel" in Settings: how much you like each kind of travel (for example coast, old towns, food or hiking), the kinds of stays you prefer, your pace, whether you prefer new places or returning to favourites, and the countries you have visited. The app works this out on your device from your trips, and you can change any of it. If you are signed in, the app sends us this summary, together with the number of trips it was worked out from, so that our website can tailor its guides to you while you are signed in (for example, putting the places, towns and country guides that suit you first; nothing is hidden), and so that an AI assistant you have connected can suggest trips and places that suit you. Signed-out visitors see the same pages as everyone else. The summary contains no trips, days, places, dates, photos or coordinates; the countries you have visited are sent as country codes only. It is linked to your account, replaced whenever it changes, and deleted with your account.
If you are signed in on our website, we also record which of its pages you open (the address of the page and when) and, when you follow a link from one of them to another website such as a hotel, a ticket office or an official site, the kind of link you followed (never the other website's address). From those addresses we work out which countries you have been reading about, so that our website can show you the trips, countries and places that suit you first, and so that an AI assistant you have connected can see where you are thinking of going. Nothing is hidden from you because of it. We do not record this when you are signed out, and we never record the pages of your account or your plans. Opening the same page again within half an hour counts once. These records are linked to your account, kept for twelve (12) months, and deleted with your account.
If you are not signed in, none of this is sent to us. Instead, your browser keeps its own short note, on your device only, of the countries whose pages you have read and how often you followed a link out from them, so that our website can show those countries first next time. We never receive it and it is not linked to you. It keeps at most forty countries for one hundred and eighty (180) days, and clearing this website's data in your browser deletes it.
You can connect an AI assistant (for example Claude) to Meridian Dispatch so that it can work on your plans and read your travel preferences. Our guides and other public information are available to any assistant without connecting. To connect, the assistant sends you to our website, where you sign in and are asked to allow it; nothing is shared until you do. When you allow it, we record the assistant's name and its return address, and issue it access credentials linked to your account: an access token that lasts one hour and a refresh token that lasts thirty (30) days and is replaced each time it is used. We store only a one-way hash of each credential. A connected assistant can read, create, change and delete your plans and read your travel preferences. When it asks what to do on a day of one of your plans, we rank places from our guides on our servers against your travel preferences, that plan and your earlier plans (so it does not repeat places you have planned before), and return the list, with the reason for each place, to the assistant; the ranking is worked out when asked and not stored. It cannot reach your photos, your journal, your forwarded emails or your account details. What you or the assistant then do with that information inside the assistant, including any record the assistant's provider keeps of your conversation, is governed by that provider's own terms and privacy policy, not this Policy.
We may use Information for any lawful business purpose, including but not limited to:
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not run advertising in the Service. Subject to that limitation, we may share or disclose Information as follows:
We share Information with vendors, contractors, and service providers that perform services on our behalf, including but not limited to: cloud infrastructure providers (currently Cloudflare); artificial intelligence and machine-learning processors (currently Anthropic); platform providers (Apple); crash and error reporting providers (currently Sentry); customer-support providers; analytics providers (currently HeyCatch for the app and our website, and Google Analytics for our website); payment processors; legal and accounting professionals; and similar providers we may engage from time to time. We require these providers to use Information only as necessary to perform the services we engage them for.
We may disclose Information when we believe in good faith that disclosure is appropriate to: (i) comply with applicable law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request; (ii) enforce our Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations; (iii) detect, prevent, or address fraud, security, or technical issues; (iv) protect against harm to the rights, property, or safety of Meridian Dispatch, our users, or the public, as required or permitted by law; or (v) respond to claims or potential claims.
If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, bankruptcy, receivership, sale of company assets, or transition of service to another provider, your Information may be sold, transferred, or otherwise shared as part of that transaction or potential transaction. The successor entity will be bound by this Policy unless and until it provides notice of a different policy.
We may share Information for any other purpose with your consent.
When you connect an AI assistant and allow it (Section 2(m)), we provide your plans and travel preferences to that assistant when it asks for them on your behalf. The assistant's provider is not our service provider; it handles that information under its own terms and privacy policy.
As described in Section 2(i), we may share aggregated or de-identified information without restriction.
The Meridian Dispatch app is a native iOS application and does not use browser cookies. Our website, meridiandispatch.com, uses Google Analytics and HeyCatch to measure visits, and these may set cookies or similar identifiers in your browser; it also counts article views without cookies. If you sign in to our website, we set a session cookie that keeps you signed in for up to thirty (30) days, and a second cookie that only tells our pages you are signed in; both are deleted when you sign out. You can block cookies in your browser settings. The Service does not engage in cross-app or cross-site tracking, does not request App Tracking Transparency (ATT) permission, does not use the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), and does not register any tracking domains. The Service does not use Apple's SKAdNetwork attribution framework.
We retain Information for as long as we deem necessary for our legitimate business purposes, including but not limited to: providing the Service, complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes, enforcing our agreements, preventing fraud and abuse, and operating routine system backups.
The specific retention periods we currently observe include:
You acknowledge that complete and immediate deletion from all systems, including third-party providers' systems and routine backups, may not be technically feasible, and you agree that retention consistent with this Section (with a ninety-day ceiling for residual copies) satisfies any deletion request.
The "Delete Account" function in the Service's Settings sheet initiates deletion of your account, parsed confirmations and planned trips on our servers and, where we hold a valid refresh token, calls Apple's revocation endpoint to disassociate Sign in with Apple from the Service. Local data on your device is not deleted by this function; you may remove the app to delete on-device data.
The "Sign Out" function clears local credentials but does not delete your server-side record. Signing back in with the same Apple ID restores access.
You can remove the Meridian Dispatch connection in the assistant's own settings, which stops it using its credentials. To have us revoke an assistant's access at once, email dispatch@meridiandispatch.com; otherwise its access ends when its refresh token expires, thirty (30) days after it was last used. Deleting your account revokes every assistant's access.
You may grant, restrict, or revoke photo-library access at any time in iOS Settings. Your photos are never transmitted to our servers; the limited information derived from photo metadata that we do process is described in Section 2(e). Revoking access stops the app from reading your library, so trip detection stops and photographs no longer appear in your journals.
Manage or cancel your subscription in iOS Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions, or via the in-app "Manage Subscription" link. Cancellation does not entitle you to a refund of fees already paid; refund eligibility is governed by Apple's policies.
If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act ("CCPA"), gives you specific rights regarding your personal information. We honor these rights regardless of whether we are technically required to do so.
How to exercise your California rights. Email dispatch@meridiandispatch.com with the subject line "California Privacy Request" and a clear description of the right you wish to exercise. We will acknowledge your request within ten (10) business days and substantively respond within forty-five (45) days, with a one-time forty-five (45) day extension permitted under the CCPA where reasonably necessary. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request, typically by confirming control of the email address associated with your account, or by asking you to authenticate the request from within the app.
Authorized agents. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. The agent must provide written, signed authorization, and we may require you to verify your identity directly to confirm the request.
If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") and equivalent laws give you rights to access, rectify, erase, restrict processing of, port, and object to processing of your personal data, and to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent. We process personal data on the following lawful bases: (i) contract (Article 6(1)(b)), to provide the Service you signed up for; (ii) legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)), for security, fraud prevention, abuse detection, internal analytics, and improvement of the Service, where those interests are not overridden by your interests or rights; and (iii) legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)), to comply with applicable law. Where required, we rely on standard contractual clauses with our processors for international transfers. To exercise GDPR rights, email dispatch@meridiandispatch.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
Residents of other states or countries (including without limitation Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Quebec, Brazil) may have analogous rights under local law. We will honor verifiable requests under such laws on substantially the same basis as the CCPA and GDPR rights above.
We implement administrative, technical, and physical safeguards reasonably designed to protect Information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction, including HTTPS encryption in transit, cryptographic verification of authentication tokens, and storage of device credentials in iOS Keychain.
No method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is one hundred percent secure. Your use of the Service is at your own risk.
While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect Information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security and we expressly disclaim any such warranty. In the event of a security incident affecting your Information, we will notify affected users and applicable authorities to the extent required by, and in accordance with, applicable law.
The Service is not directed to and is not intended for use by children under seventeen (17) years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under thirteen (13). If you believe a child under thirteen (13) has provided personal information to us, contact dispatch@meridiandispatch.com and we will take reasonable steps to delete such information from our records.
The Service is operated from, and Information is processed in, the United States and other jurisdictions where we or our service providers maintain facilities. If you access or use the Service from outside the United States, you consent to the transfer of your Information to the United States and to processing in any jurisdiction where we operate, which may have different data-protection laws than your jurisdiction. Where required by applicable law, we implement appropriate transfer mechanisms, such as standard contractual clauses with our service providers.
The Service may contain links to or interact with third-party services (such as your email provider, Apple, the App Store, and third-party mapping services). We are not responsible for the privacy practices, content, security, or terms of those third parties. Your interactions with third-party services are governed by those parties' policies. We disclaim any liability arising from your use of, or interactions with, third-party services.
The Service, including any Information generated, parsed, displayed, or otherwise processed by the Service, is provided on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis, without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise. We make no representation or warranty regarding the accuracy, completeness, reliability, timeliness, or suitability of any reservation parse, AI-generated description, trip-detection result, or other Information generated or displayed by the Service. You acknowledge that artificial intelligence systems may produce inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading results, and that you are solely responsible for verifying any reservation, date, location, or other detail before relying on it for travel or other purposes.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we disclaim all warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, and quiet enjoyment.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Meridian Dispatch, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, licensors, or service providers be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, including but not limited to damages for lost profits, lost data, loss of goodwill, missed travel, or substitute services, arising out of or related to: (i) your use of, inability to use, or reliance on the Service or any Information processed by the Service; (ii) any unauthorized access to or alteration of your Information; (iii) any third-party conduct or content on the Service; or (iv) any other matter relating to the Service.
To the extent the foregoing disclaimer is not enforceable, our total cumulative liability arising out of or related to the Service or this Policy shall not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid us for the Service in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100). The limitations in this Section apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose. Some jurisdictions do not allow limitation of certain damages; in such jurisdictions, the foregoing limitations apply to the fullest extent permitted by law.
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Meridian Dispatch and its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, and service providers from and against any and all claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to: (i) your use or misuse of the Service; (ii) your violation of this Policy or our Terms of Service; (iii) your violation of any applicable law; (iv) the content you forward, transmit, or otherwise submit through the Service, including any content that infringes a third party's rights; or (v) your violation of the rights of any third party.
We may update this Policy at any time, in our sole discretion. If we make material changes, for example, expanding the categories of Information we collect, the purposes for which we use Information, or the parties with whom we share Information, we will provide notice through the Service, by email (if we have a contact address for you), or by updating the "Last updated" date at the top of this Policy with reasonable advance notice prior to the effective date. Non-material changes (such as clarifying language or correcting errors) may be made without prior notice. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any update constitutes your acceptance of the updated Policy.
This Policy is governed by the laws of the State of New York, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or related to this Policy or your use of the Service shall be resolved exclusively in accordance with the dispute-resolution provisions of our Terms of Service, which include mandatory binding arbitration and a waiver of class-action rights. Please review our Terms of Service carefully.
If any provision of this Policy is held invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of that provision or of our right to enforce it later. This Policy, together with our Terms of Service and any other agreements expressly incorporated by reference, constitutes the entire agreement between you and us with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersedes all prior or contemporaneous communications and proposals.
Except as expressly provided herein, this Policy does not confer any rights, remedies, or benefits on any person or entity other than you and Meridian Dispatch.
You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations under this Policy without our prior written consent. We may assign or transfer our rights and obligations under this Policy at any time without notice or consent.
For questions, requests, or complaints about this Policy or our privacy practices:
Email: dispatch@meridiandispatch.com
Mailing address:
For privacy requests under specific laws (GDPR access requests, CCPA "do not sell" requests, etc.), please mark your communication clearly so we can route and respond within statutory timeframes.