Privacy Policy

Last updated: 17 October 2026

Flanio is a travel/discovery app provided by SİSİFOS YAZILIM VE TEKNOLOJİ ANONİM ŞİRKETİ. In this policy, "we" means this company, which is the data controller for your personal data. This policy explains what data we process, why, who we share it with, and your rights. The company's address and how to contact us are in section 13.

1. Data we collect

Account and identity. For guest use we create an anonymous user ID (UID). If you create a permanent account, your email and password (your password is held by our authentication provider; we do not separately store it), and a display name if provided. If you sign in with your Google account, Google sends us your name, your email address, whether your email address is verified, your Google account ID and the link to your profile photo; these are stored in your account record. If your display name is empty and the name from Google has at least two words, we save a shortened form of it (the first two letters of your first name and of your last name) as your display name; you can change it later. If you turn your guest account into a permanent account with Google, your data stays in the same account. If you already have a Flanio account with that Google account or with the same email address, your guest account is not linked to it and you are signed in to that existing account; the same happens when, as a guest, you sign in to your existing account with your email address and password. In this case, the data kept on our servers in connection with your guest account (for example your Flân Puan) is not transferred to the existing account, and the guest account is closed under the guest account rule in section 7; the data on your phone stays on your phone. If you create a permanent account with your email and password, or make your guest account permanent by email, the language the app is using at that moment (Turkish, English, Russian or Arabic) is also saved to your account; this is so that we can send account-related emails (for example, email verification) in that language. If you change the app's language later, the saved language stays the same. For session security, two kinds of record are kept: a record of each open session (IP address, device/browser information, and the times the session was opened and refreshed) in our own database; and authentication audit logs in our hosting provider's log storage.

Travel data. Trips you create; information such as destination, date preference, traveller/interest/pace notes, route, transport type and approximate budget preference; the visit verification record for the trip completion points (see "Location").

Content. AI Travel Cards you generate; messages you write to Flanio Assistant; comments you write about places and the ratings you give, the information notes you send about places (contributions), the comment and contribution reports you send and your block list (details in section 6).

Usage/analytics (product_events). We measure in-app events (e.g. the card-generation flow). These records are not fully anonymous — they can be technically linked to your account (pseudonymous). You can turn analytics off in settings.

Location. With your permission we use your location to show nearby places; this is not stored in our app database and is used momentarily for the request. If you ask for a walking or driving route inside the app, your start and destination coordinates are sent to our routing provider openrouteservice (HeiGIT gGmbH, Germany); we ask you separately before that happens, and you can withdraw your consent in Privacy and security settings. We do not store these coordinates; retention on the provider's side is governed by its own policy.

For the trip completion points, when you open the app within your trip dates, your phone uses your location to check, on the device itself, whether you are in the city you added to your trip. This check is done only with a permanent account and only if you have already given location permission; no separate permission is requested for it. If you are in that city, only a visit signal for that trip goes to our server; your location and the time of day are not sent, and the day the signal arrives is recorded. Only one signal is kept per trip. This record is deleted when your account is deleted; if ownership of a trip you share passes to another member, this record does not pass to them. If you do not give location permission, this signal is not sent; the rest of the app works the same, only the trip completion points are not awarded.

Microphone and dictation. If you press the microphone button in Flanio Assistant, your speech is turned into text by your device's speech recognition service. The microphone is turned on only when you press the button; it listens for at most 60 seconds and turns off after 3 seconds of silence. The voice recording does not reach Flanio: Flanio neither sends it to its servers nor stores it; only the recognized text comes back to the app. Recognition is requested on the device first, but if that is not possible on your device, your device's operating system may send your voice to its default speech recognition service (e.g. Google) for recognition; that transfer is governed by that service's own terms. The recognized text is processed as a message you send to the assistant (sections 5 and 7).

Device/technical. For service operation, security and diagnostics we process IP address, request/session metadata and server logs.

Notification key. If you have given notification permission, a notification key for your phone is obtained from Google's notification service (Firebase Cloud Messaging) so that we can send you notifications while the app is closed. We store this key together with your account (including a guest account), your phone's operating system and the app's language; the language is so that we can send the notification in that language. For this service Google also processes an identifier for each installation and the app version. If you have not given notification permission, no key is obtained. If you turn the permission off later, the key is not renewed and is deleted after the period given in the retention section.

Crash and error reports. If the app crashes or hits an unexpected error, a technical report is sent to Sentry so we can diagnose it. The report contains: the error type and where in the code it occurred (stack trace), device model and manufacturer, operating-system version, app version, and the name of the screen you were on. When the app crashes, or freezes and stops responding, the report also includes an installation ID — a random identifier generated when you first install the app. It is not your name, your email or your user ID, and we do not link it to your account. It is used only to see which crashes come from the same device. The report does not include your email, user ID or display name, no screenshot is taken, and no text you typed is sent — including text entered in the translation screen and messages written to Flanio Assistant. The app does not add your IP address to the report. Sentry sees the connection's IP address when it receives the report; from that address it infers an approximate location (country, sometimes city) and adds it to the report, but does not store the IP address itself. You can turn this off in settings; when off, no report is sent at all.

Permissions. Camera and photo access (photos/translation), location, notifications, microphone (writing to the assistant by speaking), storage (saving to gallery).

Waitlist (website). If you sign up to the waitlist form on flanio.com.tr, we process your email address and the segment you choose ("I live here" / "I am visiting Istanbul"). We use this data only to send Flanio announcements and first invitations; we do not share it with third parties for marketing. We keep it until the purpose of the list ends or you ask to be removed; you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in each email or by writing to info@flanio.com.tr.

Website visit measurement. To measure how many times our website is visited, which pages are opened and how fast pages load, we use Cloudflare Web Analytics. When you open a page, your browser sends Cloudflare the following: the address of the page you open, which site you came from, the type of your browser, operating system and device, and how long the page took to load. Cloudflare sees the connection's IP address; the measurement results also show which country visits come from. This measurement does not use cookies and does not leave an identifier for you in your browser. According to Cloudflare, no attempt is made in this measurement to recognise visitors from their IP addresses or browser information. We see the results only as totals; we cannot see who a visit belongs to.

2. Data that stays on your device — and the exceptions

The following data is stored on your device and is not sent to our servers: your Travel DNA answers, your memory timeline and the memory photos you add. Your phone's iCloud or Google backup may include this data too — that backup is your own cloud. Photo translation runs on your device: text recognition (OCR) and translation happen on your device; your image/text is not sent anywhere. A translation language pack is downloaded on first use. Google ML Kit, which provides the translation feature, does send Google technical information about the device and how the feature is used; details are in section 4.

Your preference profile. The preference profile we derive from your Travel DNA answers is kept on your device; no persistent preference profile is created on our servers. The one exception is Flanio Assistant. When you ask the assistant a question in the trip planning flow or on a trip's screen, three things are sent to our server along with your question: the preference weights calculated from that profile (a number between 0 and 100 for each axis), a confidence score showing how settled those weights are, and the profile's version number. These are what let the answer fit the way you travel. The assistant you open from a place page does not carry any of this. Of those three fields our server passes only the weights and the confidence score on to the assistant provider, Anthropic; the version number goes no further than our server. The request that goes to Anthropic contains no name, no email address and no user ID. The weights accompany that one question only and are not kept as a preference profile on our servers. The record of your conversation with the assistant, however, is kept linked to your account; its retention period is given in section 7. If your preferences change, the next question carries the updated weights. The raw answers you give in Travel DNA are never sent.

Important: Trips you create without signing in (as a guest) are saved to the cloud (under your anonymous ID) — they do not stay only on your device.

3. How we use data

To provide and personalize the service; to generate AI Travel Cards and voice/text content; to run Flanio Assistant; to operate the Flân Puan economy; for security, fraud prevention and diagnostics; for product measurement (analytics); to send you notifications while the app is closed; and to show comments and approved contributions, review contributions, apply the rules for comments and contributions and review reports of AI-generated content (section 6).

4. Third parties

We do not sell your data. To provide the service we use:

5. AI features

For AI Travel Cards, limited route/season information is sent to OpenAI (without identity). For Flanio Assistant, your messages and trip context are sent to Anthropic. These providers have their own retention periods (typically time-limited). If you do not use AI features, these transfers do not occur. When you use Flanio Assistant, your preference weights and their confidence score are sent to Anthropic alongside your messages and trip context; that request contains no name, no email address and no user ID (see section 2 above).

6. Comments, ratings, contributions and community safety

When you write a comment about a place, give it a rating or send an information note about a place (a contribution), report a comment or a contribution, or block a user, some of your data is processed. This section explains what data is processed, who sees it, how long it is kept and what you can do. The rules for comments are set out in the "Comments and ratings" section of the Terms of Use, and the rules for contributions in the "Content you submit" section.

Data we process

Do not write special categories of information about yourself or anyone else in a comment, such as health, religion or political opinions. We do not ask for this kind of information; if we see it in a comment, we may hide the comment.

Why we process it and our legal basis

Comments and contributions are not used for advertising and do not affect how places are ranked. They are not sent to AI providers.

Who sees it

Automated processing

How long we keep it

When you ask for your account to be deleted, your comments and ratings, and your contributions that are under review or have been rejected, are deleted together with your other account data once the deletion window ends (section 8). The same happens when your guest account is closed automatically (section 7).

What you can do

7. Retention

8. Your rights and controls

9. Security

Your session keys are held in your device's secure store (iOS Keychain / Android Keystore). Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Database access is restricted with row-level security (RLS). No method is 100% secure.

10. Children

Flanio is not suitable for people under 16; we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.

11. International transfers

Some of our providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cloudflare, Google, Brevo) may process your data outside your country (e.g. the US). The Supabase infrastructure that stores your data — hosting, authentication, storage and database — is located in Germany as of the date this page was last updated. Germany is in the European Union; under EU law, this is not a transfer to a third country for users in the EU. For transfers from Türkiye, it changes nothing. Some server-side operations run in the Supabase region closest to where you make the request, so the destination country depends on where you are. The country where your data is stored is published on this page; if it changes, this page is updated. Supabase itself publishes the current list of regions where server-side operations may run (https://supabase.com/docs/guides/functions/regional-invocation). Hyperknot Software Kft., which operates the map tile provider OpenFreeMap, is based in Hungary, and HeiGIT gGmbH, which operates our routing provider openrouteservice, is based in Germany. The country a company is based in does not by itself determine where data is processed: in its own privacy policy HeiGIT states that data is also transferred to countries outside the European Union. Sentry processes crash reports in the Germany (European Union) region. Transfers to providers processing data in the US or outside the EU are carried out under the data processing agreements concluded with the relevant providers.

12. Changes

We may update this policy; we will notify you of material changes appropriately.

13. Data controller and contact

To exercise your rights, you can apply to us in writing at this address, or write to info@flanio.com.tr from an email address you have given us before. You can also get a copy of your data in the app (section 8). We reply to your requests within 30 days at the latest.

14. Language

This policy is prepared in Turkish and may also be provided in other languages. Non-Turkish versions are for information only; in case of any conflict or difference in interpretation, the Turkish version prevails.