What we collect, and who handles it.

Who is responsible

Tomáš Zeman, publishing under the name As I Know It, decides what happens to the information described here. Write to hello@asiknowit.guide about anything on this page and you will get a reply from a person.

What we collect, and only when you offer it

On this website there is no account to make and nothing to log into. Two things reach us through it, and both because you chose to send them.

When you ask for an invitation. The form on the homepage, and the same request in the app, takes your email address and the city you know, and the form on the website also asks for your name. We also keep the language of the page or the app you used, the date, and whether the request came from the website or the app. We use it to decide who to invite and to write back. We do it because you asked, and because it is in our interest to run a small beta well. We send one email to say we have it, and after that you hear from us only if there is a place for you. Nobody is told no. An invitation request is deleted one year after you make it, unless you are invited, and sooner if you ask. To be removed, use the link in any email we send you, or reply to it, or write to hello@asiknowit.guide. The link opens a page that asks you to confirm, and when you do it deletes your request and your email address. We keep no note that you asked. To slow down floods of requests, the server keeps counters in memory only, so no IP address is stored for it. We write to you about your request and nothing else.

Once an invitation is used, we drop the name, city and language from the request and keep the address, the date and the fact that you were invited. An invitation that is never used is deleted along with the request 90 days after we send it. Deleting your account in the app also removes your email address from the list.

The page also counts that a request was sent, together with where you were just before you asked: the page on this site you came from, or the name of the site if you came from somewhere else. Never a full web address, and nothing that says who you are. That count is anonymous and is not joined to your email address. It answers one question, which is whether reading a guide is what makes someone want one of their own.

When you tell a creator something has changed. The note box on a guide asks for no name and no email address. What you write is emailed to the creator of that guide, or to us if you chose that instead, along with which page and section it came from so it can be fixed, and how long the note took to write, which is one of the ways we spot a machine. It is never published, never shown to other readers, and never turned into a public comment.

How long we keep it

An invitation request is deleted one year after you make it, unless you are invited, and an invitation that is never used is deleted 90 days after we send it. Reader notes are kept for a year after we answer them, then deleted. The creator app’s records are kept for as long as you have an account. The record that a subscription existed, with its transaction identifier and dates, is kept for three years after the account is deleted, as the record that you agreed to the charge. Ask us sooner and we will delete yours sooner, without asking why.

Who else handles it

• Netlify, Inc., in the United States, hosts this site and keeps ordinary server logs, including IP addresses, to keep it running and secure.
• Google Ireland Limited provides our email, and the one spreadsheet where reader notes, the counts described below and the creator app’s records are all kept. They are in one place on purpose, so that when somebody asks us to delete what we hold about them there is one place to look rather than three. Invitation requests are not in it: they are kept on our own server, described below.
• Google Ireland Limited also provides Google Maps Platform, which the app asks when a creator names a place, so the guide can carry a real address and a link rather than a guess.
• Google Ireland Limited also keeps a copy, made each night, of the agreements creators accept, their answers on whether we may feature their guide, and the record linking a guide’s handle to a sign-in, so that none of it is lost if our server is.
• Apple provides Sign in with Apple, the App Store the app comes from, and the billing for membership. Apple takes the payment and tells us that a subscription exists, when it started and when it ends, the price and currency it charged, whether renewal is on or off, and whether a payment failed. We never see your card or your billing address. If you choose to hide your email address when you sign in, Apple forwards our messages to you through its own relay, and we see only the relay address.
• Anthropic, in the United States, provides the language model a creator talks to while making a guide, and that translates a finished guide into the languages it is offered in. It handles what a creator says and the guide’s own words, and nothing a reader does.
• OpenAI, in the United States, turns a creator’s voice into text when they talk to the app instead of typing. It receives the audio only for that. Your dictation recordings are not kept: our server holds it only in memory long enough to process it, and OpenAI’s transcription service does not retain it or use it to train its models.
• Fly.io, a United States company, runs the server that builds and serves published guides and holds what is in them: the photographs and videos, the record linking a guide’s handle to a sign-in, and the agreements creators accept. It also keeps the invitation requests described above: the email address, the city, the language, the date and where the request came from. The server itself is in Europe.
• Postmark, run by a United States company, sends the emails we write to you: the one that says we have your invitation request, the invitation itself, and the emails about a membership. It receives your email address and the text of the message, and nothing else about you.
• Backblaze, Inc., a United States company, keeps a second copy of our records, made each night and stored in its data center in the Netherlands, so that nothing is lost if our other copies are. The copy is encrypted before it leaves our computer, and Backblaze cannot read it.
• A contractor, based in the European Union, answers creators for us by email, WhatsApp and Instagram. They see what a creator writes to us, including a phone number or email address if that is how they write, and work under a written agreement that keeps it confidential and limits them to answering.

Each one works on our instructions and nothing else. Where information reaches the United States, it does so under the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

When a creator makes a guide

Making a guide is a conversation, and the conversation is handled by a language model on our behalf. Three things are worth saying plainly.

• A creator’s words are never used to train a model. Not by us, and not by the provider, whose business terms commit to that.
• Photographs and videos are not sent to the model at all. They are stored by us, and only ever shown in the guide.
• The provider holds what passes through only briefly, to guard against misuse, then deletes it. Weeks, not years.
• The model tidies what a creator said. It does not invent recommendations, and it never adds a place they have not been.

You are talking to software, and it will not pretend otherwise.

Our server keeps what a creator sends in that conversation, word for word, and beside each message what the app did with it: the place it added or moved, the note it wrote, what it filed under Practical, what it could not find, and what it said back. That is how we find where the app misunderstood someone without waiting for them to tell us. A report sent with Report a problem is kept the same way. Neither is ever published or shown to anyone else, and deleting your account in the app deletes both.

If anything above changes, we will tell creators before it happens rather than updating this page quietly.

When the app looks up a place

When a creator types the name of a place, the app asks Google for it, and sends what they typed along with the city the guide is about. Google sends back the address, the website, the price range and photographs of that place. Nothing else about the creator goes with the question: not who they are, not the identifier described below, and not anything else in the guide.

While a creator writes a message, the app also helps them pick the place they mean before they send it. As they type a name, what they have typed so far goes to our server, which asks Google for places by that name in the guide’s city. When they pause partway through a sentence, the sentence goes to our server, which asks the language model which of its words are places, and then asks Google for those names. None of it is kept. Our server reads the draft to answer and drops it, and a draft the creator never sends is never added to the guide.

The photographs Google returns are other people’s. A creator picks one only if they have none of their own, the photographer’s name is shown with it wherever it appears, and we do not keep Google’s copy: the app holds a reference and asks for the picture again when it needs it.

When a creator talks instead of typing

When a creator talks instead of typing, the app records what they say and sends it to our server, which passes it to OpenAI to turn into text. It sends along the names of the places already in the guide, so a name like Café de Flore comes back spelled right, and nothing else about the creator. The text lands in the composer for the creator to change or delete before anything is added. Your dictation recordings are not kept: the app deletes each clip once it has been turned into text, our server holds it only in memory long enough to process it, and OpenAI’s transcription service does not retain it or use it to train its models.

When a creator shares to TikTok, Instagram or Facebook

The iPhone app can hand a guide’s reel, a short film of it, to TikTok. It does that with TikTok’s own sharing code, which is part of the app. The app saves the reel to your Photos and opens TikTok on it, and you post it or keep it as a draft there. The code talks to TikTok only when you tap TikTok in the Share panel, and what it hands over is the reel you chose. It reads nothing from your TikTok account, and we never see what you do in TikTok. From the moment TikTok opens you are under their rules and not ours.

Sending a Story or a Reel to Instagram or Facebook goes through your phone’s clipboard: the app puts the picture or film there, opens the app, and the clipboard clears itself within five minutes. To post a picture to your Facebook feed, the app uses Facebook’s own sharing code, which is part of the app. It starts only when you tap Post under Facebook, it is told not to log anything about you or collect an advertising identifier, and what it hands over is the picture you chose. From the moment either app opens you are under their rules and not ours.

When you ask us for help

Settings in the app has two rows, Message us on WhatsApp and Email us. Opening Settings sends nothing. If you tap the WhatsApp row, WhatsApp opens at a chat with our business number, with one line already typed that names the app and its version. You can change or delete it, and nothing is sent until you send it. From that moment you are under WhatsApp’s rules and not ours. WhatsApp is run by Meta, which sees that your account wrote to ours, and when, under its own terms. We see your phone number, the name on your WhatsApp profile, and what you write or send. The same is true if you write to that number without using the app. The messages are read by us and by the contractor who answers creators for us, named under Who else handles it. A chat is kept until we delete it, and we delete it if you ask, with any note we made of it, without asking why. The WhatsApp row is hidden if WhatsApp is not installed, and you never have to use it: you can email us instead, at hello@asiknowit.guide.

Reading a guide in another language

We translate a guide into the languages it is offered in when it is published, using the same language model that helps make it, and serve a reader the page already in their language. The English original is what we keep as the source, and venue names and addresses are marked never to be translated, so a place stays findable on a door or a map.

What the app records

The iPhone app creators make guides in keeps a short record of how far they have got, and sends it to us. It is how a small team finds out whether the app works without asking everyone every week. We do this on our legitimate interest in seeing whether the app works, and the switch in Settings is how you object.

Every line is one of a fixed list. Some of them: an account was made, a guide was started, the first place was added, five places, eight places, a photo was added, the guide was previewed, a place was shared, a help row was tapped, WhatsApp or email, a guide was published without a photograph of its own, a drafted sentence was kept or thrown away, a piece of writing tripped the content check, and the steps around paying: the subscription screen seen or closed, Apple’s payment sheet opened, a resubscribe offer seen, a PDF saved. Failures are on the list too, as one of a few words for what went wrong. Alongside each line goes how many places and photos the guide holds, the version of the app, and an identifier.

When one of those lines is a failure, the app also sends the same word to our own server, with the version of the app and your sign-in, so we see it the day it happens. It carries no message, no file name and nothing you wrote. It is kept on our server in Europe with the rest of our record of what broke, for as long as you have an account. Turning off Share how I use the app in Settings stops these too.

That identifier is a random number the app makes up the first time it runs. It is not your Apple account, not your email address, and not worked out from anything about you. Settings shows it as Support ID, and it stays until your account is deleted. Two other things join lines to each other: which guide a line was about, and which run of the app it came from. The steps around paying are the exception: they are kept against your sign-in, with the price you were shown, because they are part of the record of a purchase.

There is no line for what you wrote, what you said out loud, what was transcribed, or what you photographed. There is nowhere in it for any of those to go.

Settings has a switch that turns the whole thing off, the steps around paying included. What Apple tells us about a subscription is the record of a contract and is not switched off. Turning it off throws away anything your phone has not sent yet. Read the Support ID out of Settings, send it to us, and we will delete every line that ever came from your phone.

Signing in is Apple’s, not ours, and making a guide needs an invitation. Until the app has accepted an invitation code, we keep nothing about your Apple account: not the identifier, not your name and not your email address. Once it has, Apple gives the app an identifier for you, and your name and email address the first time only. Publishing a guide sends it to our server, which builds the public page and keeps the photographs and videos in it, a record linking the guide’s handle to your sign-in so the guide can be found and removed, and the agreement you accepted when you started. Deleting your account in the app removes your guides, and the photographs and videos you took with them; the record that you agreed, with the name, the version and the date, is kept as the legal record of that agreement, and so is the record that a subscription existed, its transaction identifier and its dates, for three years, as the record of the charge. The steps around paying lose your sign-in and keep only their count. Photographs we fetched from Google Maps were never yours or ours to remove. It also clears the copies on your phone, so save a PDF of anything you want to keep before you delete.

When you pay. Apple takes the payment and we never see your card or billing address. Apple tells us that a subscription exists and when it started, when the free month or the paid year ends, the price and currency Apple charged, whether renewal is on or off, whether a payment failed, and an identifier for the transaction. We keep that against your sign-in for as long as you have an account, and the transaction identifier and dates for three years after, as the record that you agreed to the charge. We also keep a short list of steps with the price you were shown: the subscription screen seen or closed, Apple’s payment sheet opened, a free month started, converted or ended, renewal turned off or on, a charge that failed, a year renewed, a subscription that ended or came back, a PDF saved. Nothing you wrote or photographed is in it. It is how we know whether the price is right.

Reminders and reader notes. If you close the subscription screen with a guide unpublished, we may use that step to send you a reminder email a few days later, unless you have turned off “Share how I use the app”. When a reader leaves a note on your guide, we email it to you. Every one of these emails has a link to stop them. We keep a coded version of your address, so we don’t send you these emails again, even if you delete your account.

Copies of a deleted guide in our server’s own backups follow within five days. Other people’s copies, search engines included, clear on their own schedule, which we do not control.

Links that earn us something

Nothing here is sponsored. Nobody pays to be in a guide. We do not sell placement, we do not take money to add a place, to move one up the page or to leave one out, and no recommendation has ever been written, changed or removed because of what it might earn. What a guide recommends is the choice of the person who wrote it and of nobody else.

What we do is earn on some of the links that are already there. If a creator sends you to a hotel, a restaurant booking or a ticket and there is a commission on that click, we take it. The destination is the one they picked, the page reads exactly as it would if there were no commission at all, and you pay nothing extra.

The commission goes to As I Know It, not to the creator. Creators are not paid for what they recommend, which is the point: there is nothing for anyone to buy. It helps pay for building and hosting the guides, which are free to read. Until launch, making one is free too. If that ever changes we will say so here before it does.

The platform picks in the Practical section at the end of a guide are ours, not the creator's: eSIMs, money, insurance, getting in from the airport, leaving your bags, tickets, renting an apartment. Those carry commission too. A creator can add their own practical notes alongside, marked as theirs. A link in one that points at a company we earn a commission from is counted the same way as the links above; every other link in a note belongs to the creator and earns us nothing. Two things about how our picks are chosen, because the point of saying this is that you can check it. They are chosen on what we would tell a friend, not on what pays the most, and where the two disagreed we went with the cheaper one for you. Where a pick is a comparison, we name the ones we did not choose so you can check it, and those earn us nothing.

The guide is exactly the same if you use none of them. If you would rather not, search for the same thing yourself. We would still rather you had the eSIM.

Cookies

We set one cookie of our own, and only if you ask for it. If you click EN or FR to choose a language, we set a cookie called nf_lang that holds that one word, for a year, so the next page comes in the language you chose. We set it only on that click, our servers read it only to pick which page to send, and it is used for nothing else. If you never click a language link, nothing is stored. No advertising, no trackers of ours, and nothing loaded from anyone else when a page opens. The one exception is a video or a post a creator has put in a guide, from YouTube, Instagram or Google Drive. It does not load until you tap it. When you do, that company shows its player in the page, sees your visit, and may set its own cookies under its own policy. Nothing here recognizes you between visits beyond that language choice. The map on a guide page is ours too: it draws from a map file served off this site, so it loads nothing from a mapping company and tells no one you opened it.

One exception, and it is worth being exact about. If you follow a link that earns us a commission, the company at the other end sets a cookie on its site to record that you arrived from here, usually for a few weeks. That is how the commission gets counted. It happens after you have left, on their site rather than ours, and nothing from it is stored by us on your device while you are reading. If you would rather not, do not use the link. The guide is the same either way.

One thing is kept in your browser, apart from that language choice. When you send a note on a guide, the times you sent them are saved so the form can stop at five in an hour. There is no name and no number in that list, it never leaves your browser, and clearing your site data clears it.

Nothing we load follows you between sites, and anything from another company waits for your tap, so there is no banner to click.

Sharing a guide

The Share button opens a panel with the link, a picture made for Instagram, a short film, and a printable card with a code to scan. The picture, the film and the card are made here and served from this site, so opening the panel loads nothing from anyone else.

The rest of the panel opens WhatsApp, Messages, your mail app, Threads, X, LinkedIn, Facebook or Reddit with the link already written out for you. Nothing goes to any of them until you tap one, and from the moment you are in their app you are under their rules and not ours.

A link passed on that way carries a short tag saying which app it came from, like ?s=ig for Instagram. It says nothing about who sent it or who opened it. It is there because Instagram and WhatsApp do not tell us where a reader came from, so without it every shared link would arrive looking like somebody typing the address in.

An unlisted guide. A creator can choose to leave a guide unlisted, before or after publishing it. It then lives at a link made of random letters and numbers instead of its name. If a guide that was already public is made unlisted, its regular link stops working, and anyone who has only that link can no longer open the guide. Making a guide unlisted does not recall copies that already exist: a search engine, a web archive or a reader may still hold what was public before. We ask search engines not to list it, we do not tell them it exists, and we leave it off the creator’s page here and out of the guides we feature. The page also asks a browser not to tell the sites it links to where you came from. This is not a lock. Anyone with the link can read the guide, and anyone who gets it can pass it on. The creator decides who gets the link, and anything they arrange with the people they share it with, including payment, is between them: As I Know It is not a party to it, handles no payment and does not take a share of it. A search engine that ignores our request can still list it, and a page that posts the link in public lets anyone who sees that page open it.

What we count

A guide page tells us when it opens, and tells us again if you tap through to a restaurant, a map or a website, open a place’s directions or copy its address, share it, or scroll far enough to reach the Practical section at the end. That last one is counted because everything in a guide that earns us a commission sits in that section, and whether anybody gets down to it is a question we would rather answer than guess. The homepage does the same, and adds one line when someone sends the invite form. Each line says which page, what was tapped, the page you came from, how wide your window is, and the time.

If something on the page breaks, it says so: the error message, the file and line it came from, and which browser you are using. That is there so a broken map or a broken button is found by us rather than by the next person to open the guide. It carries nothing you typed and nothing about you beyond the browser.

There is no cookie and no identifier in any of it, so we cannot tell one reader from another, or link this visit to your last one. It answers one question, which is whether anyone is reading the guide and what they open. If that is more than you want to send, switch on Do Not Track in your browser and we will not send it at all. A content blocker will stop it too, and the guide reads exactly the same either way.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to limit what we do with it, object to what we do with it, or ask for it in a form you can take elsewhere. Email hello@asiknowit.guide and we will answer within a month, usually the same week.

If you think we have handled your information badly, you can complain to the CNIL, the French data protection authority, at cnil.fr.