Privacy Policy

Information We Collect

We collect information you provide directly — such as your name, email address, and donation details when you register as a walker, make a donation, or subscribe to our newsletter. We also collect limited technical information (like browser type and pages visited) to improve our website. Two kinds of information need their own explanation, and they have their own sections below: the GPS route recorded while you walk, and the health-related information a veteran gives us when applying to be one of our heroes.

Location and Route Data While You Walk

If you register as a walker and use the walk tracker, we record your precise location. This is the most sensitive information we hold about walkers, so here is exactly what happens.

What we collect. While a walk is running, your device reports its position every few seconds. We store each position as a latitude and longitude, the time it was recorded, and how accurate the reading was. Together these form the route of your walk — where you went, and when you were at each point along it.

Only while you are walking. We ask your device for your location only after you press Start, and we stop asking the moment you pause, finish, or discard the walk. Recording continues if you lock your phone or switch apps with a walk still running — that is what lets a fifteen-mile walk be recorded without you holding the screen — but we do not track your location in the background when no walk is in progress, and we never collect location just because you are browsing the site. Your phone or browser also controls this: you can refuse or revoke the location permission at any time, and the tracker simply will not record.

Where it is kept. The route is saved on our servers and also mirrored in your own browser's storage on the device you walked with. The local copy exists so that a dead battery, a closed tab, or a walk with no cell signal from start to finish does not cost you your miles. You can clear it by clearing this site's data in your browser.

Who can see it. By default, only you and Foundation staff — administrators, and staff with read-only access for reviewing walks. Publishing your route is opt-in and is off unless you turn it on. If you do turn on live sharing, then for the walks you share, your live position during the walk and the finished route afterwards can be seen by anyone on the internet who visits the relevant page. Not only signed-in backers, and no account is needed. What they see is a trimmed copy: the line of the route only, with no times on any point, and with roughly the first tenth of a mile removed (and, once the walk is finished, the last tenth too), so the map does not start or end at your door. The full route, with times, stays visible only to you and to Foundation staff.

Please read this before sharing a route. A recorded walk usually begins and ends wherever you set out from, which for most walkers is their home. We hide the times and trim the start and end of every shared route for that reason, but a trimmed route can still show the neighbourhood you walk in, and a live walk shows that you are out right now. We think walkers should decide that knowingly, which is why sharing is off by default and why we are telling you plainly rather than burying it.

Turning sharing off, and deleting a route. The live-sharing switch is in your Walker portal, next to the tracker, and you can change it whenever you like. Turning it off stops us publishing any further walks — but it does not retroactively un-publish a walk you have already shared. To take a route that is already public back down, or to have a route deleted entirely, email us at glenn@walkforahero.com and we will do it.

How long we keep it. A completed route is the record behind the miles you were credited and the pledges those miles raised, so we keep it while your walker account is active. We delete the location coordinates of every route one year after the walk. The only exception is a walk our team is still reviewing, which we keep until the review is finished. You can also delete your account yourself at any time, which removes every route straight away, or ask us to delete any single route sooner, and we will. If miles from that walk have already been credited to a hero, we keep the distance, date and duration — but not the coordinates — because those figures are part of our financial and donor records.

Health-Related Information About Veterans

Our work is about paralysis and mobility, so some of the information veterans give us is health-related. We are not a healthcare provider and this is not medical care, but the information deserves the same care, and you should know what we hold.

What we collect. When a veteran is considered to become one of our heroes, we record their contact details and phone number, branch, rank, years of service and conflict or era, a description of their injury, and the name and contact details of their treating physician. If a veteran sets up their own hero page, they also write their own biography and their own account of their service and injury.

What becomes public, and what does not. Only the biography, the story and the photograph on a hero's page are published, and only after the veteran has submitted them and our team has reviewed and approved the page — a profile stays private until it is published. The injury description, the physician's name and contact details, and the phone number held in an application are never published on this site.

Who inside the Foundation can see it. Applications, including physician contact details, are visible to Foundation administrators and to staff accounts holding read-only review access. They are not visible to walkers, to backers, or to the public. We are narrowing who holds that access; if you want to know exactly who can see your application, ask us and we will tell you.

Your say in it. A veteran may ask us to correct anything we hold, to unpublish their page, or to delete their information, and we will. We do not sell it, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not share it with anyone outside the Foundation except where we are required to by law.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information to process donations, communicate with you about the campaign, send mission updates to newsletter subscribers and to donors (anyone can unsubscribe at any time), and improve our website. Route data is used to calculate the miles you walked, to credit those miles to the hero you walk for, to work out the pledges they raise, and — where you have opted in — to show your walk publicly. We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Payment Processing

Donation payments are processed by Stripe, our third-party payment processor. Your card details go to Stripe, not to us: we do not store your full card number or banking details on our servers. Stripe handles that information under its own privacy policy and its own security obligations, and we receive back only what we need to record the gift — the amount, the date, the outcome, and the name and email you gave at checkout.

Cookies & Similar Technologies

We use minimal browser storage — such as cookies or local storage — only to keep you signed in when you use your Walker or Backer portal, and, if you are walking, to hold your walk in progress on your device. Our website analytics are provided by Plausible Analytics, a privacy-focused service that does not use cookies and does not track you across other websites. You can control browser storage through your device's settings, though this may affect your ability to stay signed in and, during a walk, your phone's ability to recover the walk if the app closes.

Your Rights and Choices

You may ask us to give you a copy of the personal information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it. Walkers can also delete their account themselves, from the Walker portal on this site or in our mobile app (Today tab → your profile picture at the top right → Delete my account; step-by-step instructions are on our Delete Your Account page). Deleting your account removes your name, email, photo, walker page, every recorded route and your backers' names and emails on your walk, and stops notifications to your devices. The miles you were credited and the donations made to your walk stay on the hero's total, recorded under "Deleted walker", because they are part of our financial and donor records — donors' receipts and our tax records have to keep matching. You may also ask us to stop sending you email, which you can do from any email we send.

If you are a California resident, you have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended, including the right to know what we collect and why, the right to delete it, the right to correct it, and the right to limit our use of sensitive personal information. The precise location we record during a walk is sensitive personal information under that law. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of on that front. We will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights.

If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, you have rights under the UK GDPR and the GDPR to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to our use of your information, to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw consent where our use rests on consent — which is the case for publishing your walk routes. Withdrawing consent does not affect what we did lawfully beforehand. You may also complain to your data protection authority.

To exercise any of these rights, email glenn@walkforahero.com with the address you used with us and what you would like us to do. We will respond within the time the applicable law allows, and we may need to verify your identity before we act on a request — particularly for deletion. An authorised agent may make a request on your behalf.

Contact

If you have questions about this policy or how we handle your information, please reach out through our contact page or email glenn@walkforahero.com.