Why Backpackers Friend Has Zero Trackers, and How to Check Any Hiking App Yourself
This week a thru-hiker on the Pacific Crest Trail opened the settings of one of the most popular navigation apps in backpacking and found a toggle that had been quietly switched on the whole time. Facebook conversion tracking was running by default. The app's own description explained that the data goes “to help us measure the return on investment of Facebook Ads.” The hiker's reaction stuck with me, and the reaction was not happy this has been silently enabled for the past 1,800 miles of my hike.
I want to be fair here. What that app is doing is legal, it's extremely common, and it's baked into the default toolkit that most apps are built with. The practice is no scandal. But the practice is a choice, and I made that exact choice the opposite way when I built Backpackers Friend. So instead of piling on, I would rather tell you precisely what my app does and does not do with your data, and then show you how to check any hiking app on your own phone in about two minutes, mine included.
The problem What “shares your data with Facebook” actually means
When an app says it does Facebook conversion tracking, or Google, or any ad network, the plain-English version runs as follows. The app includes a small piece of software from that ad company, called an advertising SDK. As you use the app, that SDK phones home with which screens you opened, what you tapped, and sometimes a device identifier that can be matched back to your other accounts. The ad company uses the report to figure out which of its ads led you to install and pay, and to build a profile for targeting you later. Nobody is reading your trip notes. Your behavior becomes someone else's marketing data, by default, without you opting in.
For a hiking app, that stings a little more than most. This is the app that knows where you camped, which trailheads you searched, when you were miles from a road, and how far you walked. That's not the kind of data I ever wanted flowing to an ad exchange.
The choice What Backpackers Friend sends, and what stays put
Backpackers Friend is built on a single principle, which is that the app is yours and the app runs on your phone. There is no account to create, no server that stores your trips, and no login screen, because there is no back end for you to log into. Every trip, route, waypoint, gear list, and recorded hike lives in a database on your device. I couldn't hand your trip history to an advertiser if I wanted to, because I never have it in the first place.
What the app does not do
- No advertising SDKs. No Facebook/Meta SDK, no Google Ads, no AppsFlyer, Adjust, or Branch. There is no code in the app whose job is to track you for advertising.
- No analytics that profile you. No Firebase Analytics, no Segment, Amplitude, or Mixpanel logging your taps and screens.
- No account, no login, no email. You never hand me an identity, so there's nothing to leak, sell, or breach.
- No cloud copy of your trips. Your routes, waypoints, gear lists, and recorded activities never leave your phone. They aren't backed up to my server, because there is no server.
- No selling data. There is no data-broker relationship, because there is no data collection pipeline to feed one.
Now the honest other half, because “we send nothing, ever” would be a lie, and you should be suspicious of any app that makes that claim. A navigation app has to reach the internet for a few specific, boring reasons. The complete list of what leaves your phone, and why, follows below.
What the app does talk to
- Map tiles & terrain. The map you see is downloaded from my own map service. Your device asks for the map squares around the area you're looking at, which is the same request any map makes, and once you've cached a trip for offline use the asking stops altogether.
- Trail & water data. To route you along real trails and mark water sources, the app queries public OpenStreetMap data for the region you're planning in. It's asking about the terrain, not reporting on you.
- Purchase validation. If you subscribe to Premium, Apple handles the payment and a receipt-validation service (RevenueCat) confirms the subscription is active. That is billing plumbing required to sell anything on the App Store, and the receipt check is not ad tracking and cannot see your trips.
That's the whole picture. Map data in, no behavior data out. None of those requests carry an advertising identity, and none of them include your trip contents. The difference between that and a default ad SDK is not subtle. One app asks “what does the trail look like here?” and the other tells a third party “this is what the person just did.”
Map data in. No behavior data out. The app that knows where you camped shouldn't be the app that tells an ad network about it.
The tool How to check any hiking app yourself in two minutes
Don't take my word for any of this, and don't take any app's word for it either. Apple gives you two built-in ways to check what an app really does, and they work on every app in the store, including mine. Learn these once and you'll never be at the mercy of a marketing page again.
1. Read the App Store privacy label before you install.
- Open the app's App Store page and scroll down to the App Privacy section.
- Look for a heading called Data Used to Track You. This heading is the big one, and the heading means data is being linked to you across other companies' apps and websites for advertising. The strongest possible answer here is that the section doesn't appear at all.
- Check Data Linked to You and Data Collected. An app that lists “Data Not Collected” is telling Apple, under threat of removal, that it gathers nothing about you.
2. Watch what an already-installed app is allowed to do.
- Open Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. Any app that has asked to track you across other apps shows up here, and you can switch that app off. (Better yet, toggle off “Allow Apps to Request to Track” to deny every app at once.)
- In Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services, check that a hiking app only has location access “While Using” or “Always” for a reason you understand. Background GPS for tracking a hike is legitimate, and a flashlight app asking for the same access is not.
- Scroll to the bottom of Location Services and open System Services to see how location is being used under the hood.
Run that on Backpackers Friend and you'll find the privacy label boring in the best possible way, and nothing waiting for you in the Tracking list. Run it on the other apps on your phone and you may be surprised who shows up. Either way, you will know, and knowing is the entire point.
The reason Why I built it this way
I didn't leave the trackers out to make a marketing point. I left them out because I built this app for the same trips you take, which are multi-day trips into places with no signal, where the phone in your pocket is the map, the compass, and the record of where you've been. Out there, the app has to work with zero connectivity and total self-reliance. An app designed to constantly phone home to an ad network is, quietly, an app designed around always being online. Building for the backcountry and building for surveillance point in opposite directions, and I chose the backcountry.
The nice side effect is that I can tell you the truth in one sentence. Your trips are yours, your trips stay on your phone, and nobody is watching where you walk, including Facebook and including me.
An app that keeps your trips to itself
Backpackers Friend plans and navigates multi-day backpacking trips entirely on your device, with no account, no cloud copy of your data, and no advertising trackers. Build routes on a real topo map, track your hike offline, and manage your gear, all without handing your trail life to anyone. Free to get started.
