Privacy
Last changed 13 November 2026
The short version. No accounts. No ads. No tracking. No cookies. Kip needs a little data to live on your screen and talk to your phone. This page lists all of it.
Kip the Hiker is run by Kugen Segaran. Questions about this page go to hello@kipthehiker.com.
What leaves your devices
- Your trail link. A random id, made when you start a trail. It is how your screen and your phones find the same Kip. Anyone with the link can wave at him, so keep it to your household. When you add a screen from the app, that screen is given the link, so only add a screen that is yours. Share links and photo addresses use a second, read-only id instead.
- Your time zone and rough location. Rounded to about 10 km and used for the sunrise and sunset. They come from your browser's or your phone's time zone, or from Cloudflare's guess based on your connection, and sit in the page's address. The trail keeps the time zone. It does not keep the location.
- What Kip is doing. About once a minute the screen says where he is: the mountain, his height, the weather, the time on the trail. Your phone reads it. Only the latest one is kept.
- What you send from a phone. Waves, snacks, cheers, photo requests and messages. The trail keeps its last 40. The words of a message and of Kip's reply are wiped 10 minutes after they are sent.
- Messages to Kip. Up to 80 characters. Each message, with Kip's current status, goes to Anthropic, whose AI model writes his reply. The phone asks you first; until you agree, or if it can't, or the day's free replies are used up, Kip answers with a line of his own and nothing is sent.
- Waves to a stranger. At night you can wave at another household, picked at random. Kip's server uses your read-only id only so it doesn't pick you, and keeps none of it. The other household sees a wave and nothing else: no id, no name, no place. Your trail counts today's waves, at most 10.
- Photos. Pictures of Kip on his trail, drawn by the page. Never a camera. They are stored under the read-only id.
- The field guide. Which animals your household has spotted on Kip's trail: the kind, the days and the place on his map. They are Kip's animals, not yours, and say nothing about where you are.
- Paired phones. The name the phone gives (cut to 40 characters) and when it paired. You can remove a phone from the app.
- Your network address. Cloudflare sees it, as any web host does. Kip holds it in memory, briefly, to slow down anyone sending too much, and never stores it.
Nothing else. No name, no email, no contacts, no microphone, no advertising id. The app uses the camera only to read the pairing code on Kip's screen; what it sees stays on the phone and is not kept.
Who else receives it
| Who | What they get | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Every request to Kip, your network address, the trail, its photos | Kip runs on Cloudflare's servers and storage |
| Anthropic | A message you send Kip, and his current status | To write his reply |
| Apple | Your App Store download | The iPhone app |
| The Nest Hub or Chromecast loads Google's Cast software. When you cast from Chrome, Chrome loads Google's Cast software too, and the iPhone app uses Google's Cast software to find your screen on your Wi-Fi. The phone remote loads its fonts from Google Fonts. Each of these sees your network address. Which trail to show goes from your phone or browser to your screen over your own Wi-Fi, not to Google | Casting, and the remote's lettering |
None of them get your trail link, except as listed. Nobody gets data to sell or to advertise with.
How long it is kept
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Kip's status | Until the next one replaces it |
| Phone actions | The last 40, until newer ones push them out |
| The words of messages and Kip's replies | 10 minutes |
| Photos | Every photo for 30 days. After that a day keeps its summit, its map, rare animals and the photos you asked for |
| The field guide | Until the trail is deleted |
| Paired phones | Until you remove them |
| Everything in a trail | Until you delete it, or 90 days after anything last reached it |
| Live screen counts | About half an hour, as a number with no trail attached |
| Daily totals (screens, new trails, pairings, messages, photos) | 400 days, as numbers with no trail attached |
Delete everything
In the Kip app, open settings and delete the trail. Every photo and every message goes, the link stops working, and it cannot be undone. A trail nothing has reached for 90 days deletes itself the same way. You can also write to hello@kipthehiker.com to ask what a trail holds or to have it deleted.
Children
Kip is not meant for children under 13, and does not knowingly collect anything from them.
On your own devices
The page remembers a few things in the browser's own storage: how long you have watched today and when you last looked. A Nest Hub remembers the last trail it showed. None of this is sent anywhere.
Changes
If this page changes, the date at the top changes too.