Utah Outdoors Privacy Policy

Updated September 29, 2026

This policy explains how Utah Outdoors handles information collected through the Utah Outdoors Android app and the membership services at utahoutdoors.org. The app is published under the developer name Forgotten Peak Ventures. Links to other websites, including public outdoor guides, may lead to services with their own privacy practices.

Information we collect

Registration starts with an invitation code and email address. We send a confirmation code and bind the invitation to your email only after you confirm it. Confirmation codes expire after 10 minutes; expired confirmation requests are removed by scheduled cleanup. The binding is used to resume registration and prevent reuse with another email. An unfinished binding is retained until the invitation expires, then removed by scheduled cleanup.

New adult members provide their name, email address, password in a protected hashed form, required profile photo, full birth date, gender selection (Male or Female), and invitation-code information to create and protect their membership. The full birth date is used to check adult signup and future age-restricted community access. You may also provide a telephone number and how you heard about us. Earlier members may have supplied only an optional birthday month and day; we do not infer a missing birth year or gender.

We record who created your registration code, its assigned distributor, its source or event, registration and verification dates, and your account's membership status. Registration links may supply campaign information and the referring website's hostname. We store the initial experience from your invitation and any later default experience you choose. It changes presentation and does not grant access to restricted communities.

When you use chat, we store your messages, conversation memberships, message timestamps, reports and moderation records, and information used to track unread messages. Organizers can remove a member from a chat so they can rejoin later, or ban them from that chat until the ban is lifted. A chat ban does not remove the member's overall account. We also process technical information needed to operate and protect the service, such as IP addresses, browser requests, sign-in cookies and security records.

Events and RSVPs

Event images and details are visible to signed-in members. When you RSVP to a member-created Utah Outdoors event, we record your attendance choice and any optional first-time gathering choice. The event host and administrators can view attendee names and first-time choices; other members see the total count and only their own RSVP. Canceling your RSVP removes your attendance and first-time choice from that event's attendee list. Meetup RSVPs are handled separately on Meetup.

How we use your information

We use your information to create and verify accounts, confirm adult signup eligibility, sign you in, recover access, manage membership, run conversations and the member directory, moderate activity, prevent misuse, and answer requests. A full birth date or gender correction is reviewed through an organizer or administrator process.

We use email addresses and provided telephone numbers to communicate with hiking-group members about outings, schedules, changes, group coordination, and membership. Contact an organizer if you want to change how you receive optional group communications. Necessary account and security messages may still be sent while your account is active. Providing a telephone number does not by itself enroll you in automated marketing texts.

With your birthday-sharing permission, we use birthdays that members provide to celebrate their birthdays. The details of birthday announcements and your choices are described below.

Private messages

Members can start a private conversation with another active member from their profile. The two participants can open it through the app or website. Site administrators can also review private messages and attached images for safety and moderation through an administrator-only review page. Organizers without administrator access cannot review private conversations. Messages and attached images are stored on our servers and are not end-to-end encrypted; authorized hosting or site administrators with direct system access may access stored data for operating or protecting the service. Private messages are not sent to Odoo. Leaving a conversation does not delete its history. You can remove your own messages or contact us for help.

What other members can see

Active members can view your name, profile picture and access level in the member directory. On your individual profile, they can also view any optional city or region, bio, interests, and conversation-prompt answers you add in My account, plus a cover photo and updates or photos you choose to share. You can separately choose whether to show your gender and birthday month and day on your individual profile; both are hidden there by default. The interests you choose in the Home getting-started guide are a separate private account preference and are not shown on your member profile. Members who join a conversation can read its messages. Organizers with moderation access can review messages and reports. Your email address, telephone number and gender are not displayed in the member directory. Gender is also used for eligibility checks when gender-specific chats, such as women-only chats, are introduced. Contact an organizer to correct your gender selection.

Birthday announcements are a separate choice from profile visibility. If you allow birthday sharing for announcements, we may include your first and last name and birthday month/day in birthday communications, group chats, or birthday features in the app. We do not share a birth year on member profiles or in announcements. You can turn off birthday announcements in My account and contact us to apply that change to organizer lists and Odoo records. Turning it off stops permission for future announcements; it does not automatically remove announcements already sent. Birthdays collected under our earlier private-only notice are not opted into sharing automatically.

Please share only information you are comfortable making available to the other members of a conversation. Other members may copy or share information they can see.

Phone notifications

If you enable phone notifications in the Android app, we store a Firebase device token linked to your membership and your choices for joined chats, private messages, and new events. You can turn off each category, mute an individual chat, or turn off all phone notifications in My account. The app also asks for Android notification permission. Turning notifications off removes your registered phone tokens from our server. We send the token and a brief alert through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging to deliver notifications; alert text does not include chat message content. Notifications may appear on your lock screen according to your phone settings. We remove invalid tokens and expire registrations that have not checked in for 90 days.

Service providers and Odoo

We use hosting, email and contact-management providers to operate the service. After you verify your email, we send your name, email address, optional telephone number, birthday month/day, registration source, referral distributor and code-creator details to our Odoo contact records for membership administration and the uses described in this policy. Birth year, full birth date, gender, passwords, verification links, profile photos and chat messages are not sent to Odoo by this integration.

Updating My account currently updates the membership website, but does not automatically update an existing Odoo contact. Contact us when a correction, communication preference or deletion needs to apply to both systems.

Google Play handles app distribution under Google's privacy practices. Public website pages may use Google advertising services; those services may use cookies and technical identifiers. The app's home, chat, member directory, account and registration pages do not include the public homepage's advertising script.

Photos, cookies and device access

The app lets you choose a profile photo through your device's file picker and crop it to a square. You can also position a cover photo and add photos to member updates. We store processed images with image metadata removed, and active members can view the cover and update photos you share. The app does not request access to your contacts, microphone or precise device location, and does not automatically upload your photo library. We do not use automated face recognition for profile photos.

Sign-in and security cookies support account access. Browser session storage temporarily holds registration-source information. On this device, browser storage can also keep account-scoped chat drafts and a pending message until it is confirmed or retried; the app clears those local chat copies when you use Sign out in My account. Disabling browser storage may prevent reliable chat retries or registration from working.

Your choices and deletion requests

You can edit your name, telephone number, profile photo, cover photo, optional member introduction, profile visibility choices and birthday-announcement choice in My account. You can edit or delete your own member updates and photos on your profile, and change private getting-started interests on Home. Earlier members can add a private full birth date and a missing gender selection. Once recorded, contact an organizer to correct your full birth date or gender. You can request a copy of your information, change communication or birthday preferences, or request deletion of your account and associated information in both the website and Odoo.

Use our Contact Us form at Contact Us: privacy or account deletion. Identify the email used for your membership and the change you want. Do not send your password. We may ask you to verify account ownership before fulfilling a request. You can request deletion without installing or signing into the app.

You can remove your own chat messages. Deleting an account does not automatically erase every past conversation; retained messages may appear under a former-member label. Tell us if your request also covers messages or personal information in conversations so we can review them.

If you specifically ask to remove an account while keeping its profile for re-registration, we retain a private copy of the display name, profile photo, cover photo, optional introduction, interests and related preferences for up to one year. After you verify the same email with a fresh invitation and create a new account, we restore those details and remove the saved copy. Member update history is not restored to the new account. The new account has a new member ID; past chat messages remain under a former-member label. This retention does not apply to an ordinary deletion request. You can ask us to erase the saved copy at any time.

Retention and security

We keep account and membership records while they are needed to provide membership services and address support, safety or administrative matters. On a verified deletion request, we review associated website and Odoo records for deletion and explain any information that must be retained for security, disputes or legal obligations. Copies in backups may remain until those backups are replaced or expire.

Unverified registrations expire after seven days and are scheduled for cleanup; removal can be delayed by background-job processing. We use HTTPS, protected passwords and access restrictions to reduce unauthorized access. No system can guarantee complete security.

Policy updates and contact

We update this policy when our information practices change and revise the date above. A revised policy does not automatically authorize a new use of information collected under an earlier notice. We will seek permission where needed before expanding how that information is shared.

For privacy questions or requests, use the Contact Us form linked on this page.