Legal
Guide by Vana — Privacy Policy
Last updated: 10 August 2026
Guide by Vana is operated by Vana London Ltd (“Vana”, “we”, “us”), company number 16833118, England & Wales. We are the data controller for the personal data described here. Contact: hello@vanalondon.com.
This policy covers the Guide by Vana app (com.vanalondon.guide) and app.vanalondon.com. It sits alongside our main Privacy Policy, which covers the Vana website, waitlist and weekends.
1. Before you sign in
You can browse the Guide without an account. Before you sign in, your activity is anonymous. We run basic, cookieless analytics and anonymous interaction heatmaps to understand how the Guide is used, and we use your IP address to estimate an approximate (city-level) location — we don’t store the full IP beyond that. Any precise location is only ever used with your permission — see “Photos and location” below. Lawful basis: legitimate interests.
2. When you sign in
You can create your account in three ways: with a phone number you verify by SMS (through our verification provider, Twilio), with Sign in with Apple, or with Sign in with Google. If you use Apple or Google, they confirm your identity to us and pass us your email address, and a name if you choose to share one. If you use Apple’s “Hide My Email”, we only ever see the relay address Apple gives us. We never receive your password, and we never post anything to your Apple or Google account. To stop fake or tampered copies of the app abusing our service, we also ask Apple or Google to confirm that the app on your device is a genuine, unmodified install; they return a signed assurance which our server checks, and it tells us nothing about you personally. We store the places you save (in our database, Supabase). After you sign in, your app activity is linked to your account through an internal user ID so we can understand how the Guide is used — but never to your name or email. Lawful basis: performance of a contract, and legitimate interests in understanding usage.
3. Photos and location
Some optional features use your photos and your location, always with your permission. Your photo diary: you can add your own photos and note where each was taken. The photos themselves stay on your device — we don’t upload or store them on our servers. When you tag where a photo was taken, we save that place to your account so it can appear on your “Your London” map. Photo location (optional). If you turn on “Use location to suggest places”, the Guide can suggest where a diary photo was taken so you don’t have to type it. On iPhone it uses the location saved in a photo’s metadata, where your device makes that available. On Android the photo picker does not hand that over, so we never read it. For a photo you take inside the Guide, where the photo carries no location of its own, we use where your device is at that moment. Where neither is available you type the place in yourself. This is off by default. When on, the coordinates are read only at the moment you add a photo. They pass through our server to Google Places to look up a place name, and Google acts as our processor for that. We do not store the raw coordinates, and the copy of the image kept on your device is re-encoded without its location metadata. Photo-diary images stay on your device and are not screened or seen by us. If we ever let you share a photo beyond your own device, it would first be checked automatically for unsafe content using Google’s image-screening service. You can turn this off at any time in Settings. “Near me” on the map: if you grant location access, the map’s “near me” option uses your device’s current location to sort places by distance. We use it in the moment to answer that request — we don’t track your location in the background. Places you’ve been: when you mark places or neighbourhoods as visited, we store that to build your personal “Your London” map. It’s tied to your account and you can remove entries. Your home area (optional). You can give us the first half of your postcode, the postal district, like SE15. We keep only that half and never your full postcode, and we work out your London borough from it on your device. We use it to mark a home borough on your yearly picture, to sort places and people by how near they are, and, if you use the Concierge, as coarse context. It goes with every question you ask the Concierge, which means it reaches Anthropic with that question, so that “near me” means something when you use those words. If you ask for somewhere near you and the Guide has nothing to offer, it can also be the area we put in a Google place search. We only ever send the district code, never a fuller address. You can change or clear it at any time on your Account screen. Lawful basis: your consent for the device and photo-location permissions (which you can withdraw any time in your device settings), and our legitimate interest in providing the diary and map features you choose to use.
4. Your taste
If you take the taste quiz or rate places, we store your answers and ratings and link them to your account so we can personalise your Recommended. If you choose to share your quiz result, that’s done through your device’s own share sheet — you decide where it goes, and it sends a link, not your account data. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in tailoring the Guide to you.
Personalisation
When you are signed in, the Guide can tailor which places you see first. The places most likely to suit your taste appear higher up. This works in two ways. You tell us what you like when you set up your profile and take the taste quiz. This is your stated taste. The Guide also learns from what you do in the app. That means the places you save, the places you mark as been, and the places you rate. This is your revealed taste. We use both only to reorder recommendations inside the Guide. Personalisation never hides places from you, and we never use it to make a decision about you.
You can also add dietary preferences on the Account screen. This is optional and starts empty. We use it to lean the Guide toward places that can feed you, and you can change or clear it at any time. It is never shown to other members, and we never use it to describe you.
Revealed-taste personalisation is on by default for adult accounts. You stay in control. You can turn it off at any time on the Account screen, using the switch called “Personalise what I see”. Turning it off keeps the taste you told us in the quiz. It only stops the Guide learning from what you save and where you have been. On the same screen you can view, edit or reset your taste profile. You can also mark a place as “Not for me”, which just sinks it and never hides it. We do not infer sensitive characteristics from your activity. We do not apply revealed-taste personalisation to any account with a date of birth under 18, or to any account with no usable date of birth. Those accounts are left out of it entirely. If you delete your account, the taste we derived from your activity is deleted with it, and you can download a copy of your data whenever you like.
Legal basis: we personalise the Guide on the basis of our legitimate interests. This covers both your stated taste and your revealed taste. You can turn personalisation off at any time on the Account screen, and the Guide keeps working without it.
Improving the Guide
If you import places you love and some aren’t in the Guide yet, we keep a note of those names (linked to your account) so we can consider adding them. We use this only to improve the Guide — never to contact you or share it — and we delete it if you delete your account.
5. Community features
The Guide includes optional social features. How other members can find you. By your handle. Other members can find you by searching your handle. This is on when you join. You can turn it off in Settings, and turning it off also stops you appearing in suggestions. As someone they might know. If you and another member share a connection, we may suggest each of you to the other. We never go further than friends of friends, and we never show anyone your friends list. You can stop us using your connections to make suggestions to other people, in Settings. By your phone number. This one is off unless you turn it on. If you do, we store a scrambled version of your number so that someone who already has it can find you. Turn it off and the scrambled number is deleted in the same moment. From their address book. If a member chooses to check their contacts against Vana, the numbers in their phone are scrambled on their own device before anything is sent. We only ever check those against members who have turned phone discovery on. Everything else is discarded straight away, and we never build a record of anyone who is not a member. If you would rather none of this applied to you, email privacy@vanalondon.com and we will honour it without you having to explain why. Lawful basis: we suggest members to each other on the basis of our legitimate interests, assessed in a written balancing test. Phone discovery and checking your contacts run on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time in Settings. Numbers belonging to people who are not members are processed only in passing and never stored. You control what you share and can keep saves private. If you opt in, we send a daily digest of places the people you follow have saved. You can report any profile or piece of user content, and block any member, from within the app; reports reach our safety team directly. Lawful basis: performance of a contract and our legitimate interest in operating features you choose to use. See our Child Safety Standards for how we handle abuse and exploitation.
If you paste a link from elsewhere, we read that page to pull out the places in it and save them to your list. Places added this way are marked as not yet reviewed by Vana.
Gifting
If you send someone a Vana gift, you give us their email address so we can send them a one-off email with the gift link. We use it only to deliver that gift — we don’t add it to any mailing list or use it for marketing. We delete it once the gift is claimed or after it expires (90 days), and if you delete your account. If you receive a gift email you didn’t want, you can ignore it and the link will expire.
6. AI Concierge
The Concierge is an AI assistant inside the Guide that helps you find places to go. When you use it, we process the messages you send and your conversation history, so it can answer follow-up questions. If you have given us a home area, we send that along with your question, so that “near me” means something. We do not send your device location to the Concierge. Conversations are linked to your account. We delete a conversation automatically once it has gone 90 days without being used, and you can delete any conversation yourself at any time.
Your messages are sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, which processes them to interpret your request and compose a response. Under Anthropic’s commercial terms this content is not retained by default and is never used to train AI models. Anthropic is based in the United States; where your text is processed outside the UK, that transfer is protected by appropriate safeguards (such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement).
The Concierge recommends from the Guide first. If nothing in the Guide fits what you asked, it can search Google’s places service and show you a few open, well regarded alternatives. We send your question, the area it relates to when there is one, and a fixed boundary around London so the results are London ones. The area may be one you named yourself, or your home area if you asked for somewhere near you. We send nothing else about you. Not your name, not your account, not where your phone is. Anything found this way is shown in its own block and labelled as not reviewed by us. You can tell us to stop doing this by emailing privacy@vanalondon.com. It does not infer or profile sensitive characteristics about you, and it can sometimes be wrong, so please check opening hours and bookings before you go.
If you delete your account, your Concierge conversations are deleted with it, and you can download a copy of your data whenever you like. Legal basis: we provide the Concierge to deliver the service you asked for, which is our contract with you, and we use your location only with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
Your yearly picture
Once a season we build a short picture of your taste from what you have saved, where you have been and what you have loved. We send that summary to Anthropic to write it up. The summary does not carry your name or your account number. It can include the name of a place you have saved, and if you have a friend whose taste closely overlaps with yours, their display name. What comes back is stored against your account so you can see it in your recap. Turn personalisation off in your account settings and none of this happens.
7. Session replay and surveys
Only if you opt in in Settings, we record anonymous session replays — we mask text and form inputs so we don’t capture what you type, exclude sign-in screens, keep recordings for 30 days, and you can turn it off any time. We may also show optional in-app surveys; your answers are stored with your feedback.
8. Who we share data with
We use trusted processors acting on our instructions only: Supabase (database hosting, EU), Twilio (phone verification, reached through Supabase), PostHog (product analytics and crash reporting, EU), Anthropic (the AI concierge and your yearly picture), Google (place lookups, maps, sign-in and app integrity, US), Apple (sign-in and app integrity, US), Expo (app delivery, over-the-air updates and push notifications, US), Vercel (web app hosting and content delivery, US with UK and EU edge) and ZeptoMail (email, EU). Two more are contacted by your device as you browse, and get nothing from us about you beyond the request itself: Open-Meteo, for the London forecast, and the image hosts that serve our cover photographs, which include Unsplash and the venues’ own hosts. We also use Bright Data and Skiddle behind the scenes to find and check places for the Guide. Neither of those receives any member data. We never sell your data. Some processing may take place outside the UK under appropriate safeguards.
9. Retention
We keep your account and saved data while your account is active. Anonymous pre-sign-in analytics are kept in aggregate. Session replays are deleted after 30 days. Anonymised concierge queries are deleted after 90 days. Gift recipient emails are deleted once the gift is claimed or after it expires (90 days).
10. Deleting your account
You can delete your Guide account and saved data at any time — in the app, on the web at https://www.vanalondon.com/delete-account, or by emailing hello@vanalondon.com.
11. Your rights
You can access, correct, delete, restrict or object to our use of your data, request portability, and withdraw consent at any time. To exercise any right, email privacy@vanalondon.com. If you’re unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to us directly (privacy@vanalondon.com or vanalondon.com/privacy-complaint), and you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk).
12. Automated decisions
We don’t make decisions about you by solely automated means that produce legal effects or similarly significantly affect you. The Guide uses automated processing only to order what you see — personalising your Recommended and answering the Concierge — and this never determines your access, your rights or your standing with us. You stay in control: you can turn personalisation off, mark any suggestion as “not interested”, and view, edit or reset your taste at any time. If we ever introduced a solely automated decision that had a significant effect on you, we would tell you before we relied on it, give you a way to ask for a member of our team to review it, and let you challenge the outcome.
13. Access requests
You can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you — a subject access request. You can download your data yourself in the app at any time, or email privacy@vanalondon.com. We’ll respond within one month; if your request is complex or you’ve made several, we may extend that by up to two further months and will explain why. We may ask you to confirm your identity, and where we hold a large amount of data we may ask you to specify what you’re looking for — if we do, the time limit pauses until you reply. We carry out a reasonable and proportionate search, and there’s normally no charge.
14. Cookies and messages
The Guide app doesn’t use advertising or tracking cookies. Our pre-sign-in analytics are cookieless, and session replay runs only if you opt in (see section 7). On the web, app.vanalondon.com uses only the storage needed to sign you in and remember your choices; our cookie notice at vanalondon.com/cookies explains this in full. We only send you electronic messages you would expect or have asked for — a one-off email to a gift recipient you name, and, if you switch them on, a daily digest of what the people you follow have saved and the app notifications you choose. You can turn any of these off, and we never use them for third-party marketing.
15. Changes
We’ll update this policy as the Guide develops and note the date above.