Location & Safety Data Notice

This notice sits alongside the main privacy notice and adds to it. Where the two differ on location, this page is the accurate one. Under the Protection of Personal Information Act, location data about an identifiable person is personal information, and we treat it that way.

Who is responsible

Glen Lyon is the responsible party for location and safety data collected through the guest app. Questions, access requests and deletion requests go to info@glenlyonenduro.co.za.

When we record your location

Only while you are on an activity you have booked, and only between the moment you start recording in the app and the moment you finish it. The app does not track you before or after, and the public website does not record location at all.

Self-guided activities require recording — it is how the access works and how we find you if something goes wrong — so you are asked to confirm it before you book. Guided activities do not require it.

What is recorded

While an activity is recording, your phone sends a position roughly once a second. Each one carries:

• latitude and longitude, and the time of the reading;
• altitude, the accuracy of the reading, and your speed;
• your phone's battery level.

We also store which device and app version sent it, so we can tell a genuine problem from a phone that needs updating. If you report damage or a hazard from the app, that report is stored with the position it was made at and any photographs you attach.

Photographs you upload are re-encoded, which removes the location data that cameras embed in image files. We keep that embedded location only for places whose position is already public — never for a protected site.

Why we record it

• To find you. The SOS button, and an automatic alarm if your phone stops reporting for longer than the check-in period, both depend on knowing where you last were.
• To watch over an activity as it happens. Staff on duty can see the position of everyone currently out, so somebody answering a radio call knows where to look.
• To time a run. On timed tracks, your positions are what produce your time and your place on a leaderboard.
• To tell whether you are on the route, which is both a safety signal and how we judge whether a recorded time counts.
• To protect heritage sites. Rock art coordinates are withheld until your device proves it is already standing there, which stops the locations being collected from the app in advance.

What we send out in an emergency

This is the part worth reading twice. When you press SOS, or when your phone goes silent for longer than the check-in period, we send a message to the on-duty phone so somebody can come for you. That message contains:

• your name, and your position with a map link, or your last known position if the alarm had no fix;
• which route you were on, how long ago the alarm was raised, and your phone's battery level;
• your phone number;
• if you have given them, your emergency contact's name and number, and your blood type.

Blood type is health information, which the law protects more strictly than the rest. We send it only when an alarm has been raised, and only because it can matter to whoever treats you. If you would rather it were not sent, leave it out of your guest profile — nothing else about your booking depends on it.

These messages are delivered by WhatsApp and, if WhatsApp cannot reach anyone, by an SMS provider. Both are outside Glen Lyon, and both process data outside South Africa. We use them because a message that arrives is the whole point of the alarm, but it does mean an emergency message leaves our systems and our country. Nothing else described on this page is sent to either of them.

Who can see your location

• Glen Lyon staff with operations access can see the live position of anyone currently out, and the recorded trace afterwards. This is deliberately not restricted to managers: when somebody is on the mountain, whoever is at a screen needs to be able to help.
• Other guests see your name, class and time on a leaderboard, if you ride a timed track. A leaderboard never shows where you were.
• Emergency recipients, as described above, and only when an alarm has been raised.

We do not sell location data, and we do not use it for advertising or profiling.

Crossing into Lesotho

Photo Safari routes cross the border. If you are recording on one of those, positions will be recorded while you are in Lesotho, and your phone will roam. We record which country an alarm was raised in, because it changes who has to respond to it.

How long we keep it

We keep recorded positions for as long as the safety, timing and record-keeping purpose that justified collecting them still applies — a disputed time, an incident review, or an insurance or legal obligation arising from the day.

If you ask us to delete your account, the rides, positions, times and leaderboard entries attached to it are deleted with it. Records we are legally required to retain, such as accounting records for a booking, survive that deletion; they do not contain your location.

Your choices

• Book a guided activity instead. Guided activities do not require GPS recording.
• Leave your blood type and emergency contact blank. They are optional, and the only thing they change is what an emergency message can tell a responder.
• Turn off location permission for the app. Recording, the leaderboard and the SOS position will not work, and on a self-guided activity we will not be able to find you. We would rather you knew that than discovered it.

Your rights

You may ask what location data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it where the law allows, or object to how we use it. Write to info@glenlyonenduro.co.za. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to South Africa's Information Regulator.

Changes to this notice

When you confirm the GPS recording notice at booking, we store which version of the wording you were shown and when you accepted it, so it is always possible to establish what you were told. If what we record or who we send it to changes, this page changes and a new version is recorded.