Yes, it’s safe to use Polarsteps.

We care deeply about user privacy, and privacy is a key part of our app's design. All user trips and profiles are set to "followers only" by default, never public. We communicate to our users when they switch their privacy settings to 'Anyone' that this means publicly accessible, even by people not using Polarsteps.

If you have all your trips set to “Only me”, no one except you can see that location. If that trip is set to “Followers”, only your followers can see that location. If you’ve set it to “Everyone”, anyone can see that location.

If you wanna check your privacy settings, these two are most important:

Account privacy settings

Open the Polarsteps app > go to Settings > Who can follow me (we recommend setting this to “Only people I accept”).

Trip privacy settings

Open the Polarsteps app > open the 'Me' tab. On every trip in your profile, you see an icon in the bottom right corner which indicates the privacy level for that trip. Here’s what the icons mean:

• 🌍 Globe = Everyone can view this trip
• 👥 People = Followers can view this trip (and people who have your secret trip link if you’ve chosen to share this). This is the default.
• 🔒 Lock = Only you can view this trip. If you have added Travel Buddies to your trip, they can see it too. Trip links you may have shared previously do not give access.

To change the privacy level for a trip: Open the trip > Open the trip menu in the top right corner > Tap “Trip settings” > Tap “Who can see this trip?” > Select your preferred option > Tap “Change privacy level” > Save your trip settings.

Here’s a short instruction video on how to adjust the privacy setting of a trip

You can read more about your account and trip settings here.