Beyond the Yard

Privacy policy

Version 2026-10-05, in force from 5 October 2026

Beyond the Yard is a place for horse riders to find people nearby. This explains what we hold about you, why, who else gets to see it, and how to make us get rid of it. We have tried to write it so that you could check any line of it against what the app actually does.

Who we are

Beyond the Yard is an independent project run from the UK. For UK and EU data protection law we are the data controller for everything described here. Write to hello@beyondtheyard.app about anything on this page.

What we collect

Because you give it to us

Your email address
Required. It is also your username. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we get it from them instead.
Your password
Only if you set one. We store a hash, never the password. Accounts opened with Google or Apple have no password at all.
Your display name, and a confirmation that you are 18 or over
Required to register. The age declaration is a tick box - we do not ask your date of birth and we do not verify your age.
Your profile
Optional: a short bio, a photograph, your town, your disciplines, experience, preferred pace, when you tend to ride, whether you have transport, and your relationship to horses.
Your horses
Optional: name, age, height, breed or type, disciplines, description and notes on what they get on with.
What you write
Forum posts, comments, marketplace listings, and messages to other riders and to ride groups.
Photographs
Only the ones you choose to add, from your camera or your photo library.
Your plans
Rides and events you organise or say you are going to. This is a record that you intend to be somewhere at a particular time, so treat it as you would telling anyone.
Who you connect with
Friendships, groups you belong to, and people you have blocked. Blocks are never shown to the person blocked.

Because of how the app works

Your location, only if you ask us to use it
The app never needs it. If you tap to use your location when choosing your town, your device's approximate position is sent to us once so we can offer the five nearest towns. We do not store it, and it is deliberately left out of our request logs. Only the town you then pick is kept.
Where you ride, if you record it
You can record a ride. If you do, the app asks for your precise location and, from the moment you start until you finish, notes where you are about once a second, including while your phone is locked in your pocket. It does not use your location for this at any other time, and never asks to use it "all the time". The record of where you went is kept on your phone until it can be sent to us, and then stored with your account so you can look back at it. Only you can see a recorded ride. It is not shown to friends, to other riders or on your profile, and it is not shared while you ride. You can delete a ride whenever you like and it is removed straight away; deleting your account removes them all. Your data export includes every ride, in a form other apps can open.
A ride you bring in from another app
If you recorded rides with another app, you can bring one in from a GPX file it exported. Your phone reads the file; the file itself is not sent to us. What is sent is what a ride recorded here sends, and less: where the ride went and when, and nothing about how you or your horse moved, so it has no walk, trot and canter. We also keep the name of the app the file says wrote it. From then on it is one of your recorded rides: only you can see it, it counts in your statistics, you can share it as a route by the same steps, and it is deleted and exported with the rest. It is marked as brought in, which only you see. A file with no times in it is a line somebody drew and not a ride, and is not taken.
Your rides added up
The app can add your recorded rides up for you: how far, how long, and how much time at walk, trot and canter, by day, week, month or year, for each of your horses. This is worked out from the rides you have already recorded and nothing new is collected for it. Only you can see it, exactly as with the rides themselves. It is not compared with anyone else's, and it goes when the rides do.
A route, if you share one
You can share a ride you recorded as a route for other riders to find. This is the one way anything your phone recorded is shown to anyone else, and it only happens if you choose it. A route is a line on a map, your name, and what you write about it. It does not carry the date, the times, your speed or your horse, and the recording it came from stays private. The first and last 500 metres are left out unless you tell us that end is a public place, and you are shown exactly what others will see before anything is shared. Leaving out the ends does not hide everything: a route that starts and finishes near the same place shows roughly where that is, so look at it as a stranger would. Signed-in riders can see a route; riders you have blocked, and riders who have blocked you, cannot. You can change it, leave out more, withdraw it or delete it whenever you like, and deleting your account removes it. Your data export includes each route in a form other apps can open.
What you write on other riders' routes
If you have ridden a route you can review it and say what state it was in. We check that against the rides you recorded with the app, not ones you brought in from a file, and keep nothing of the ride with what you write. A review or a report is shown with your name, and a report says which day you rode. Reports stop being shown after 60 days. You can remove either, and deleting your account removes them.
Routes you save or follow
The list of routes you have saved is yours alone; nobody can see it, the rider who shared a route included. Following a route records an ordinary private ride. We are not told you followed it, and nor is anyone else.
A meeting point, if you pin one
Organising a ride or an event, you can move a map to mark exactly where you are meeting: a gate, a corner of a field, a lay-by. That is a precise place rather than a town, so we store it, and only riders you have accepted can see it. People browsing, and people who have merely asked to join, see the town and nothing more. The exception is an event where you have deliberately chosen to publish the venue, which is public because you said so. It never appears on a listing or in search. Pinning one is optional and you can move or remove it while the ride stands. We delete it 30 days afterwards.
Sign-in tokens
Held in your phone's secure storage. We keep a hash of the refresh token so it can be revoked.
Your IP address
Used in memory to limit how often something can be attempted, so the app is harder to abuse. It is never written to our database and never written to our logs.
What you put up for sale
The words of a marketplace listing - its title, description, price and category, but not your name - are sent to a service that checks whether it looks like a scam, before other riders see it. It is not kept: we use the service on terms where nothing we send is stored or used to train anything. Nothing else you post is sent anywhere for checking, and your messages never are.
Reports about you or by you
If someone reports content, we keep a copy of the reported content as evidence - see below, because this includes private messages.

Notifications on your phone

If you let us send notifications, your phone is given a code by Google that lets a message reach that handset, and we keep it against your account. It identifies the phone, not you, and it is no use to anyone for anything else. We delete it when you sign out, and Google tells us when it has stopped working so we can drop it.

What travels with a notification is the short phrase you see - "New ride request", "Event cancelled" - and a reference so that tapping it opens the right screen. Your messages never go through it. You can turn any category off in the app, and you will still see everything when you open it.

Crash reports

Release versions use Google Firebase Crashlytics to help us find and fix faults. It receives crash traces, app version, phone and operating-system information, and installation identifiers. Our Dart reports send the error type and stack, without the original error message. We do not attach your account ID, email, messages or ride tracks. Native crash reports are also collected by the service.

Google retains these reports and identifiers for 90 days before beginning their removal. Processing may take place outside the UK. These installation identifiers are separate from your account, so deleting your account does not delete the crash reports. See Firebase's privacy information.

What we deliberately do not collect

No analytics. No advertising identifier. No tracking across other apps or websites. No contacts, no calendar, no microphone. We have never asked for your phone number and no part of the app collects one.

Who else sees it

We do not sell anything about you, and we do not share anything for advertising. These are the only companies your data reaches, and only because the app cannot work without them.

Google - diagnosing crashes
Crash traces, app and device information, and installation identifiers through Firebase Crashlytics, to help us fix faults.
Google - delivering notifications
The code that identifies your phone, and the short phrase a notification shows. Not your name, not your email, and not anything you have written.
OpenStreetMap - the map squares
When you open a meeting point, move the map to pin one, look at a ride you recorded, or look at a route, your phone asks them for the map squares around it. They see the request and the address it came from, which tells them roughly the area you are looking at. We send them nothing about you.
Resend - sending email
Your email address and the message itself, for the only two emails we send: confirming your address and resetting your password.
Cloudflare - storing and delivering photographs
The photographs themselves, tagged with your account's internal identifier. Because your phone fetches images straight from Cloudflare, they also see the IP address of whoever is looking at a photograph.
Google and Apple - only if you sign in with them
They tell us your account identifier and your email address, and Apple also passes your name the first time. They know you signed in.
TypeSafe - checking listings for scams
The words of a listing when you publish it: its title, description, price, category and condition. Not your name, not your address, nothing that identifies you. They do not keep it and never use it to train anything - we use them on terms that say so. Nothing else you post goes to them, and your messages never do.
Our hosting and backups
The app runs on servers we rent in Europe, and the database is backed up nightly to European object storage.

We may also have to hand something over if the law requires it, or to protect someone from harm.

Who can see what, inside the app

Deleting your account

You can delete your account from the app, or by emailing us - see how to delete your account. Either way it works the same:

Two things deliberately survive, and we would rather say so here than surprise you:

Our nightly backups are kept for 30 days. Deleting your account does not reach into a backup that has already been taken, so a copy may persist there for up to 30 more days before it ages out.

How long we keep things

Meeting points for rides and events
Deleted 30 days after the ride or event.
Notifications
Deleted after 90 days.
The copy of reported content
Erased 90 days after the report is settled, whether it was upheld or not. The decision and the reason for it are kept; the copy of what was reported is not.
The record of what moderators did
Kept longer than the evidence it refers to, on purpose. It says who looked at what and when, it holds none of the reported content, and it is how we could show that somebody's access was legitimate.
Unfinished photo uploads
Removed after 2 hours.
Backups
30 days.
Everything else
Kept while your account exists, and dealt with as above when you delete it. We are being plain rather than quoting a period we do not actually enforce.

Your rights

Under UK and EU data protection law you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, or restrict or object to what we do with it. Deletion is built into the app. For anything else, email hello@beyondtheyard.app and we will answer within a month.

If you think we have got this wrong, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first.

Why we are allowed to hold it

Children

Beyond the Yard is for adults. You must be 18 or over. We ask you to confirm it and we cannot verify it. If you believe someone under 18 has an account, tell us and we will close it.

Changes

If we change this, we will update the date at the top and say so in the app. If a change matters, we will tell you before it takes effect.