Privacy

Last updated 14 September 2026

yatotes is a small, invite-only site for runners, run by one person. This page says what it collects, who can see it, how long it is kept, and how to get rid of it. It describes what the software actually does today rather than everything it might one day be allowed to do.

Who runs this

yatotes is operated by Cody Elder. For anything on this page — a question, a correction, or a request to delete your data — write to privacy@yatotes.com.

Who can use it

Accounts are invite-only, restricted to adults of 18 or over, and not available in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom. The EEA restriction is not a formality: this site does not yet have the processes GDPR requires, so rather than pretend otherwise it turns those visitors away at sign-up. If you reach yatotes from the EEA you are sent to a page explaining that and no account is created.

What is collected when you have an account

• Your identity. You sign in with Google, and yatotes stores the email address that returns, plus whatever you choose to add: a display name, username, photo, bio, home city, time zone, date of birth and gender. The date of birth exists to enforce the 18+ rule and to age-grade results; the rest is yours to leave blank.
• What you record. Races you save or mark as registered, planned and completed workouts, times and results you claim as yours, and anything you write in a post, comment or direct message.
• Who you connect with. Friends, crews, and the messages between you.
• How you use the site. Which pages and features you interact with, recorded against your account to improve what the site suggests. You can switch this off entirely under Profile → Privacy; when you do, the browser stops sending these events, the server drops any that arrive anyway, and you are excluded from the analysis built on them.

Live race tracking, and the watch

This is the part that collects the most sensitive thing on the site, so it is spelled out in full. It only happens if you opt in to a specific race, and it is off until you do.

• Your position during a race. If you connect a Garmin watch and start the activity, the watch records your latitude and longitude about every five minutes and sends them, through your phone, to yatotes. Positions are stored with the time they were taken. They are not continuous: it is a point every few minutes, not a trace of your every step.
• Which watch. An identifier the watch generates for this app. It is specific to this app on that watch and is not a serial number or anything Garmin can be asked to link back to you.
• Who can see it. Whoever holds the link you share. A tracking link is a long random string, unguessable in practice, but anyone you send it to can forward it. Treat it as public. Some trackers are deliberately open to anyone with the race's address.
• When it stops. When you stop and save the activity, or withdraw from the tracker. Withdrawing deletes the positions already collected.

Cheers, photos and visits on a tracker page

• Cheers. Anyone with the link can post a short message and a name. These are public on the page, and they are delivered to the runner's watch, where they appear on the wrist and buzz. Do not put anything private in one.
• Photos. Anyone with the link can post a photo to a tracker. They are public on the page.
• Counting spectators. A tracker page counts how many people are looking, including people with no account. Rather than store who you are, the site derives a one-way fingerprint from your network address, browser and the race, mixed with a secret it keeps. It cannot be reversed into your address, and the same person on the same race is counted once. Alongside it the site keeps the approximate city, region and country your network address suggests, which is how the visitor panel can say people are watching from somewhere. The runner sees a number; nobody is shown your address.

What is not collected

• No advertising, no ad networks, no selling anything to anybody.
• No third-party analytics or tracking scripts following you around the web.
• No payment details — the site takes no money, so there is nothing to store.
• No continuous background location. The watch only records inside an activity you start.

Who it is shared with

Other people on yatotes see what you choose to make visible, and whoever holds a tracking or share link sees what that link is for. Beyond that, yatotes uses a small number of services to run at all: a host for the site, a database and file store for its data, Google for sign-in, and a push-notification service if you enable notifications. They process this data to provide those services and for nothing else. Nothing is sold, and nothing is handed to anyone else except where the law requires it.

How long it is kept

Your account and what you have recorded are kept until you ask for them to be deleted. Race positions are kept with the tracker they belong to; withdrawing from a tracker deletes yours. Cheers and photos belong to the tracker and can be removed by the people running it. Backups are kept off-site on a rolling schedule and age out, so deleted data can persist in a backup for a short time after it is gone from the site.

Getting your data, or getting rid of it

Email privacy@yatotes.com and ask. You can have a copy of what is held about you, have mistakes corrected, or have the account and its contents deleted. There is no automated button for account deletion yet, so this is done by hand — which also means you can ask for part of it rather than all of it. Some things you can already do yourself: withdraw from a tracker to delete your positions, turn off usage analytics, and change what your profile shows.

Security, honestly stated

Traffic is encrypted, secrets are held outside the code, tracking links are long random strings, and the watch authenticates with a credential only it and the server know. This is a site run by one person, not a company with a security team, and it should be judged that way. Do not put anything on it you would be harmed by losing.

Children

yatotes is for adults. Accounts require you to be 18 or over, and anyone who declares otherwise at sign-up is turned away. If you believe a child has an account, write to the address above and it will be removed.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes with it and anyone with an account is told. Small corrections and clarifications happen without ceremony.

See also the terms of use.