Terms of Use

Byker (the app and byker.net) is run by [legal name of the person or company that runs Byker], [postal address], United Kingdom ("Byker", "we", "us"). By creating an account or using Byker, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle your data.

You must be 16 or over to create an account. If you're under 18, please make sure a parent or guardian is happy for you to use Byker.

Because the law treats under-18s as children online, riders aged 16 and 17 have extra protections on Byker, whatever their settings:

• Messages: only your friends can message you. Riders who aren't your friends can't send you a message request, or add you to a group chat.
• Sharing your location: you can share it with your friends and with an event you're going to, but not with a club or with nearby riders, and you never appear to anyone as a nearby rider.

• Give accurate details when you sign up, including your birthday, and keep your email address up to date.
• Your account is just for you. Keep your password and the devices you're signed in on secure, and tell us if you think someone else has used your account. You can log out of every device from Account Settings.
• Your @username is chosen once and can't be changed, because it's part of your rider page's link. Don't choose one that impersonates someone else, or that's offensive or misleading.
• If you sign up with email, you'll need to verify your email address before you can use Byker.

Byker is a tool for planning and sharing rides. It is not a navigation system, and it can't see the road in front of you.

• Check every route before you ride it. Routes are worked out from OpenStreetMap, which volunteers make and which can be out of date or wrong. A route may include roads that are closed, private, unmade, flooded, unsuitable for your bike or your experience, or where motorcycles aren't allowed. Distances, times and climb are estimates.
• Rides shared by other riders are their own opinions. Tags like "Beginner-friendly" or "Scenic", descriptions, photos and ratings are written by riders, not checked by Byker. Conditions change with weather and seasons.
• Follow the law and the Highway Code, obey road signs and speed limits, and ride to the conditions. Road signs and the law always come before anything Byker shows you.
• Never use Byker while you're riding. Set up your route and your sat nav before you set off, and stop somewhere safe to make changes. Recording carries on by itself; you don't need to touch the phone.
• When you open a ride in Google Maps, it may choose different roads between your points. GPX exports follow your planned line, but your device may still recalculate it.
• Make sure you, your bike, your licence and your insurance are fit for the ride you're planning.

Events on Byker (meetups, group rides, charity runs, shows, track days, training and so on) are organised by riders, not by Byker. We don't organise, supervise, insure or vet events, organisers or the riders who go.

• If you organise an event, you're responsible for it: giving accurate details, choosing a safe and lawful meeting point (a café or car park, never your home), and any permissions, insurance or arrangements it needs.
• If you join an event, you take part at your own risk and are responsible for your own riding. Group riding needs extra care.
• Joining criteria (like women only, men only or engine sizes) are checked against what riders have put in their own profiles and garages. We can't confirm that those details are true.

Your rides, descriptions, tags, photos, comments, ratings, events and messages ("your content") stay yours.

• You give Byker a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to store, copy, process and show your content, only to run Byker and only to the people you choose: yourself for private rides, the riders or link you share with, the riders in a chat for your messages, or everyone on Byker for published rides and public events. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except as described below.
• When you publish or share a ride, other riders can view it, rate it, comment on it, add it to their Planned rides, open it in Google Maps and export it as GPX. Riders you share a ride with can save their own copy, which stays theirs if you later delete yours or your account.
• Only post content you have the right to post. If a photo shows other people, make sure they're happy to be in it.
• You can make a published ride private again, stop sharing it, or delete it at any time.

Byker is for riders to share good roads and ride together. When you use it, including in messages, don't:

• post anything illegal, threatening, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, or that bullies or demeans anyone;
• post anyone else's personal details, like their home address, or anything that could help someone find or follow them without their agreement;
• encourage dangerous or illegal riding, such as street racing or riding well beyond speed limits, or share routes designed for it;
• post spam, advertising, scams, or misleading or impersonating content;
• post content that infringes someone else's copyright or other rights;
• try to get into accounts or parts of Byker you're not allowed into, interfere with how Byker works, or collect data from it with automated tools;
• copy or resell Byker's maps or data in bulk, or use Byker to build a competing service.

You can report any ride, photo, comment, tag, message or rider that breaks these rules, from inside the app. Our moderators review reports and may hide or remove content, turn off a ride's sharing, or remove tags. Where someone breaks these terms seriously or repeatedly, we may suspend or close their account. We act on reports in line with our duties under the Online Safety Act 2023. If you think we've got a decision wrong, email us and we'll look at it again.

Byker is free to use. Byker Premium is an optional subscription that raises the free limits and adds extras, as listed on our features page and in the app.

• Price: £3.99 a month or £39.99 a year in the UK, including VAT. The app shows the exact price in your currency before you subscribe.
• Free trial: new subscribers can have a 7-day free trial, once per App Store or Google Play account, as the store decides. If you don't cancel before the trial ends, your subscription starts and you're charged.
• Payment and renewal: you subscribe and pay through Apple's App Store or Google Play, under their terms. Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each month or year until you cancel it.
• Cancelling: cancel any time in your App Store or Google Play subscription settings, at least 24 hours before it renews. Premium carries on until the end of the period you've paid for. Deleting your Byker account doesn't cancel your subscription; cancel it in the store too.
• Refunds are handled by Apple or Google under their refund policies. This doesn't affect your legal rights as a consumer.
• When Premium ends, nothing is deleted or hidden. You keep everything you made, and the free limits apply to anything new. For example, you keep all your private rides, but can't add a new one until you're below the free limit.
• Changes: if we change the price, the store will tell you before it applies and give you the chance to cancel. We may change which features are in Premium and the limits on each plan; if a change takes away something significant you've paid for, we'll tell you in advance and you can cancel.

Byker shows no adverts, on either plan.

• Byker's maps, routing and place search are built from OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence. The map is drawn using the OpenMapTiles schema (© OpenMapTiles). UK postcodes contain OS data © Crown copyright and database right.
• Opening a ride or place in Google Maps, or a GPX file in another app or device, takes you outside Byker, and that service's own terms apply.
• Downloaded offline maps are for your personal use within Byker.

We're always improving Byker, so features may change, and we may sometimes need to take the service offline for maintenance or fixes. We'll try to give notice of anything significant. We provide Byker as it is and can't promise it will always be available or free of errors.

You can delete your account at any time in Profile → Account Settings → Delete account. This deletes your data as described in our Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or close your account if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, if the law requires it, or to protect other riders. Unless it's unsafe or unlawful to do so, we'll tell you why.

• Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't be limited by law. Nothing affects your legal rights as a consumer.
• As explained in section 3, routes, times and other riders' content are guides only, and you are responsible for your own riding. We're not responsible for loss or damage caused by relying on them instead of your own judgement, by events organised by other riders, or by other riders' content or behaviour.
• We're not responsible for losses that weren't reasonably foreseeable when you started using Byker, or for business losses: Byker is for personal use.
• We're not responsible for delays or failures caused by things outside our reasonable control.

We may update these terms, for example when we add features or the law changes. We'll update the date at the top, and for significant changes we'll tell you in the app before they apply. If you don't agree with the new terms, you can delete your account.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring proceedings in your local courts, and the mandatory consumer law where you live still applies. If you have a problem, please contact us first and we'll do our best to sort it out.

For help with the app, see Help and FAQ, or open a support ticket in the app (Profile → Help → Support tickets). We answer in the app and by email.

Use our contact form, or write to us at the address in section 1.