Outside.
Outside.
Sidequests store outing titles, ordered activities, saved event details, times, places, notes, organizer identity, invitation links, join requests, and attendance. An optional account-backed transportation preference supplies an editable suggestion for new plans. You can skip or clear it in App settings.
Attendance choices are Going, Maybe, or Can’t. Changing your response does not remove your membership.
Organizers choose Anyone with a link or People I allow. Open links reveal the itinerary, logistics, and named comments. Private plans require an account and organizer approval or a direct invitation from the organizer to read. Organizers can invite their friends directly, granting access with an initial Maybe response; invitees choose their own attendance. Attendance and member lists remain visible only to approved members. Pending request names are visible to the organizer. Joining does not create friendships or change sharing of what you’re down for.
Links may be forwarded. Organizers can replace or disable invitations without removing existing members. Only share personal addresses and other details with people you trust. Sidequests are not listed for public discovery.
Organizers can permanently delete a Sidequest for everyone. The daily cleanup removes dated, shared plans 30 days after their last scheduled activity; drafts, cancelled plans, and undated plans expire 30 days after the organizer last changed the plan. Guest responses do not extend retention. Saved transportation preferences remain until cleared or account deletion. Deleting an organizer's account removes their plans; deleting another member's account removes their membership and stored name. Leaving removes your membership. Organizers control notes and stop details, which may include information typed by them. Comments store author identity, display name, text, and time. They expire with the plan and do not extend its lifetime. Authors and organizers can delete comments. Account deletion removes authored comments. Reports can be emailed to Outside.
Outside is a free hobby project for discovering local events, launching first in Grand Rapids.
You can browse events, use filters, and open directions without an account.
An optional account is required to say “I’m down,” connect with friends, share what you’re down for, and save school calendars. Those features require acceptance of the Terms and acknowledgement of this Privacy Policy.
Outside does not request, receive, or store device geolocation.
Outside uses a city preference cookie to remember your city. School-calendar selections are saved to signed-in accounts.
The inbox stores friends interested in the same events, Sidequest messages, plan changes, access requests, and approvals. Push is optional and requires browser permission.
Planning features may use Clerk identity, events you’re down for, friend links, sharing settings, and notification settings as described below.
Outside uses event and deal information from configured local sources to show tonight's options. The selected city determines which market's event inventory is displayed.
Outside does not accept neighborhood or custom-place origins. Legacy custom-location parameters are removed from page URLs and are not used for directions.
If you choose Boston or Grand Rapids, Outside stores that selected market in a cookie named outside-market and in browser local storage so the root domain can route you back to the same city.
If you select public school calendars while signed in, Outside stores their school IDs with your account. These choices follow your account across devices and city changes, adding those schools' public events to your signed-in feed. They are not proof of enrollment, are not shared with friends, and do not require a school email. Remove selections in App settings under School calendars. Signed-out visitors do not have school preferences, and Outside does not use a school preference cookie. School calendars link to their original event pages; public listings may still have admission or audience restrictions.
Outside does not call the browser geolocation API or calculate travel estimates. When you click Directions, Outside sends the event's coordinates or its venue-and-address text to Apple Maps on Apple devices and Google Maps on other devices. The maps provider handles the trip origin, live location permission, route mode, and its own data practices.
If you choose to create an account or sign in, Clerk processes your sign-in details and uses authentication cookies to maintain your session. Outside uses your Clerk user ID to connect your account records. Public event browsing does not require sign-in.
Before interest, friend, sharing, or account alert features are enabled, Outside stores your Clerk user ID, the accepted Terms version, the acknowledged Privacy version, and the acceptance timestamp. A new acknowledgement is required when either current version changes. After sign-in, Outside asks you to review updated policies and complete required profile information during first-time setup. Continue opens App settings, then returns you to browsing or the event or invitation you opened.
If you use friend or Sidequest features, Outside stores a display name you choose. It is not a public-search profile. Friends, approved members, and organizers reviewing requests can see it. On an open board, anyone with the link can see it beside your comments.
Admin poster and PDF OCR uploads are stored as private review-only source material. Upload review records can include the uploaded text, source URL, attribution notes, file metadata, review status, and admin audit details such as actor, action, reason, and timestamp.
Signed-in visitors to open plans receive future updates automatically and can stop updates. Approved members receive updates too. Mute push stops device alerts while leaving inbox updates on. Requests and approvals still arrive when other updates are stopped.
Outside stores following choices, read state, notification preferences, and device push endpoints and encryption keys. Friend requests, Down matches, and direct Sidequest invitations appear in the same Inbox. Opening a successfully loaded Inbox marks existing updates as read. Opening a device alert marks its update, or its Sidequest updates, as read; viewing a Sidequest also marks its existing updates as read. New arrivals remain unread until seen. One unseen push per Sidequest and a separate unseen friend push suppress repeat device alerts while Inbox updates continue. Browser push providers process delivery requests. Lock-screen alerts omit names, messages, and locations. Sign-out turns off push for that device; already displayed alerts cannot be recalled.
Inbox records are kept for up to 30 days or until their plan or match expires, whichever comes first. Push retries stop after 24 hours. Match deduplication receipts remain until the match expires. Device subscriptions and preferences remain until removed or account deletion. Daily cleanup removes expired records; backups follow infrastructure retention.
Do not post private addresses, phone numbers, or sensitive details on an open board. Links may be forwarded. Notification delivery is not guaranteed.
Your selected market is stored in your browser under the key outside-market. It is used only to remember whether you chose Grand Rapids or Boston.
The browser stores a push-account marker under the key outside.pushUser to detach notifications when accounts change. Outside only enables push after device permission and worker setup. Old alert preferences do not enable delivery.
Older versions stored transport, category, student eligibility, group category, and local group-invite preferences. Current discovery ignores those retired values, but they may remain until you clear site data.
You can clear this saved preference by using your browser's site data controls or by changing and saving the preferences again.
Outside does not sell personal information. Outside does not share notification settings with advertisers, data brokers, analytics providers, social networks, or friends. What you’re down for stays private unless you enable sharing with all your current and future friends. Existing enabled sharing settings now cover all friends.
Outside uses Clerk as the single identity provider for consumer accounts and admin access. Outside stores product-specific profiles, link claims, friendships, sharing of what you’re down for, match, and audit records separately from Clerk identity.
Admin-uploaded source material and listing candidates are kept for review and are not published until an admin approval workflow converts them into source-attributed event records.
A reusable friend-link record stores both a token hash and the private share token so its owner can copy the same link again. Anyone who receives or is forwarded that link can submit a separate request. The link remains active until its owner replaces or disables it; rejecting a claimant does not automatically replace the link.
Claiming a valid friend link creates a pending request and shows the claimant's Outside display name to the link owner. It does not create a friendship. A friendship is created only if the original link owner explicitly approves that claim. A claimant can withdraw a pending request, and either friend can later remove the friendship.
Outside stores an account-level on/off sharing setting. When enabled, all current and future accepted friends can see shared interest in the same events. Turning sharing off or removing a friendship stops future sharing without deleting the events you’re privately down for. Older selected-friend lists no longer restrict sharing.
Outside uses accepted friends' Outside display names—not Clerk names, usernames, or email addresses—to label friend lists and shared interest in the same events.
When both friends say they’re down for the same event and one friend has enabled sharing with friends, Outside stores a directional match record containing the recipient, sharing friend, event, status, match and update times, and expiration. Only the authorized recipient sees that friend's display name for the match.
The outside-market cookie can remain for up to one year unless you clear site data or choose another supported market. School selections remain in your account until you remove them or your account data is deleted. Signing out stops applying them to the feed on that device.
The local-storage market preference, push-account marker, and retired preference values remain in your browser until cleared. Outside does not store a custom trip origin or device location.
Consumer and admin account session retention is handled by Clerk when you choose to sign in.
Legal acceptance records remain in Outside product storage until the account records are deleted or the record is replaced by acceptance of newer Terms or Privacy versions.
Account records are kept to provide the features you use until updated, removed, or deleted with your account. Interest in expired events and disabled links stop being usable but may remain in storage until cleanup or account deletion.
Admin upload review source material, poster listing candidates, and audit records are stored in Outside server-side storage. In production, they use PostgreSQL when a database is configured.
Outside is maintained by Paul Kumswa as a personal, noncommercial hobby project. Event corrections, privacy and deletion requests, copyright or takedown requests, security reports, and accessibility feedback can be sent topaul.kumswa@gmail.com.
Outside collects public event facts from reviewed venue, institution, tourism, and organizer calendars. It stores normalized current facts, source attribution, direct event URLs, review decisions, and sync history.
Source, ticketing, maps, transit, rideshare, micromobility, and other provider links take you to services governed by their own privacy practices. Outside does not control data those services collect after you leave.
Clerk processes identity and session data for optional accounts. Northflank hosts the application and PostgreSQL product database. Cloudflare provides domain services and may process requests when its proxy is enabled. Infrastructure providers may process IP addresses, browser information, request URLs, timestamps, and errors to deliver and secure the service, including when you browse without an account. Hosting location headers may be used to choose an approximate city; they are not saved in account records.
Outside does not use advertising pixels or behavioral analytics. Infrastructure logs and backups follow the providers' configured retention settings; account deletion may not immediately remove backup copies.
Outside is designed for college students, recent graduates, and young professionals, and is not directed to children under 13. Do not use Outside if you are under 13. Explicitly child-only events are excluded from discovery when source evidence identifies that restriction.
Contact Outside to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your account and records, including display names, friend links and claims, friendships, events you’re down for, sharing choices, and match records, or to appeal a request decision. Use the email associated with the account when possible and identify the relevant records. Outside may request limited verification before acting on account data.
Account deletion is handled manually and includes Outside product records and the Clerk identity. We aim to acknowledge requests within seven days and complete verified requests within 30 days, subject to any applicable legal deadline. We will tell you if more time or limited retention is necessary.
Support email is processed by Gmail. Send only the details needed to handle your request. We keep request correspondence as needed to resolve it and document the outcome.
Browser-only preferences can be removed through browser site-data controls. Event-source corrections and attribution requests should include the Outside URL and authoritative source URL.
Outside uses server-side access checks, scoped scheduler tokens, reviewed source activation, and private server-side storage boundaries. No online service can guarantee absolute security; report suspected issues through the contact channel without sending secrets or unnecessary personal data.
We update this page and its effective date when our practices change. Account users are asked to acknowledge the current version before using personal features. Event browsing remains available without acknowledgement.