Preppers are, by default, privacy-forward and security-minded. Your experience using the internet isn’t just limited to privacy, however, so this document extends beyond that.
Design philosophy
Never Astray proactively abstains from the use of dark patterns.
- No popups of anything. Ever
- No bogus “sale” timers
- No “x other people have this in their cart”
- No sounds
- No address bar notifications
- No chat popups
- No newsletter subscription popups
- No “free ebook”
- No “allow us to send you notifications”
- No weird cart upsells
- No “open in our app”
- No difficult to find or use unsubscribe process
- No contact harvesting
- No “offers” interstitial
- No “agree to terms” with a lengthy, leagalese set of terms you will never read or would need a lawyer to understand
- No “turn off your adblocker” demands
Good neighbor philosophy
Neighbors are people, not amorphous corporate entities.
My dad used to say that he liked doing business with people locally because if anything ever went really wrong, he knew where he could find the guy to punch in the face. He never punched anyone, but he raised hell in a few places where it was well-deserved.
We’re not some tech startup looking to make bank on your data. Never Astray has no dreams of going public. We sell maps. Period.
Never Astray is independently run out of Austin, TX by a single founder. If you have any issues with your product, or take any issue with the way I run the business, feel free to contact me and get it sorted out. You’ll always be dealing with me or someone who reports directly to me.
Our maps are made entirely in the USA.
Get an adblocker or privacy-friendly browser
Before we go into the details of what we do, know that you can, without pushing a single button on our website, block tracking and ads by running privacy-forward adblockers or browsers. We highly recommend the use of adblockers like uBlock Origin or the Brave browser. Please be aware that not all adblockers are created equal and even popular, well-rated ones like AdBlock Plus allow “acceptable ads” and don’t disable tracking by default.
We believe that internet users have a right to be displayed only what they want to see on their computers and devices.
There are ways to “opt out” of advertising these days, but if you’ve ever tried to opt out of phone call spam, you know how well opting out works. Take it into your own hands and control what your devices display.
Stuff we do
Location information
We will request your location via browser only when creating a custom map where this feature could assist you. It is necessary to store this information with your order. If you do not wish to have any exact location saved anywhere ever, we recommend moving the map’s center point to somewhere that is not your exact location.
Analytics and Retargeting
We use Google Analytics and Facebook to capture website usage information so that we can sell our products to similarly-minded folks or remind website visitors about what they looked at. If you run uBlock Origin or Brave, you will never be included in this mix of information.
We maintain a mailing list. Good business is about keeping in touch with people and we aim to do it in a not-annoying way. We’ll ask before adding you to it and there will always be an easy-to-find unsubscribe button that takes you off the list in a single click.