Privacy policy

We do not keep where you walked

Your GPS readings are used to work out which map cells you unlocked, and then they are thrown away. They are never written to our database. Nobody — including us — can pull up the route you took, because it does not exist anywhere after the moment it was counted.

What we do keep

• ·The hexagonal cells you have unlocked, roughly 65 metres across, with when you first unlocked each one and when you last passed through.
• ·The places you have discovered, your level, XP, achievements and quests.
• ·Your account: email address, display name, and your picture if you upload one.
• ·The journal notes you write and the photographs you take yourself.

This is your progress. Without it the fog would close over the map every time you opened the app.

Photographs

Photographs you contribute to a place are public. A place can have several, a person reviews each one before it appears on the map, and none of them carries the name of whoever took it. We may take a public photograph down later, including to make room for a newer one. The photographs you keep for yourself — in your journal and on your own discoveries — are private: they live in storage no domain serves and reach you through short-lived signed links. Every photograph is re-encoded before it leaves your phone, so the EXIF, which carries the exact spot and second it was taken, never goes with it.

When you walk with someone

Joining a co-walk shares the cells you unlock during it with the others in that walk, and nothing else — no live location, no route, and nothing outside that walk. You can remove your part at any time.

Reports and blocks

When you report something, we keep who reported what or whom, the reason, and how it was resolved, and only our moderators can see it. When you block someone, we keep who blocked whom until you remove the block. Both are deleted along with your account.

What we never do

We do not sell your data, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not hand it to anyone else. Our staff can act on an account — suspend it, unlock it, answer a support request — but they cannot look at where anybody has been, and that line is held by automated tests rather than by memory.

It stays yours

You can delete your account from Settings at any time. Deleting removes everything above, immediately and permanently, and it cannot be undone. Places and photos you submitted that were approved are not taken off the map because of it, but they are no longer connected to you in any way. You can also remove a single walk, a single photograph, or your part of a shared walk.

Map data

Base map and place data come from OpenStreetMap, licensed under ODbL 1.0, served from our own tile service.