Privacy Policy

1. Information we handle

• Account and profile: your email address, sign-in verification records, account identifier, username, display name, home city if you provide one, and profile and privacy settings.
• Social activity: friend requests, friendships, visibility choices, map grouping preferences, radius settings, and nearby-alert activity.
• Location: precise latitude and longitude; capture and upload times; accuracy, permission, source, and motion information; and location labels and geographic context returned by the device’s geocoder. Geocoder information may include an address or other detailed label, while friend-facing location information uses public place anchors and includes resolved neighborhood details for accepted friends by default when location sharing and visibility permit, unless you choose city-only sharing for that friend.
• Optional phone and contacts: the phone number you choose to save and phone numbers you choose to submit from your device’s contacts for matching, as explained below.
• Device and operational information: push notification tokens, authentication and upload credentials, app and device information associated with requests, IP addresses, request times, errors, and diagnostic records used to operate and troubleshoot the service.
• Communications: messages and information you send when contacting us for support or providing beta feedback.

When enabled for specifically selected test accounts, restricted location diagnostics may collect additional precise samples, motion and capture metadata, and manually retrieved native SDK logs. These diagnostic records are separate from ordinary friend-facing data.

When the app encounters an error, it automatically sends a crash report containing the error’s name, message, and technical trace, the app version, and the device platform and operating-system version. Crash reports do not include your account identifier. Before storing a report, the server removes coordinate-like numbers, email addresses, and token-like strings from its text.

2. How we use information

We use this information to sign you in, maintain your account, connect friends, apply your sharing choices, display approximate friend locations, calculate distance for radius alerts, deliver notifications, and respond to support and privacy requests. We also use operational and diagnostic information to investigate failures, prevent abuse, secure accounts, and test reliability during the beta.

Your home-city and display settings support how the app presents information. Nearby alerts use distance between stored device locations; being in the same named city does not by itself trigger an alert.

3. Who receives information

• Other users: profile information needed for friend discovery and requests; accepted friends can receive city labels, public city-level map anchors, and freshness information. By default, when location sharing and visibility permit and a neighborhood resolves, accepted friends also receive its name and public anchor coordinates; city-only sharing suppresses those neighborhood fields. Visibility and location-sharing controls still apply. Nearby notifications convey proximity without including exact coordinates. A recipient may remember, copy, or share what they see.
• Infrastructure and delivery providers: Amazon Web Services hosts backend infrastructure and the database; Resend processes email addresses and verification messages for sign-in; Twilio processes the phone number you enter to send and check text-message verification codes; Expo and platform push services process device tokens and notification delivery information; Cloudflare serves and protects this website and processes connection and request information.
• Device location and mapping services: the app uses operating-system location and geocoding services and Apple maps on iOS. These services may process location and map requests under their own privacy terms. The iOS background location SDK is supplied by Transistor Software and processes location on the device for capture and upload to our backend.
• The operator and authorized service support: information may be accessed when necessary to operate, secure, or troubleshoot Whereabout or answer your request.
• Legal or safety circumstances: we may disclose information when required by applicable law or a valid legal process, or when reasonably necessary to address fraud, security threats, or threats to people’s safety.

Providers may process information in the United States or other countries where they operate. Their own handling of information is also governed by their terms and privacy policies.

4. Location and background updates

You control device location permission and the app’s location-sharing setting. When permitted and sharing is enabled, iOS can capture and upload location while the app is in the background using its native background location SDK. The current Android app does not provide background location capture. Foreground updates may occur while you use the app.

The backend keeps a current location record for your account and uses precise coordinates internally for distance calculations. The current app places the primary map pin at a public city anchor. By default, accepted friends also receive a resolved neighborhood name and its public anchor coordinates through the service when location sharing and visibility permit. Choosing city-only for a friend omits those neighborhood details. Neither public anchor is your GPS point. Last-known approximate information may remain visible when updates become stale, with freshness information.

Turning off location sharing clears your ordinary current server location record and stops friend-facing location display. Restricted diagnostic records, operational records, and backups follow separate retention processes. Device permission changes also affect future collection. Signing out, closing the app, or denying notifications should not be treated as a substitute for reviewing your sharing and location-permission settings.

5. Optional contact discovery

Phone discovery is optional and separate from email sign-in. If you save a number, the server receives and normalizes it, then stores a keyed cryptographic match value (HMAC) and its last four digits for the account’s discovery record. That value is still linked to your account; it is not anonymous information.

If you permit contact access and run contact discovery, phone numbers from your contacts are sent to our server for matching. The server normalizes them and computes match values during the request. The matching route does not save a copy of your uploaded address book. Matches return an account identifier, a permitted display name if available, and an optional opaque reference used to connect the result to your local contact.

A phone number must be verified by text message before contacts can find you by it. To verify, you enter a code we send by SMS. A number that has not been verified is not discoverable. The number you enter is sent to Twilio, our verification provider, only to send and check that code; we do not store the number itself or the code, only the match value and last four digits described above. A contact match does not establish identity or confirm that the account belongs to the person in your address book. Confirm whom you are adding before accepting a friendship or sharing location. You can disable discoverability by phone in the app and revoke contact permission in device settings.

6. Your choices and requests

Use the app’s available settings to edit profile information, change sharing and per-friend visibility, manage friendships and radius preferences, and disable phone discoverability. Use your device settings to manage location, contact, and notification permissions. Some features depend on these permissions.

You can delete your account in the app by choosing Delete account in Settings. After you confirm, your account and the information linked to it, including your profile, friendships, location record, and settings, are deleted from our active database. Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. It does not recall notifications already sent, and some records are kept for a limited time as described in Retention and security.

You can also ask to access, correct, or delete personal information or your account by emailing hello@whereaboutapp.com. We may need to verify that the request relates to your account before acting. Do not include sign-in codes or precise location in your message. Uninstalling the app does not by itself delete your server account.

Depending on where you live and which laws apply, you may have additional rights concerning your information. You can contact us about those rights at the same address. This policy does not limit rights provided by applicable law.

7. Retention and security

We retain account and service information to support your account and the features you use, and for security, troubleshooting, legal requirements, and resolving disputes. Retention differs by record type. The ordinary current location record is replaced by accepted updates and cleared when sharing is turned off; this does not immediately erase separate logs, diagnostic records, or backup copies.

The service includes cleanup routines for closed alert sessions, expired authentication records, completed location-upload receipts, and temporary restricted diagnostics. Diagnostic location records are subject to a maximum seven-day retention policy. Phone verification attempt records hold the keyed match value described above, not the phone number, and are deleted after seven days. If you delete your account, these records are detached from your account and retained for that same period to prevent abuse of text-message limits. Crash reports are deleted after 30 days. Provider logs and backups have separate retention and deletion processes. Contact us for questions about a particular record or a deletion request.

We use access controls and other technical measures to protect information, including keeping restricted diagnostics out of ordinary friend responses and notifications. No storage or transmission system can guarantee complete security. Please report suspected account misuse or a security issue to our contact address.

8. Website and browser signals

The static website pages do not contain advertising or analytics scripts in their page source. Cloudflare, our hosting and security provider, receives web request information and may use cookies or similar mechanisms for its hosting and security features. Provider behavior also depends on the website’s hosting configuration.

These static pages do not implement a separate response to browser “Do Not Track” signals. Browser signals do not change device location permission or your in-app sharing choices. Contact us with questions about browser privacy preferences or processing by the website’s providers.

9. Adults-only beta

The beta is intended only for adults aged 18 or older. Do not register or submit information if you are under 18. If you believe a person under 18 has provided information to Whereabout, contact us so we can investigate and address the account and associated information.

10. Changes and contact

We may update this policy as the beta and its data practices change. We will post the revised policy here with an updated date and provide additional notice of material changes when required by applicable law. Where consent is required for a new use of information, we will seek it.

Privacy and support: hello@whereaboutapp.com
Operator location: California, United States.