Your privacy. In plain language.Your privacy. In plain language.

A map you can browse anonymously.

Aloka is operated by the Aloka team. This policy covers our website, map, accounts, contributions, and contact forms. You can explore the public map without creating an account or granting location permission.

We do not sell personal information, run advertising trackers, or record replay videos of your map session. Our Manifesto explains the commitments behind these choices.

What a contribution leaves behind.

An account contains your email, sign-in information, pseudonymous handle, preferences, contribution counts, and trust information. Email is used for sign-in and account-related communication. If you register a passkey, the authentication service stores its public credential; your fingerprint, face scan, or device PIN stays with your authenticator.

A Lantern records the public place or point you deliberately select, observation time, structured conditions, chosen Lenses, an optional note, a coarse geographic cell, and the proximity-verification result. It is linked to your account internally so we can apply contribution limits, assess corroboration, moderate content, and honour export or deletion requests.

Eligible observations contribute to public aggregate readings. Public Lantern views use broad time windows and do not expose your email or a per-person trail of check-ins. Optional notes require moderation. A selected place can still reveal something about a visit; leave private addresses and identifying details out of contributions.

Photo attachments are resized on your device and stripped of embedded metadata. If a send is interrupted, that copy can wait with your Lantern in this account’s device queue. Before an image enters server storage, the private processor removes metadata again and obscures detected faces, plates and text. Detection can miss details; every photo and its description also require human review before publication. Do not submit images that identify someone or reveal a private location.

Content reports retain the referenced content, your explanation, and your account association for review. Moderation records document decisions and their reasons. They are not public profile activity.

One request, with a stated purpose.

The map asks before using your device location. Locating yourself or choosing a route origin uses a position to perform that action. A Lantern proximity check compares a position with the place you selected; the raw device coordinates are discarded after verification and are excluded from the stored contribution and offline queue.

We do not request background location or keep a history of device positions. A saved route, a chosen contribution point, and a map link are deliberate location records. Search and routing requests also reveal the places involved to the services that answer them.

You can decline or revoke location permission in your browser and continue using search and manual map controls. Be mindful when sharing a map URL: its viewport, selected place, route endpoints, time, and Lenses may be visible to anyone who receives it.

Useful memory, under your control.

Essential sign-in cookies keep your session working. Browser storage remembers preferences, recent searches, the last map view, and anonymous saved places, routes, and areas. Signed-in saves also sync to your private account collection.

Unfinished Lanterns may be kept in the current browser session. An interrupted submission can be held in an account-specific offline queue on this device. The queue omits device coordinates and only replays for the account that created it. Observations older than 72 hours require a new check of the conditions.

Cached map and place data can support a later visit, but may be stale. Clearing Aloka’s site data in your browser removes local records and can also remove unsent contributions. Account deletion cannot reach copies on another device, so clear those separately.

An email for the purpose you chose.

The city waitlist stores your email, requested city, signup source, and signup time so we can record demand and contact you about availability. Repeating the same signup does not create a second entry. Contact us to withdraw or correct it.

A business request stores your email, organization or project, use case, request identifier, and submission time. We use these details to reply about the data sheet and your request. It does not subscribe you to a marketing list.

Waitlist abuse prevention stores a keyed hash of the request IP address, not the raw address in the signup record. Temporary rate counters help prevent spam. Please do not put passwords, sign-in codes, private travel histories, or information about other people in either form.

The services needed to draw the map.

• Vercel serves the website and application requests.
• Supabase provides authentication, the database, server-side processing, and private photo storage.
• OpenFreeMap serves basemap tiles and map assets. Its servers receive ordinary connection information and the tile areas your browser requests.
• Routing and address-search services receive the endpoints or search terms needed to answer your request. OpenStreetMap and Overture supply the underlying geographic records.
• If you email the Aloka team, your message is processed by our email provider, Google. Sign-in emails also pass through the authentication service’s email delivery provider.

Hosting, authentication, and map providers can process IP addresses, request metadata, and operational logs. The promise not to store a device-location trail is not a promise that internet requests have no metadata. Providers may process information outside your country under their applicable terms and safeguards.

Aloka gives access to private account and moderation data only for operating, securing, and supporting the service. We may disclose information where required by law, with a valid request, or to address abuse and protect rights.

Records have a purpose and an exit.

Account records and contributions remain while your account is active, unless removed through moderation or a deletion request. Saved items remain until you remove them or delete your account. Local-only records remain until you clear them or your browser removes them.

Waitlist and business requests are separate from map accounts. Contact us to remove them; deleting a map account does not automatically withdraw a form submission. We keep them to manage the signup programme or request and delete them when that purpose ends, subject to any legal retention requirement.

Rate counters are cleaned daily once their window is more than two days old. Operational logs and backups follow the relevant provider’s retention settings; a deletion from the live database does not instantly erase every backup or previously downloaded copy. Restricted moderation audit records may remain to explain a decision.

Public caches can temporarily show an older aggregate or approved image. Once the source contribution is deleted it is excluded from new readings, but we cannot recall copies that another person already saved or shared.

See it. Correct it. Remove it.

Settings → Privacy Center lets a signed-in user request an account export and permanently delete the account, its Lanterns, photos, and saved collections. Keep an export before deleting if you need a copy. Use Settings to change preferences or remove passkeys.

Contact us about access, correction, withdrawal of a signup, deletion, objections to processing, or a privacy concern. We may need to verify that the request concerns your information. Where applicable, you may also complain to your local data-protection authority; this policy does not limit statutory rights.

We use account data to provide the service you request, optional submissions and location access at your choice, and proportionate security records to operate and protect the service. The legal basis and rights that apply can depend on your jurisdiction.

Aloka is not designed to collect personal information about children. Parents may use the map when planning a walk with children, but should not identify a child, their school routine, or their movements in a contribution. Contact us if such information has been submitted.

A visible record of the rules.

We update the date on this page when the policy changes. Material changes to how account information is used will also be communicated through the service or the account email where appropriate.