Privacy policy

Last updated September 2026. Plain language, on purpose: if something here is unclear, the community rules and terms of service cover the rest, and you can always ask a human directly.

What we collect

An account needs a username and a password. Email is optional, used only to recover your account, and never shown to anyone else.

  • Profile. Whatever you choose to add: an about line, a tagline, a city, an avatar or banner photo.
  • Spots. A title, description, category, and a coordinate. Your own spot's exact coordinate is visible to you as its owner; everyone else sees it rounded to a public grid roughly 110 meters wide, the same way a private spot never shows its real location to a stranger.
  • Photos and videos. Every photo and video you upload, anywhere in the app, is re-encoded and stripped of embedded location data (EXIF GPS) on our own server before it is stored. The file that ends up on the map or in a post never carries the coordinates your camera or phone recorded.
  • Messages, reviews, votes, and posts. The content of anything you send in chat, write as a review, post to the Lounge, or vote for.
  • Your connections. Who you have sent a friend request to, who you have accepted, and who you have blocked.
  • Reports. If you report something, we keep the report and your account so a moderator can act on it; if someone reports you, we keep that too, and it is not something your own data export includes, since it is not your data to receive.
  • Basic visit counts. Which country a visit came from, and roughly when, kept as a daily count with no visitor ID attached. We do not keep a record tying any single visit to any single person, member or not.

Location, specifically

Two things on this app use your real position, and both are opt-in:

  • "People near me." Off by default. Turning it on shares your position with other members the same rounded way a spot's location is shared: to the nearest public grid point, never your exact coordinate. Turning it back off clears the stored position outright, not just hides it.
  • "Route here" on the map. Asks your browser for a live position to draw driving directions to a spot. That position is rounded before it is sent anywhere and is never stored.

Nothing else on HiFinder reads your location. A spot you add uses wherever you place a pin on the map, not your device's position.

Outside services

A short, complete list, because "we share data with our partners" means nothing. These are the only outside services HiFinder talks to, and what each one gets:

  • Google, GitHub, or Discord, only if you choose to sign in with one of them instead of a password. They confirm who you are; HiFinder still picks your username itself rather than using anything from your profile there.
  • Spotify, when a spot's "Sounds like" section looks up a track. This is a lookup against Spotify's public catalog, not a connection to your Spotify account: HiFinder has no access to your listening history, playlists, or identity.
  • GIPHY, when you search for or send a GIF in chat. Your search text reaches GIPHY; nothing else about you does.
  • Photon (by Komoot), for turning a typed address into a map location, and a map location back into a readable place name. A coordinate sent this way is rounded to the public grid first, the same as a spot's public location, so an exact position is never sent, including while editing a private spot.
  • OSRM, the routing service behind "Route here", described above. Rounded coordinates only.
  • A public map tile service (AWS), for the terrain under the globe. This is a keyless, public data source; it does not receive anything that identifies you.
  • Sentry, error monitoring for our own engineering use, configured to receive error details only, never your IP address, cookies, or any personal data alongside them.

Photo and video screening for policy violations happens on our own server, using our own model. No photo or video is ever sent to an outside service for this.

Cookies

One cookie: the session cookie that keeps you signed in. No advertising cookies, no cross-site tracking, no analytics service that fingerprints your browser.

How long we keep it, and your rights

Your data stays as long as your account exists. From account settings you can, at any time and without asking anyone:

  • Download it. A JSON export of everything tied to your account.
  • Correct it. Every field you can set, you can also change, directly.
  • Delete it. Typing your own username deletes your account permanently, along with your spots, posts, reviews, votes, and messages. This cannot be undone and we cannot recover it for you afterward.
  • Turn off what's optional. Location sharing, being listed under "Find people," and appearing on the monthly leaderboard are each their own switch.

If you are in the EU, UK, or California, these are the same rights those laws already give you (GDPR access, correction, and erasure; CCPA know, delete, and opt out); we just built them as ordinary account settings instead of a request you have to email in for.

Age

HiFinder is for legal-age visitors only in your own location, the same rule as the community rules. We ask once, on your first visit, and do not otherwise attempt to verify age beyond that.

Changes to this policy

If what we collect or who we share it with changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves. We will not quietly widen what leaves this app without saying so here first.