👋 Overview
Map It! ("we," "our," or "us") is a social travel app that lets you create geotagged trip albums, share photos and videos with friends, and discover the world through other people's adventures.
This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have. By using Map It!, you agree to this policy.
We do not currently sell your personal information to third parties. If this ever changes, we will update this policy and notify you in advance.
📋 Information We Collect
Account information: When you register, we collect your email address, username, display name, optional profile photo, bio, and city/state. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email, and profile photo from Google.
Trip and media content: When you create a trip you provide a location (latitude/longitude) and upload photos and videos. We also extract and store:
- EXIF metadata embedded in your photos (date taken, GPS coordinates, camera model)
- Video metadata (duration, resolution)
- The iTunes song you choose to attach to a trip (track name, artist, album art, and a 30-second preview URL from Apple's public API)
Social activity: We store the content of likes, comments, follow relationships, direct messages, and notifications you send or receive.
Device information: We collect your device's push notification token (FCM token) to send you in-app notifications. We do not collect device identifiers for advertising purposes.
Usage information: Firebase may automatically log basic usage signals (e.g., app crashes). We use this only to improve stability.
🎯 How We Use Your Information
- Display your profile, trips, and media to you and others (according to your visibility settings)
- Plot trips on the interactive map using the location you provide
- Show EXIF-derived dates and locations on individual media items
- Enable social features: follow, like, comment, and direct message
- Send push notifications for likes, comments, follows, and messages
- Provide customer support when you contact us
- Detect and prevent abuse, spam, and unauthorized access
🔒 Visibility & Sharing Controls
You control who sees each trip:
- Public: Visible to all users
- Friends: Visible only to your followers
- Specific people: Visible only to users you choose
- Private: Visible only to you
You can also set your account to private, which requires your approval before someone can follow you.
We never share your trips or media with third parties beyond the users you explicitly permit.
🤝 Third-Party Services
Map It! uses the following third-party services. Each has its own privacy policy:
🖼️ Google User Data (Google Photos)
If you sign in with Google, you can choose to import photos and videos from Google Photos. When you tap Google Photos, Map It! asks for permission to use the Google Photos Picker (photospicker.mediaitems.readonly). This lets you pick items in Google's own picker; Map It! can only access the specific photos and videos you select.
- What we access: only the items you select in the picker, and their basic metadata (such as creation time).
- How we use it: selected items are downloaded to your device so you can add them to a trip. They're uploaded to Map It! only if you post them, and then are treated like any other photo you add (including removing embedded location data).
- What we don't do: we don't browse or read the rest of your Google Photos library, store your Google access token on our servers, use Google user data for advertising, sell it, or let people read it.
- Revoking access: you can remove Map It!'s access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
📍 Location Information
Map It! uses location in three ways:
- Trip location: You manually select or search for a location when creating a trip. We store this as a latitude/longitude pair and display it on the map.
- Photo GPS: If your photos contain GPS coordinates, we read them to place each photo on the trip map. We then remove the embedded GPS data from the photo file itself before uploading it (for photos, and for videos on iOS). You can remove any photo's location at any time from the trip view.
- Privacy zones (optional): You can choose areas on the map, such as around your home or work, where the locations of your photos are never shown on the map. We store each zone's center point, size and optional name, and the locations of the photos a zone is hiding (so they can be shown again if you remove the zone), privately: they are visible to no one but you, and are used only for this feature. Place search is handled by Google Places. On trips you share with collaborators, everyone's zones apply to all of the trip's photos, so a photo taken inside any member's zone is kept off that trip's map; the zones themselves are never shown to anyone. Privacy zones control what is shown on maps in the app; they do not change your files. A trip's owner and collaborators can download the original photos and videos on that trip, and an original may contain the location where it was taken. You can change or remove your zones at any time in Settings, and they are deleted with your account.
We do not continuously track your device location in the background.
🧒 Children's Privacy
Map It! is intended only for adults 18 years or older and is not directed at anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that a user is under 18, we will delete their account and personal information. If you believe someone under 18 has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.
🗑️ Data Retention & Deletion
Your data is retained for as long as your account is active. You can delete individual trips and media at any time within the app.
To request complete account deletion (including all trips, media, profile data, messages, and followers), email us at mapit.app.business@gmail.com. We will process your request within 30 days.
🔄 Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will update the "Effective date" at the top of this page. Continued use of Map It! after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.