Privacy Policy

Last updated: 5 November 2026

MapSeek is a travel journal app for iPhone and Android, developed and published by MBG Studio ("MapSeek", "we", "us"). This policy explains what information the app uses, where it is kept, who receives it, and the choices you have. It applies to the MapSeek app and to this website.

In short: your routes, photos and notes stay on your device. An account is optional. If you create one, our servers keep your profile, your social activity in the app and a few totals about your travels, but never your routes, locations or photos. You can delete your account in the app at any time, and it is deleted at once.

1. Using MapSeek without an account

You can use MapSeek without creating an account. Everything you record or add stays on your device: routes and their GPS points, photos, notes, places, pins, statistics, badges and your local profile. We do not receive any of it. Backups you choose to export are files you control; they are encrypted with a code only you hold.

Even without an account, the app talks to the outside services listed in section 4 (maps, place names, weather) and asks our server for public settings such as which map supplier to use, app announcements and the minimum supported app version. Those settings requests carry no account, location or device identifier.

2. If you create an account

Accounts are optional and can only be created with Sign in with Google orSign in with Apple. MapSeek has no passwords of its own. Creating an account does not upload your routes or photos.

What we receive from Google or Apple

• A unique account identifier from Google or Apple, which is how we recognize you.
• Your email address and whether the provider has verified it. If you use Apple's "Hide My Email", we receive the relay address. We use the address only to contact you about your account, for example to confirm a deletion request; we do not send marketing email.
• Your name, only as a suggestion for your display name, which you can change before saving.
• For Sign in with Apple, a token from Apple that we keep encrypted so that we can revoke MapSeek's access to your Apple ID when you delete your account, as Apple requires.

We do not receive your Google or Apple password.

Your profile

Your username, display name and optional bio are stored on our servers and are visible to other signed-in MapSeek users, together with your follower and following counts.

Travel progress

With an account, the app syncs a summary of your progress so it is the same on your devices: your total distance, level, the badges you have earned and when (country badges show which countries you have visited), and a one-way-scrambled key for each counted route. A route key cannot be turned back into the route; it only lets us count each route once. No GPS points, places, dates, times, photos or notes of individual routes are sent.

Please note one limit: when a single new route is synced, the increase in your total distance matches that route's length, and the time of the sync is roughly when it ended. We do not store these differences, but they can be worked out at the moment of syncing. Your progress is only shown back to you. You can erase it from the app with "Delete all data".

Route summaries you share

If you choose to share a finished route, we store only a short summary of it: the day it started (no time), its distance rounded to 100 metres, its duration in minutes, its country, and its city only if you turn that on for the share. No map, GPS points, photos or notes are shared. Shared summaries appear in the feed of people who follow you. Following does not need your approval, so treat a shared summary as visible to anyone with a MapSeek account. You can remove a share at any time.

Following, blocking and reporting

We store who you follow, who you block, and the reports you make about other accounts (the account and a reason chosen from a list; there is no free text). Reports are reviewed by MapSeek's moderators, who can clear a bio or disable an account.

Your device and session

An account can be signed in on one phone at a time. To manage this we keep, for your current session, a random identifier of the app installation, the device model and platform (for example "Pixel 8", Android), when it was last active and last synced, and how many routes it has not synced yet. If you sign in on another phone, these are shown to you so you can decide whether to switch.

3. Logs and security

• Server access logs. The web server in front of our API records each request, including your IP address, the time, the address requested and your app's user agent. These logs are capped in size (five files of 50 MB); the oldest is deleted as new entries come in, so how long an entry stays depends on traffic. Request bodies and sign-in tokens are not logged.
• Application logs. Our backend logs each request's route, result and duration, together with account identifiers, for up to 7 days or 100 MB, whichever comes first. Locations, tokens and email addresses are not logged.
• Rate limits. To prevent abuse we count requests per IP address in memory for a short time; these counts are never written to disk.

All connections to our servers use HTTPS. Our servers are behind Cloudflare, which processes requests on our behalf to protect and deliver the service.

4. Outside services the app uses

Some features need outside services. They receive what is needed to answer the request, and, like any server, your IP address. They process it under their own policies.

• Map tiles: Mapbox (privacy) orStadia Maps (privacy), whichever we have selected. They receive the map area you are looking at.
• Place names: OpenStreetMap Nominatim(privacy). To name the town or country of a point, the app sends approximate coordinates (rounded to about 1 km) either to Nominatim directly or through our own server, which forwards them without any account, device or IP information and keeps only the answer for that area. Requests to Nominatim name MapSeek's contact address, as Nominatim asks.
• Weather: Open-Meteo (terms). To show the weather of a journey, the app sends its location and time.
• Sign-in: Google and Apple handle the sign-in screens when you create or use an account.
• Older app versions only: versions of MapSeek before 2.0 check the minimum supported version with Google Firebase Remote Config, which receives a Firebase installation identifier. Version 2.0 and later do not use Firebase.

MapSeek contains no advertising, no analytics or tracking SDKs and no crash reporting. We do not sell or rent your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

5. Permissions

• Location, while you record a journey, to draw its route. Recording continues with the screen locked until you stop it.
• Camera, when you take a photo to pin to a journey.
• Photos, to pick photos (through the system photo picker) and to save photos and journey videos when you choose to.
• Notifications, for the notification shown while a journey is recording.

You can change these at any time in your device settings.

6. Why we use your information

We use the information above only to provide MapSeek: to run your account and sync your progress (to perform our agreement with you, the Terms of Service), to show what you choose to share to the people you choose, and to keep the service safe and working, such as logs, rate limits and moderation (our legitimate interest in a secure service). Where the law requires consent, for example for location access, we ask for it and you can withdraw it.

7. Deleting your account and data

• In the app: Profile, then Account, then Delete account. Your account is deleted immediately and permanently, together with your profile, sessions, sign-in link, follows, blocks, progress, shared route summaries and reports made about you. Data stored only on your device is not affected; remove it with "Delete all data" or by uninstalling the app.
• Without the app: follow the steps on the account deletion page.

After deletion, a few things remain for a limited time:

• If you used Sign in with Apple, your Apple account identifier and the encrypted Apple token are kept until Apple confirms the revocation of MapSeek's access, for at most 7 days, and are then deleted.
• A scrambled form of your last sign-in tokens, without any link to you or your account, is kept for up to 400 days so that a device returning later can be told its account was deleted.
• Reports you made about other accounts remain without your name.
• Log entries remain until they are deleted under the limits in section 3.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR in the EU and UK, or Türkiye's KVKK), you may have the right to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your personal data, to object to or restrict its use, and to complain to your data protection authority. You can see and edit your profile and delete your account in the app. For anything else, email [email protected]; we answer within 30 days.

9. Where your data is processed

Our servers and the services in section 4 may be located in countries other than yours. Where we transfer personal data across borders, we rely on the safeguards that the applicable law provides.

10. Children

MapSeek is not directed to children under 13. You must be at least 13, or the minimum age required in your country, to create an account. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

When the app's data practices change, we update this page and its "Last updated" date. If a change is significant, we may also tell you in the app.

12. Contact

MBG Studio, the developer of MapSeek, is responsible for your data. Questions or requests:[email protected].