Privacy Policy

Last updated: Saturday, March 14, 2026

LocationNotes is a location-based notes service. This policy explains what data the service stores, how public and private note visibility works, how team collaboration changes data exposure, and how LocationNotes handles public pages, language-specific content, account security, exports, and deletion.

In this policy, a private profile page, private team page, or private trackable page means the page route itself is restricted. It does not automatically mean the related user name, team name, or trackable name is confidential in every other product context.

Related product guides: What is a User?, What is a Team?, What is a Note?, and What is a Trackable?.

What we collect

• Account data such as email address, user name, password hash for local accounts, and linked Google or Facebook sign-in identifiers.
• Profile settings such as profile blurb, page visibility, saved time zone, and the account user name used in the public profile URL.
• Note data such as title, body, coordinates, visibility, deletion state, timestamps, sync mutation identifiers, ownership, and team association.
• Category data such as name, hierarchy position, ownership, deletion state, and content language.
• Team data such as team name, team slug, description, team page visibility, join policy, active membership records, membership status, and admin status.
• Team invite and join records, including invite links, direct invites, join requests, approvals, denials, revocations, and who performed the action.
• Trackable data such as public code, secret-code hashable values stored for lookup, QR payload, public/private setting, group relationship, activation owner, team scope, default metadata behavior, journey links to notes, and trackable comments.
• Short-lived browser session data that remembers a currently active trackable after a secret code or QR scan is used on that device.
• Security data needed to protect accounts, including sign-in failures, lockout state, email-change tokens, password-reset tokens, and linked-provider records.

Precise location data

Notes can be anchored to exact map coordinates, so LocationNotes handles precise geolocation. Treat location data as sensitive information. A note stays device-local, private, team-private, or public only according to the visibility and sync choices made by the user and the team context associated with that note.

• Anonymous Android users may create private local notes that stay only on the device until they later sign in and sync.
• Private personal notes are visible only to their owner.
• Private team notes are visible to the note owner and current active members of the associated team.
• Public notes can appear on public maps, public profile pages, public team pages, public note pages, and search results.

Language, time zone, and presentation data

LocationNotes records the content language used when profiles, team blurbs, notes, and categories are saved. Public team lists default to the visitor's current language. Public maps, public hierarchy pages, and public search can optionally include all languages, but the underlying user-generated content keeps the language in which it was saved.

If a signed-in user saves a preferred time zone, LocationNotes uses that time zone when rendering times on signed-in pages. Otherwise, the site falls back to the browser-detected time zone when available. The browser-detected time zone is stored in a cookie so the website can show times more accurately for signed-out visitors.

Content saved in Klingon may be rendered in Klingon font on supported public and signed-in pages. The page shell can still follow the visitor's current website language even when the user-generated note or category text remains in the original saved language.

Public pages, public search, and indexing

LocationNotes can expose public content on profile pages at /Profile/{user-name}, team pages at /{culture}/team/{team-name}, note pages at /{culture}/Note/{noteId}, and the public team directory at /{culture}/teams/public. Public note pages can exist under multiple localized page shells, such as English, Spanish, and Klingon route variants, while still showing the user-generated note content in its recorded language.

Public pages may be indexed by search engines and included in LocationNotes sitemaps. Non-public profile pages, non-public team pages, private notes, and private categories are not intentionally exposed on those public pages.

Page privacy is page-level access control, not a promise that every related label is hidden everywhere. User names, team names, and trackable names may still appear where the product is allowed to reference them, such as public group listings, public trackable pages, note-to-trackable associations, journey summaries, exports, moderation tools, and team-management surfaces.

Public search at /en-US/search defaults to the visitor's current language. Signed-in users can also search their own private notes and their teams' private notes through the website filters. Signed-out users do not get those private-result scopes.

How we use data

• To authenticate users and allow linked sign-in providers.
• To store, sync, search, and display notes and categories across the website and Android app.
• To generate, validate, and route trackable public codes, secret codes, and scan-only QR payloads.
• To remember an active trackable session on the current browser after a valid secret-code or QR lookup, so the user can continue the logging flow without repeatedly re-entering that code.
• To associate trackables with location notes, build the journey map, and decide what private or public note details can be shown from that journey.
• To enforce visibility rules for private notes, public notes, profile pages, team pages, note pages, and search results.
• To support team membership, invite links, join requests, approvals, admin moderation, and exports.
• To send password-reset and email-change confirmation messages when a user requests them.
• To generate personal and team JSON export files for authorized users.
• To process account deletion and Facebook data-deletion requests.

Trackables, secret codes, and browser sessions

Trackables can be system-issued or user-supplied identifiers that connect physical items to location-note history. Each trackable can have a public code, a short secret code, and a private scan URL QR. Secret codes and scan URLs are treated as sensitive access credentials.

• Public codes are intended for public routing and public lookup.
• Short secret codes and private scan URLs are intended for possession-based flows and active logging.
• LocationNotes shows the short secret code and private scan URL only once, during creation. After that reveal, those values are not shown again on normal pages or normal API reads.
• If you scan a valid private QR or enter a valid secret code, the website may store a remembered active-trackable session on that browser so you can continue the workflow before signing in.
• That remembered browser session is separate from account authentication and can be deactivated from the trackable flow.
• A non-public owner page does not automatically hide the trackable name, owner label, or team label from every trackable-related surface. Those labels can still appear on allowed trackable references even when the linked page itself is private.

Trackable ownership, groups, and comments

Trackables can be activated to an individual user or to a team. Trackables may also belong to one trackable group at a time. A group can supply fallback item title and description values until an item is individually activated and personalized.

• Unactivated trackables cannot be used to place new map activity and cannot accept comments.
• When a trackable is activated to a team, team admins can manage it and the activating member keeps control while they remain on that team.
• Trackable-group membership can be removed and later reassigned, but only one group can control a trackable at a time.
• Trackable-page comments are separate from note-page comments and belong to the trackable itself.

Linked providers and security email

When you use Google or Facebook sign-in, LocationNotes stores the provider linkage needed to recognize your account on later sign-ins. LocationNotes also sends security email when you request a password reset or an email-address change. Those messages are transactional account-security messages rather than marketing mail.

What we do not do

• We do not sell personal information.
• We do not intentionally publish a private note unless a user or authorized team action changes that note's visibility.
• We do not intentionally expose non-public profile pages or non-public team pages to anonymous public browsing.
• We do not treat a non-public page setting as a guarantee that the related user name, team name, or trackable name will be hidden from every permitted listing or association context.
• We do not require a public team page in order for a team to exist.

Your choices

You can manage your profile settings, page visibility, linked providers, password, sign-in email, and time zone from the account pages. You can also request exports or permanent deletion through the website.

• Download my account data
• Download team data
• Delete account and synced data
• Browse public teams

Children and minimum age

LocationNotes is not directed to children. You must be at least 16 years old to create a new account, and older if your local law requires a higher minimum age for self-consent to online services. If you believe a child created an account in violation of this rule, contact us so we can review and act on that report.

Retention and deletion

Synced personal data is retained while the account exists unless it is deleted earlier through the product. Deleting an account removes the personal account and synced personal data, but it does not automatically remove all shared or team-owned content that other people still rely on.

• If a team still exists, team-owned notes remain available to that team subject to its visibility and admin controls.
• If a trackable still has non-deleted activity from other people or a team, that trackable can remain in the system even after one contributor deletes their account.
• Where the product rules allow, LocationNotes removes the deleted user's personal non-team trackable activity without automatically erasing unrelated shared trackable history.
• If a trackable is team-owned, that team remains the controlling scope while the team exists.
• If a team is deleted, team memberships and team-only categories are deleted at that time.
• If a team is later deleted and the original creator still exists, those team notes convert back to personal notes and keep their prior public or private visibility.
• If the original creator no longer exists when the team is deleted, ownerless team notes are deleted at that time.

Contact

Email: michael.kappel@locationnotes.com

Phone: (630)362-7576

Mailing address: 1331 S. 51st Ave, Cicero, IL 60804