What we keep, and what we don't.

Introduction

Small World (“we,” “us,” or “our”) provides a mobile app that tells you when people you care about happen to be nearby. This policy explains which personal data we process when you use the app, this website and related services (together, the “Services”), why we do it, and what your rights are under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Our terms of use apply alongside it.

Who is responsible

The controller for your data is the operator named in our Impressum. For privacy questions, data requests or account help, email support@small-world.app.

What we process, and why

Account and profile

Your email address, display name and profile photo (one you upload, or the one your Apple or Google account provides if you sign in with it), your sign-in data, your settings, time zone and language, and the name of each device you use, so you can see and remove them. We need this to run your account (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). The people you are connected with see your name and photo.

Location

With your permission — including in the background — the app sends your location to our servers so we can tell when you and someone you're connected with are near each other. How precise it is depends on your mode: Normal sends a coarse position now and then; Active sends a precise position frequently and switches back to Normal after 15 to 90 minutes; Stealth sends nothing and removes the position we hold. Location is encrypted before it is stored. Until you add a Home safe zone, we also keep one night-time position a day and work out roughly where home is from them, so we can tell when you're travelling; nobody is ever shown either. Friends never see your coordinates — they see a rough area or distance at most, depending on your mode, your level for them and your safe zones. The exception is a spot or live location you choose to share in a chat: the people in that chat see it. Location is the core of the service, so we process it to perform our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Safe zones, Meet Ups and trips

Safe zones you set (an encrypted place and a radius), Meet Ups you create or join (place, name, address and time), and trips you add (an encrypted destination, a rough place label and dates). We need these to provide those features (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Connections and closeness learning

Who you're connected with, the level you picked for each person, and anyone you've hidden from, muted or blocked. If closeness learning is on for both of you, we also keep rough distance bands for the pair and the last day you were roughly near each other, so alerts arrive when someone is closer than usual instead of every day. This is profiling in the GDPR sense, but it only decides when to nudge you; it has no legal or similarly significant effect on you. Either of you can turn it off and delete it in the app (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Messages and photos

Chat messages, photos and locations you share in chats, so we can deliver them. Chats are protected in transit and at rest, but they are not end-to-end encrypted, and our systems can read them (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Invites

Invite codes you create, with the optional name and short note you add, and who invited you. To find an invite after you install the app from a link, the app checks your clipboard once on first launch.

Phone features that stay on your phone

The camera reads QR codes on your device. Your contacts are read on your device only when you choose someone to invite by text message, and are never uploaded. The calendar is used only when you add a Meet Up to it. Photos are only the ones you pick to send or use as your profile photo.

Notifications

We store a push token for each of your devices. With current app versions, chat messages and nearby alerts are sent as content-free notifications that your phone fills in itself. Some other notifications — such as waves, Meet Up updates and new connections — still carry a name, a place name or a short note in their text, which passes through the delivery services listed below (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Place search and maps

When you search for a place, or the app suggests a spot to meet, your search text and an approximate location are sent to Google Places — for Meet Up suggestions, a point between you and the people you're meeting. Trip destinations get their place label from Google's geocoding service. Safe-zone addresses are looked up with your phone's built-in address search. Maps come from Apple on iPhone and from Google on Android; loading them sends your IP address and the area you're viewing to that provider (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Crash reports

On by default, and you can turn them off in Settings → Privacy. When the app crashes or freezes, it sends a technical report — stack trace, device model, operating system and app version — to Sentry. We strip email addresses, IP addresses and account IDs before a report leaves your phone, and reports never include your location, names or messages on purpose. We rely on our legitimate interest in a working, secure app (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); switching the setting off is your objection.

“Help improve Small World” (optional)

Off unless you turn it on. When it's on, we collect two things. First, when both you and a friend have it on, anonymised encounter data: how far apart you were, alert timing, level and how you responded, tied to a random pair code rather than your names. Second, usage events — for example that the app was opened, an onboarding step was finished or a wave was sent — linked to your account and a pseudonymous installation ID, never with coordinates, names or message content. With it on, crash reports also carry a short trail of recent app steps. Turning it off deletes your encounter data and usage events. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR and § 25(1) TDDDG), which you can withdraw at any time in the app.

Safety and reports

If you report a person, message or photo, we store the report and what it's about so we can review it. If three different people report the same account within seven days, it is suspended automatically. If you think a suspension is wrong, email us and a person will look at it. We do this to keep users safe (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Tips and support

In-app tips are handled by Apple or Google; we never receive your payment details. When you email us, we use your message and address to answer you (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR).

Who receives data

The people you're connected with see what the app shows them, within the limits you set. We do not sell your personal data, and we don't use advertising or data brokers. We use these service providers, who process data on our instructions under data processing agreements:

• Supabase — database, sign-in, file storage and the server functions that run the app
• Google Cloud — the key-management service that holds the key to your location data; Places and Geocoding; Firebase Cloud Messaging for Android notifications
• Expo — relays push notifications and delivers app updates
• Apple — push notifications on iPhone (APNs)
• Sentry — crash reports
• Vercel — hosting for this website
• Cloudflare — cookieless website statistics, if enabled

Apple and Google also provide maps, sign-in with Apple or Google if you choose it, your phone's address search, and in-app tips. For those, they process data under their own privacy policies. We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.

International transfers

Several of these providers are based in the United States or process data there — push notifications always pass through Expo and Apple or Google. Such transfers rely on the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified under it, and otherwise on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (Art. 45 and 46 GDPR).

How long we keep it

• Location: each position we receive is deleted after 24 hours. Apart from night-time positions (next item), we keep only your most recent position, encrypted, replaced with each update and removed when you go Stealth. If you don't open the app for about three months, we switch you to Stealth automatically.
• Night-time positions: one a night, encrypted, only while you have no Home safe zone. Each is deleted after 90 days, and the rough home worked out from them goes with the last one. Adding a Home safe zone deletes them all at once.
• Spots shared in a chat: removed from the message after 24 hours. Live location shares end after 15 or 60 minutes; the position is cleared when they end, and the record of the share is deleted after 90 days.
• Chat messages: deleted after 90 days. Chat photos: after 1 hour or 30 days, whichever the sender picked — the file is removed from storage too.
• Closeness data: fades over about two months without updates; pairs with no activity are deleted after about six months.
• Trips: deleted a week after they end, or two weeks after you cancel them.
• Invite codes: deleted seven days after they expire.
• Encounter data: 90 days. Usage events: 180 days. Both are deleted straight away when you turn “Help improve Small World” off.
• Push tokens: deleted after 90 days without use. Data export files: 48 hours.
• Nearby alerts and waves: 12 months, unless a moment in your scrapbook was made from them.
• Reported messages and photos: we keep a copy for 28 days after the review is finished, and never longer than 90 days from the report. A record that a report happened — about a person, a message or a photo — and its outcome is kept for 12 months, without the content.
• Everything else, including your profile, connections and moments: until you delete your account.

You can delete your account in the app at any time. That deletes your profile and the data linked to it, including your profile photo, your one-to-one chats and their photos. Messages you sent in Meet Up group chats stay there, without your name, until they expire, and reports about your account are kept for the periods above.

Security

Your location is encrypted at rest, and the key that would unlock it is held in a separate key-management service — so the stored rows are useless to anyone who reaches the database alone. It is not end-to-end encrypted: our matching functions unwrap that key to work out who is near you, so our systems can decrypt location. Chat messages are the same — protected in transit and at rest, but not end-to-end encrypted. We do this so we can act on abuse reports. If you would rather a conversation stay unreadable to us, use a dedicated end-to-end encrypted messenger for it. No system is perfectly secure; we work to reduce risk in line with industry practice.

Your rights

You have the right to access your data (Art. 15 GDPR), to have it corrected (Art. 16) or deleted (Art. 17), to restrict its processing (Art. 18), to receive it in a portable format (Art. 20) and to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21). Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting what happened before (Art. 7(3)). You can export your data and delete your account in the app under Settings → Privacy (or without the app); for anything else, email support@small-world.app.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular the one where you live or work (Art. 77 GDPR).

You don't have to give us any data, but without an account and location the app can't work. Everything else is optional.

Minimum age

You must be at least 16 to use Small World, and you confirm this when you sign up. If you believe someone younger has an account, contact us and we will delete it.

This website

small-world.app is hosted by Vercel. When you visit, its server logs record your IP address, browser type and the page requested. We use these logs only for security and reliability; they are kept briefly and not used to track you across visits (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

This site sets no cookies and has no advertising or social embeds. If we enable Cloudflare Web Analytics, it counts page views without cookies or tracking identifiers; it is never loaded on invite pages, so invite codes don't reach it. Fonts are served from this site itself; your browser does not contact Google.

Invite pages (/i/…) show the code from the link and never look it up in our database. The “Buy us a coffee” button links out to Ko-fi, which handles tips under its own privacy policy.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the updated version on this page and change the “Last updated” date. If changes are material, we will provide additional notice as appropriate.