Coordinotes

What Coordinotes keeps about you, and why. In short: what you post, your name on it, and nothing for ads or tracking.

Last updated 23 October 2026

Who

Coordinotes is made by Viljami Laurila, in Finland. He is responsible for the data described here. Write to [email protected] about anything on this page.

Your account

You can look around without an account. To post a coordinote or leave a heart you sign in with Apple or Google. From that we keep:

• the ID Apple or Google gives us for you, so we know it's you next time;
• your email address, if they share it (Apple lets you hide it behind a relay address);
• your name, which is shown on your coordinotes. You can change it in the app.

Other people see your name on your coordinotes and nothing else about you.

Your location

The whole app is about being somewhere, so it uses your phone's location while it's open:

• Looking around: your position is sent to our server to find the spots near you and how far they are. We don't store it, though it can appear for a short time in the server's technical logs.
• Posting: when you post a coordinote, we keep where you were standing, how accurate the phone said that was, and whether the phone reported a faked location. This is only to check that coordinotes were really posted on the spot. Nobody else sees it.
• The app never sends spots' exact positions to anyone, and never shows where other people were.

Photos and text

Photos are taken with the camera inside the app. Before storing a photo we crop it and save it again, which removes everything hidden in the file (such as the phone model and its GPS position). Photos are kept in private storage and are only shown to people standing at the spot, or who have been there.

We also keep the text you write, when you posted, and which coordinotes you gave a heart to (hearts don't show who gave them).

Reports and hidden people

You can report someone else's coordinote, or hide everything a person posts. When you report one, we keep the report: which coordinote, who reported it, the reason you picked and when. We keep reports so we can review them and act on them, and the person you reported isn't told who it was. When you hide someone, we keep that so their coordinotes stay out of your view; they aren't told.

Who else is involved

• Laravel Cloud hosts the server, database and photos.
• Apple and Google handle signing in.
• OpenStreetMap (Nominatim): when someone starts a new spot, our server sends its position, and nothing about the person, to look up a name for the place.
• OpenFreeMap: the faint streets on the radar are map tiles your phone downloads from them, so they see your IP address and the area being shown.
• This website loads its fonts from Google Fonts and its map from jsDelivr.

There are no ads, no analytics and no tracking, and nothing about you is sold or shared for marketing.

Deleting

You can delete any of your coordinotes in the app. You can also delete your whole account in the app: that removes your account, all your coordinotes and their photos, your hearts, your reports and the list of people you've hidden, straight away. Spots that other people have also posted at stay, without your name.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask what we keep about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how it's used, by writing to [email protected]. You can also complain to the Finnish Data Protection Ombudsman (tietosuoja.fi).

Children

Coordinotes isn't meant for children under 13.

Changes

When this page changes, the date at the top changes too. If a change matters for how your data is used, we'll say so in the app first.