Pinmap
Privacy Policy
This is the same text shown inside the Pinmap app. It is generated from the application itself, so the two cannot disagree.
Last updated 25 September 2026. Version 5.
Section 1About this policy
1.1Purpose
This Privacy Policy explains what personal information Pinmap collects, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have over it. It forms part of the Terms of Service.
1.2Who it applies to
It applies to everyone who uses the Pinmap mobile application, wherever they are located.
1.3Who is responsible
Pinmap is the party responsible for the information described in this policy. In the language of the General Data Protection Regulation we are the "controller"; in the language of the Protection of Personal Information Act we are the "responsible party". You can reach us at hello@pinmap.co.za.
Section 2Information we collect
2.1Account information
Your email address, username, display name, and your profile photograph if you add one. Where you sign in using a third party identity provider, we receive from that provider only the information necessary to create and identify your Account.
2.2Content you create
Your pins, reviews, ratings, photographs, videos, trips, folders, lists, saved items, tags, and the record of who you follow and who follows you.
2.3Location
Your device's location, when you permit it. We use it to show places near you, to sort results by distance, and to record the city you are currently in so that notifications about places near you are meaningful. You may refuse location access, or withdraw it later in your device settings, and continue to use Pinmap with reduced functionality.
2.4Contacts
If, and only if, you use the "Find friends" feature, phone numbers from your device's contact list are hashed on your device before they leave it, compared against the hashed numbers of existing Members, and then discarded. We do not upload, store or retain your contact list, and we cannot recover a phone number from what is sent.
2.5Device and notification information
A push notification token for your device, so that we can deliver the notifications you have enabled, together with basic device and application version information used to deliver the correct build and to diagnose faults.
2.6Usage and diagnostic information
Crash reports, error traces, and aggregate information about which features are used and where people encounter difficulty. This is used to find what is broken and what is confusing.
2.7Information about you from other Members
Other Members may tag you in a pin, invite you to a trip, or follow you. The record of those interactions necessarily includes you.
2.8Information we do not collect
We do not collect payment card details. Where a paid feature exists, payment is processed by the application store operator, and card details are never sent to us. We do not collect biometric information, health information, or any special category of personal information.
Section 3Why we use your information
3.1To provide the Service
To create and maintain your Account, to display your Content to the Audience you chose, to place pins on a map, to find places near you, to operate trips and follows, and to send the notifications you have enabled.
3.2To keep the Service safe
To detect and prevent abuse, spam, fraud and unauthorised access, to enforce the Terms of Service, and to respond to reports made by Members.
3.3To improve the Service
To understand which features are used, to diagnose faults, and to develop, test and improve Pinmap and our other products and offerings.
3.4To produce editorial content
A photograph you have taken of a place may be featured in Pinmap's own editorial content, such as a curated Gem or a What's Hot entry, on the terms set out in section 3.4 of the Terms of Service. Where we do this, your name, your review and the link to your pin are not shown.
3.5To choose which promoted places to show you
Some places in Explore have paid to appear there, and are labelled as promoted. We use what you have pinned, saved and searched for, and the city you are in, to decide which of them to show you, so that what you see is relevant to you rather than the same for everyone.
This happens inside Pinmap. We do not send your information to the venue that paid, and we report to them only in aggregate, never in a form that identifies you or reveals what any individual did. You can turn this off in Settings, in which case you will still see promoted places, but they will not be chosen using your activity.
3.6To communicate with you
To send service messages, to answer your questions, and to notify you of changes to these documents.
3.7To comply with law
To meet a legal obligation, to respond to a lawful request from a competent authority, and to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.
3.8What we do not do
We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it with third parties for their own advertising or marketing, and a venue that pays to appear in Explore receives no information about you: the choice described in section 3.5 is made by us, inside Pinmap, and is reported back only as counts. We do not use your information to make decisions about you by automated means that produce a legal or similarly significant effect.
Section 4Legal bases for processing
4.1Where a legal basis must be stated
Where the law requires us to identify a legal basis for processing, including under the GDPR and the UK GDPR, ours are set out in sections 4.2 to 4.5.
4.2Performance of a contract
Operating your Account and delivering your Content to the Audience you chose. Without this processing there is no Service.
4.3Consent
Access to your location and to your contact list, and the sending of push notifications. You may withdraw consent at any time in Settings or in your device settings, without affecting processing carried out before withdrawal.
4.4Legitimate interests
Keeping the Service secure and available, diagnosing and fixing faults, understanding how the Service is used, and improving it. We have considered these interests against your rights and freedoms and consider them balanced by the limits described in this policy.
4.5Legal obligation
Retaining or disclosing information where the law requires it.
Section 5Visibility of your information
5.1You choose your Audience
Every pin carries an Audience that you select. Your pins, your reviews and your ratings are shown only to the Members in that Audience.
5.2Information visible to all Members
Your username, display name and profile photograph are visible to any Member who finds your profile, so that people can recognise you before choosing to follow you.
5.3Photographs of places
A photograph you have taken that depicts a place may be shown to other Members as a photograph of that place, without your name, your review or any link to your pin. This allows Pinmap to show real photographs of a venue rather than stock imagery. Your identity and your words remain within the Audience you chose. This is the only circumstance in which an item of your Content is shown beyond your chosen Audience, and you may ask us to stop using a particular photograph at any time.
5.4Trips
Content placed within a shared trip is visible to the members of that trip, which may include Members you do not follow. Content in a trip you have not shared remains private to you.
Section 6Service providers and disclosure
6.1Providers who process information on our behalf
Pinmap is built on services operated by other companies, which process information on our instructions and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes:
- Supabase, for the database, authentication and file storage;
- Google Maps Platform, for maps, place search and place details;
- Expo, for application delivery and push notification routing;
- Apple and Google, for application distribution and notification delivery;
- Sentry, for crash and error reporting; and
- PostHog, for usage analytics.
6.2Place data
When you search for a place, the search text and an approximate location are sent to our mapping provider in order to return results. That provider handles this under its own privacy terms.
6.3Disclosure required by law
We may disclose information where we are required to do so by law, or where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, safety or property of a Member, of a third party, or of Pinmap.
6.4Business transfer
If Pinmap is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will give notice within the Service before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
6.5What a paying venue is told
A venue that has paid to appear in Explore is shown how its own listing performed: how many people saw it, opened it, acted on it, and later pinned the place themselves. These are counts. They never name you, and a breakdown is withheld and folded into the total whenever it would describe too few people to be anonymous.
6.6No sale of personal information
We do not sell personal information, and we have not done so. We do not share personal information for cross context behavioural advertising.
Section 7International transfers
7.1Where information is held
Pinmap is operated from South Africa and built on providers that operate internationally. Your information may therefore be stored or processed in a country other than the one in which you live.
7.2Safeguards
Wherever your information is held, it remains subject to this policy and to the contractual terms we have with the provider concerned, including the standard contractual clauses or equivalent safeguards where these are required.
Section 8Retention and deletion
8.1While your Account exists
We retain your information for as long as your Account exists, because it is the Service.
8.2Deleting an item
If you delete a pin, a photograph or any other item, it is removed from the Service and from the view of every other Member.
8.3Deleting your Account
You may delete your Account from within Settings. Deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed. It removes your profile, your pins, your reviews, your photographs and videos, your trips, your follows, your notifications and your saved items.
8.4What can remain after deletion
Copies may persist in routine encrypted backups for a limited period before being overwritten in the ordinary course. Where another Member has saved or been tagged in a copy of your Content and has accepted it into their own collection, that copy belongs to them. Aggregate statistics that no longer identify you, and records we are required by law to keep, may be retained.
8.5Reports and moderation records
Where you report Content, or your Content is reported, we keep the record described in Terms section 4.8. We keep reports, our decisions and the copy of the reported Content for three years, and for longer where an investigation, a legal claim or a request from an authority requires it.
These records are kept even after the Account that posted the Content or the Account that made the report is deleted. Where that happens we remove the profile information of the Accounts concerned and retain the identifier needed to connect the record to the conduct. We rely on our legitimate interest, and on our obligation to keep records of unlawful conduct, in doing so. Only people at Pinmap who review reports can see these records.
8.6Diagnostic data
Crash reports and analytics events are retained for a limited period, set by provider, and are not linked to your Account beyond what is necessary to diagnose a fault.
Section 9Security
9.1Measures we take
Information is transmitted over encrypted connections and stored by providers that encrypt data at rest. Access to production data is restricted. Access to Content within the Service is enforced at the database layer, so that a Member cannot read Content outside the Audience it was shared with.
9.2No absolute guarantee
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security, and you are responsible for keeping your login credentials confidential.
9.3Breach notification
If a breach of security affects your personal information and the law requires notification, we will notify you and the relevant regulator within the period the law requires.
Section 10Your rights
10.1The rights you have
Wherever you live, you may ask us to:
- confirm what personal information we hold about you, and give you a copy of it;
- correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
- delete your information;
- restrict or object to a particular use of your information; and
- withdraw a consent you previously gave.
10.2A copy of your information
You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you: your profile, your pins and reviews, your Crumbs, comments and replies, who you follow and who follows you, and your photographs and videos. Write to hello@pinmap.co.za from the email address on your Account and we will send it to you, at no charge, within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm that the request comes from you before we send anything. There is no download button in the app; this is how you ask.
10.3Exercising them in the app
Most of these you can exercise yourself. You can edit your profile, change the Audience of a pin, delete individual Content, turn notification categories off, withdraw location access, and delete your Account, all within the app.
10.4Exercising them by writing to us
For anything you cannot do yourself, write to hello@pinmap.co.za. We will respond within the period required by the law that applies to you, and in any event within thirty days where no shorter period applies. We may ask you to confirm your identity before acting.
10.5The law behind these rights
Depending on where you live, these rights are conferred by the Protection of Personal Information Act in South Africa, the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union, the UK GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, or the equivalent law of your country. Where your local law gives you more than the list in section 10.1, you have that too.
10.6Complaints
If you believe we have handled your information wrongly, please tell us first so that we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the data protection authority in your country. In South Africa that is the Information Regulator.
10.7No discrimination
We will not deny you the Service, charge you a different price, or give you a lower quality of service because you exercised a right under this section.
Section 11Children
11.1Minimum age
Pinmap is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Where the law of your country sets a higher minimum age, that age applies instead.
11.2If a child has registered
If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, write to hello@pinmap.co.za and we will delete the Account and the information associated with it.
Section 12Changes to this policy
12.1How we change it
We may update this policy as Pinmap changes. The current version is always available within the Service, and each version is numbered.
12.2Material changes
Where a change is material, we will notify you within the Service and ask you to accept the new version before you continue to use it.
Section 13Contact
Questions about this policy, requests relating to your information, and complaints may be sent to: