Privacy Policy

Explorestraya — Melbourne

Last updated: 28 August 2026

Draft. Written by the team, not by a lawyer. Have it reviewed before

launch. The sections most worth professional review are §3 (the lawful basis

for location processing), §7 (retention), and whether you need to register an

APP privacy officer.

We are an Australian app and this policy is written against the **Privacy Act

1988 (Cth)** and the Australian Privacy Principles.

1. The short version

• We collect your email, a handle, a display name, your birth year, and the

places you check in at.

• Location is read only while you are actively checking in, never in the

background.

• Your check-in photos are private. Other users never see them.
• We do not sell your data, and there are no advertising trackers in the app.
• You can download everything we hold, or delete all of it, from inside the app.

2. What we collect

When you create an account: email address, a password (stored hashed — we

never see it), handle, display name, and your birth year.

When you check in: the place, your GPS coordinates and reported accuracy at

that moment, a short series of location samples taken while you hold the button,

whether your device reports mock locations, and the timestamp. If you take a

photo: the image, and a perceptual fingerprint computed from it.

As you play: your XP entries, badges, collections, streaks, saved places,

and any reports you make.

Automatically: basic error and performance diagnostics. No advertising

identifiers, no cross-app tracking, no third-party analytics SDKs.

3. Why we collect location, specifically

To decide whether you were actually at the place. That is the entire purpose,

and it is the whole product — without it, a check-in means nothing.

• We read location only while the check-in screen is open. The app has no

background location permission and does not track your movement between

places.

• The location samples we keep are the ones from the seconds you spent

verifying, not a trail.

• We use them once to make a decision, then store them with the visit so a

disputed decision can be reviewed.

4. Your photos

Check-in photos are stored in a private bucket. They are not publicly

addressable — a link to one is signed and expires within minutes.

Who can see a photo of yours:

• you, in your own history;
• a moderator, if it is queued for review or reported;
• other people, but only for a photo you chose to post to a place's

community wall. That is a separate switch on the check-in screen, off unless

you turn it on, and you can take the photo down again at any time. A

moderator approves it before anyone else sees it.

That is all. We do not use your photos for advertising or to train anything.

We compute a perceptual fingerprint (a short hash) so the same photo cannot be

used for two different check-ins. The fingerprint is not an image and cannot be

turned back into one.

5. Who else gets your data

Our infrastructure providers, who process it on our instructions and nothing

else:

Data is stored outside Australia. By using the app you consent to that

transfer. We take reasonable steps to ensure these providers handle it

consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers

or data brokers.

We will disclose data if we are legally required to, and we will tell you unless

we are prohibited from doing so.

6. What we show other people

Your handle, display name, avatar, level, XP and number of places appear on

public leaderboards — but only if you are 16 or over.

Under 16, none of that is shown to anyone. You can play the whole game; you just

do not appear on person-to-person surfaces.

Your email address, birth year, exact coordinates and photos are never shown to

other users at any age.

7. How long we keep it

While your account exists. When you delete your account:

Deleted after a 30-day grace period: your profile, email, birth year, every

visit and its coordinates, every photo (including the files themselves), your XP

ledger, badges, collections, saved places and authentication records.

Kept, with your name removed: reports you made about *places* — "this gate

is locked" stays true after you leave, and deleting it would send the next

person to a locked gate. These are unlinked from you and cannot be traced back.

Kept briefly: rate-limiting counters, for up to 48 hours.

8. Your rights

Under the Australian Privacy Principles you can:

• See what we hold. Settings → Your account → Download my data. It is one

JSON file with everything, and it takes seconds.

• Correct it. Most fields are editable in the app. Your birth year is set

once — email us if it is genuinely wrong.

• Delete it. Settings → Your account → Delete my account.
• Complain. Email us first. If we do not resolve it, you can complain to the

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

9. Children

The app is for 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone

younger. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we will

delete it.

10. Security

Passwords are hashed and we never see them. Photos are in a private bucket with

signed, expiring access. The database enforces per-user access rules at the row

level, so a bug in one part of the app cannot read another person's data.

No system is perfect. If there is a data breach that is likely to cause serious

harm, we will notify you and the OAIC as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme

requires.

11. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app

before it takes effect.

12. Contact

privacy@explorestraya.com.au