Privacy policy
Short version: the app works without an account, there are no ads and no tracking, and your photos never leave your device.
Effective 1 August 2026
Who is responsible
The data controller is Bartosz Jatczyszyn, the author of GlobeQuest, acting as a private individual. For anything concerning your data, write to globequest.world@gmail.com. I answer personally, usually within a few days.
The principle the whole app rests on: the data belongs to the device. GlobeQuest stores everything locally and runs without an account and without the internet. An account is optional, and its only job is to make the same map available on a second device.
What is collected, and why
Without an account (guest mode)
Nothing is collected. Visited countries, pins, routes, notes, photos and quiz results live in your device's own storage (the app database on a phone, IndexedDB in a browser). None of it is sent anywhere and I have no access to it. Clearing the app's or the site's data deletes it for good.
With an account
| Data | Why | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Email address and password | Creating and running the account. I never see the password — it reaches the authentication provider as a hash. | Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of a contract) |
| A copy of your travel data: visited countries, wishlist, pins, routes, text notes, quiz progress | Syncing between devices and the friends leaderboard. | Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR |
| Profile: nickname, chosen avatar, friend code | So friends can tell who is who. | Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR |
| Friend list | Shared trips, leaderboard, Time Capsules. | Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR |
| Time Capsules: the message and the coordinates where you leave it | That is the whole point of the feature — a capsule opens only where it was left. | Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR |
Location
Your GPS position is processed on the device — it places you on the map, draws routes and finds things nearby. No location history is kept.
One exception: when you try to open a Time Capsule, your coordinates go to the server, because that is the only place where "are you actually standing there" can be checked honestly. That single position is used for the distance check and is not stored — all that remains is the fact that the capsule was opened.
Photos and voice notes
Photos added to the journal are never uploaded — they stay on the device, even when you have an account. The app reads the coordinates your camera wrote into them (EXIF) to suggest a place; that happens locally.
Voice notes are turned into text by the speech recognition built into your system or browser. The recording then goes to that provider (Apple, Google) on their own terms — I receive neither the audio nor the transcript.
Processors
- Supabase — accounts and sync. The database is in Frankfurt, in the European Union.
- Cloudflare Pages — hosting for the app and this page.
Services the app queries directly from your device
The map and country pages are built from open sources the app reaches straight from your device. I hand them none of your data, but the connection itself means they see your IP address and what you asked for (a map tile, a country name):
- OpenStreetMap — tiles, place search (Nominatim), nearby objects (Overpass), routing (OSRM/FOSSGIS)
- CARTO — basemap rendering
- Wikidata (including QLever), Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons — facts, coats of arms, anthems, landmark photos
- Open-Meteo — weather and climate
- date.nager.at, open.er-api.com, api.sunrise-sunset.org, restcountries.com, flagcdn.com — holidays, exchange rates, sunrise and sunset, country data, flags
- DiceBear — drawn avatars
- Unsplash — a handful of illustrative photos
- Google Fonts (
fonts.gstatic.com) — the emoji font in the browser only; the app's own typefaces are bundled and never fetched - buycoffee.to — only once you open the tip page yourself
What is not here
- No ads and no ad networks.
- No analytics, no pixels, no cross-site tracking.
- No profiling and no automated decision-making.
- No selling or sharing of data with anyone.
- No marketing cookies — which is why there is no cookie banner. The browser stores only what the app cannot run without: your data in IndexedDB, plus settings and the login session in local storage.
How long
- Account data and its cloud copy — until you delete the account. You do it yourself, in the app: Account → Formalities → Delete account. It is immediate and irreversible.
- Data on the device — until you delete it or clear the app's or site's data.
- Time Capsules — until you delete the capsule or the account.
Your rights
You have the right to access your data, to rectify it, to erase it, to restrict processing, to data portability and to object. Two of these work immediately in the app, without writing to anyone:
- A copy of your data — Account → Formalities → Download my data. You get a JSON file with everything the app knows about you.
- Account deletion — Account → Formalities → Delete account.
Everything else takes one email to globequest.world@gmail.com. If you believe your data is being handled unlawfully, you may lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority — in Poland that is the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (ul. Stawki 2, 00-193 Warsaw).
Age
An account may be created by someone aged 16 or over. Below that age, a parent or guardian must consent. The app without an account collects nothing and is open to anyone.
Security
All connections use HTTPS. Access to stored data is guarded by server-side rules that only ever return rows belonging to the signed-in user — even if someone rewrote the request in the browser. The contents of a Time Capsule do not reach the recipient's device until the server confirms they are standing in the right place.
Changes
If the app starts doing something new with data, I will update this document and the date at the top. For significant changes I will say so inside the app.