Privacy 101

A plain-language summary. Our full Privacy Policy is the document that counts; this page explains the ideas behind it.

How we think about privacy

Hexology is about places: people write stories, images and audio into the world for others to find. That means the app needs to know where you are, and that what you publish is out in the open. We think the honest way to run a service like that is to collect as little as we can, to be clear about what is public, and to give you the means to remove your own data yourself. This page sets out how that works in practice.

Your location

The app uses your phone’s precise location while you are using it, for two things only: to show you content that has been placed near you, and to let you place your own. We don’t store your location, we don’t keep a history of where you’ve been, we don’t use background location, and we don’t track you. The only location we keep is the one you attach to a post, and that is part of the post. You can switch location off in your phone’s settings at any time; the app won’t be able to show you nearby content, but nothing else changes.

What’s public

Everything you post on Hexology is public. There are no private posts, groups or messages. Your name and @userhandle are shown with your posts, and so is the place you attached them to. Your login email is private; if you add a second email address to your profile so that people can contact you, that one is public.

Two things follow from this. Think before you post: if you place a post at your home, you are telling the world where you live. And remember that a location on a post can tell people where you have been, and roughly when.

Your content is yours

You can delete any post or collection you have made, and you can delete your whole account, from within the app. Deletion happens straight away. You can also ask us for a copy of your data; we prepare it by hand and send it within 28 days.

Reading on the web

The Hexology Viewer at app.hexology.co lets anyone read public content in a browser. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device and shows no adverts; we count visits in aggregate without identifying anyone. Its front door and map page load map images from OpenFreeMap, which sees your internet address and roughly the area shown. If you press Around Me and allow it, your location stays on your device: to show what’s near you we look up sources for the surrounding area (about 275 by 175 metres) without identifying you, and the map images for that area come from OpenFreeMap. We don’t store your location. Where you are stays on your device unless, on desktop, you press Share after Around Me, which puts your position in the link; the Viewer tells you so before you copy it. Points you choose on the map are kept in the page address in a way your browser never sends anywhere.

Browsing without an account

You don’t need an account to explore. The app gives your device an anonymous identifier so that content you collect stays with you; it isn’t linked to a name or email, and it’s gone when you log out or uninstall the app. You need a verified account to post.

What we don’t do

We don’t sell your data. We don’t show advertising or work with advertisers. Our websites set no cookies. We count visits using Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies and doesn’t track you across sites, and we use Google Search Console, which places nothing on our pages. The only email we send to app users is about their account. Our newsletter goes only to people who sign up on our websites and confirm by email; every issue has an unsubscribe link, and your address is used for nothing else. We don’t offer login through any third-party account, so no other company learns from us that you use Hexology.

Keeping Hexology safe

Every image uploaded is checked automatically for content that breaks our rules before it appears, and anyone can report a post from within the app. A reported post is taken down promptly and looked at by a person, who decides whether it goes back up; because the Viewer keeps copies of pages for up to a day, it can take about a day to disappear from the web. If your post is removed and you think that’s wrong, tell us and we’ll look again.

Who helps us run Hexology

A small number of companies process data on our behalf: Amazon Web Services hosts the platform in Germany, sends our service emails and scans uploaded images; Google draws the map in the app and receives crash and performance reports; Cloudflare and IONOS deliver and host our websites, and Cloudflare runs the Viewer, whose map uses OpenFreeMap and komoot’s Photon service; Web3Forms runs our contact form; Buttondown sends our newsletter. They work to our instructions and can’t use your data for their own purposes. The full list, with what each one does, is in the Privacy Policy.

Questions

Email hello@hexology.co or use the contact form on about.hexology.co. Our full Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy have the detail.