Plain-language summary: Nearli collects your account details, the pins you create, and general location data. We don't sell your data. Public pins you create are visible to everyone. Private pins are visible only to you. You can delete your data at any time.
Definitions
Throughout this policy, the following terms have the meanings below. Understanding these definitions will help you read the rest of the document clearly.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| "Nearli" | The Nearli platform, including the mobile app, website, and all associated services operated by Hither Labs, LLC. |
| "Hither Labs" | Hither Labs, LLC, the company that owns and operates Nearli, headquartered in the United States. |
| "We," "us," "our" | Hither Labs, LLC. |
| "You," "user" | Any person who creates an account, accesses Nearli, or uses any feature of the platform. |
| "Pin" | A digital marker placed at a specific What3Words grid location, containing an optional image and up to 100 characters of text. |
| "Public Pin" | A pin that is visible to all Nearli users during its active duration period. |
| "Private Pin" | A pin visible only to the user who created it, with no set expiry duration. |
| "W3W" / "What3Words" | What3Words Limited, the third-party provider of the precision location grid system Nearli uses to define pin placement locations. |
| "Personal Data" | Any information that identifies or could reasonably be used to identify you as an individual. |
Information We Collect
We collect only the information necessary to operate Nearli.
Information you provide directly
- Account registration: When you create an account, we collect your display name, phone number, account creation date/time, preferred language, and timezone.
- Business account details: If you register as a venue operator, we also collect your venue name, address, email, website, and operating hours.
- Pin content: The text (up to 100 characters) and image (optional) you attach to pins you create. Public pin content is stored until the pin expires; private pin content is stored until you delete it.
- Reactions and comments: Emoji reactions and text comments (up to 100 characters each) you leave on public pins placed by other users.
- Communications: If you contact us by email or through the app, we retain those communications to respond to you and to improve our support.
Information collected automatically
- Device information: Device type, OneSignal ID (used for push notifications), operating system, and app version. We use this to diagnose bugs and improve compatibility.
- Usage data: Pins created, pins viewed, reactions and comments submitted, and session timestamps. This data is used in aggregate to understand how the product is used.
- IP address: Collected at login and during active sessions for fraud prevention and security. Not used to determine your precise location beyond country-level geolocation for analytics.
- Crash reports: If the app crashes, anonymized diagnostic data may be sent to help us identify and fix the issue.
Location information
Nearli is a location-based platform. See Section 4 (Pins & Location Data) for a detailed explanation of how location information is collected and used.
What we do not collect: We do not collect your phone's contact list, microphone access, camera roll (beyond images you explicitly select to attach to a pin), or background location data when the app is closed.
How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect for the following purposes:
- Operating the platform: Creating and managing your account, enabling pin creation and display, processing reactions and comments, and enforcing the one-active-pin-per-grid-square rule.
- Enforcing pin duration and expiry: Tracking the creation timestamp of public pins to automatically remove them when their selected duration elapses.
- Safety and security: Detecting and preventing fraudulent activity, abuse, spam pins, and unauthorized access to accounts.
- Customer support: Responding to your questions, complaints, and requests.
- Product improvement: Understanding aggregate usage patterns to inform decisions about features, performance, and design. This analysis uses anonymized or aggregated data wherever possible.
- Business account analytics: Providing venue operators with aggregate metrics on their public pins, including view counts, reaction counts, and comment counts. This data is provided to the business that placed the pin only.
- Legal compliance: Meeting obligations under applicable law, including responding to lawful requests from law enforcement or government authorities.
- Communications: Sending transactional messages related to your account (password resets, security alerts). We do not send marketing emails unless you have explicitly opted in.
We do not sell your personal data. We do not share your personal data with advertisers, data brokers, or third parties for their own marketing purposes. Nearli does not serve ads and receives no revenue from ad networks.
Pins & Location Data
Because Nearli is fundamentally a location-based product, we want to be especially clear about how location information is handled. This section covers both the location data embedded in pins and the location permissions the app requests from your device.
How pin placement works
When you place a pin, you select a What3Words grid square as its location. The What3Words three-word address of that grid square — for example, ///filled.count.soap — is stored in association with your pin. This is a precise location, accurate to a 3m × 3m area.
Public pins and location visibility
The What3Words address of a public pin is visible to all Nearli users. When you place a public pin, you are intentionally disclosing that location to the general public for the duration of the pin. Do not place a public pin at a location you wish to keep private.
Private pins and location privacy
The What3Words address of a private pin is stored in our database but is never transmitted to or displayed to any other user. Private pin location data is accessible only to you through your account. We do not use private pin location data for analytics or profiling.
Device location permissions
Nearli requests access to your device's location to help you identify the What3Words square nearest to your current position when placing a pin. Specifically:
- We request location access only while the app is in use ("foreground location"). We do not request background location access.
- Location access is used solely to populate the pin placement interface with your approximate current position. You can manually select any What3Words square within a 50m radius of your detected device location.
- We do not store a log of your device's GPS history. We record the What3Words square you selected for each pin, not a continuous trail of your movements.
- You may deny location permission and still be able to view active, public pins on Nearli but you will not be able to emoji react or post a comment to any pins.
What3Words API
Nearli uses the What3Words API to resolve What3Words addresses to geographic coordinates and vice versa. When you use the location selection feature, your approximate GPS coordinates may be transmitted to What3Words to identify nearby grid squares. What3Words' own privacy policy governs how they handle that data. We encourage you to review it at what3words.com/privacy.
Sharing & Disclosure
We share your information only in the following limited circumstances:
Information that is public by design
Public pins — including their What3Words location, thumbnail image, text content, and associated emoji reactions and comments — are visible to all Nearli users, as well as to anyone accessing the Nearli map interface. This is the intended function of a public pin. You choose to make a pin public at the time of creation.
Service providers
We engage a small number of third-party service providers who process data on our behalf to operate the platform. These include cloud infrastructure providers (for hosting and database services), a payment processor (for business subscription billing), and app distribution platforms (Apple App Store and Google Play). These providers are contractually bound to use your data only as directed by us and not for their own purposes.
Legal requirements
We may disclose your information if required to do so by law, court order, or governmental authority, or if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to comply with applicable law, protect our legal rights, or prevent harm to a person.
Business transfers
If Hither Labs, LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or substantially all of its assets, user data may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will provide notice before your personal data becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
With your consent
We may share your information for other purposes with your explicit prior consent.
We do not share: Your email address, phone number, account credentials, private pin content, or private pin locations with any other user, third party, or advertiser under any circumstances except as required by law.
Data Retention
We retain your data only for as long as necessary to provide the service and fulfill the purposes described in this policy.
| Data Type | Retention Period |
|---|---|
| Account data | Retained while your account is active. Deleted within 30 days of account deletion request. |
| Public pin content | A pin is removed from the public map automatically when the pin's selected duration elapses. Historical pin data are retained for up to 1 year or until a user deletes their pin history or deletes their account. |
| Private pin content | Retained until you delete the pin or delete your account. |
| Reactions & comments | Removed from the public map when the associated public pin expires. Historical pin data, including reactions and comments, are retained for up to 1 year or until a user deletes their pin history or deletes their account. |
| Usage analytics | Aggregated and anonymized after 90 days. Raw event logs are retained for 90 days and then deleted. |
| Security & fraud logs | Retained for up to 12 months to investigate security incidents. |
| Support communications | Retained for 2 years to provide consistent support and resolve disputes. |
Security
We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorized access, loss, or disclosure. These measures include:
- Encryption of data in transit using TLS (HTTPS) for all communications between your device and our servers.
- Encryption of data at rest for personal account data and private pin content.
- Password hashing using industry-standard one-way algorithms. We cannot retrieve your password.
- Access controls limiting which Hither Labs personnel can access personal data, on a need-to-know basis.
- Regular security reviews of our infrastructure and third-party integrations.
No system is perfectly secure. In the event of a data breach that affects your personal information, we will notify you and relevant regulatory authorities as required by applicable law. If you discover a security vulnerability in Nearli, please report it to security@nearli.app before public disclosure.
Your Rights & Choices
You have meaningful control over your data on Nearli. The following rights and choices are available to all users regardless of jurisdiction.
Access and portability
You may request a copy of the personal data we hold about you, including your account details and a log of pins you have created. We will provide this in a machine-readable format within 30 days of your request.
Correction
You can update your account information (display name, phone number) directly in the Nearli app settings at any time. If you believe we hold inaccurate data about you that you cannot correct through the app, contact us and we will correct it.
Deletion
You can delete individual pins, reactions, and comments at any time from within the app. You can delete your entire account, along with all associated personal data, from the account settings menu. Account deletion is permanent and irreversible. Deleted data is purged from our systems within 30 days.
Opt-out of analytics
You can opt out of non-essential usage analytics in the app settings. Opting out does not affect the functionality of the platform. Certain operational data (such as error logs required to keep the service running) cannot be disabled.
Location permissions
You can revoke Nearli's location access in your device's operating system settings at any time.
Communications
Transactional account messages (such as 2-factor authentication codes and password reset confirmations) cannot be disabled as they are necessary for account security. If you have opted into marketing communications, you can unsubscribe at any time via the unsubscribe link in any such message or by contacting us directly.
To exercise any of these rights, or if you have questions about your data, email us at privacy@nearli.app. We respond to all data rights requests within 30 days.
Children's Privacy
Nearli is not intended for use by children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information without your consent, please contact us at privacy@nearli.app and we will review the relevant information and take appropriate action.
Third-Party Services
Nearli integrates with the following third-party services. Each has its own privacy policy that governs how they handle data passed to them through our integration.
- What3Words: Provides the precision location grid system. Location coordinates may be shared with What3Words when resolving grid addresses. Review their policy at what3words.com/privacy.
- Cloud infrastructure provider: We use a major US-based cloud provider for hosting, data storage, and computing. Data are stored in servers located in the United States.
- Payment processor: Subscription payments for business and premium accounts are processed by a PCI-DSS compliant third-party payment processor. We do not store your full payment card details on our servers.
- Apple App Store / Google Play: Distribution of the Nearli mobile app through Apple and Google's platforms is subject to their respective terms and privacy policies.
Nearli does not integrate with social media platforms, advertising networks, or data brokers. Links within the app or on the Nearli website to third-party sites are governed by those sites' own privacy policies, not this one.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. When we make changes, we will update the "Last Updated" date at the top of this page. For material changes — those that meaningfully affect your rights or how we use your data — we will provide additional notice, such as an in-app notification or an email to the address associated with your account, at least 14 days before the changes take effect.
Your continued use of Nearli after a policy update constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy. If you do not agree with a material change, you may delete your account before it takes effect.
We will not make changes to this policy that retroactively reduce your privacy rights with respect to data already collected without your explicit consent.
Contact Us
If you have questions about this privacy policy, want to exercise your data rights, or need to report a privacy concern, please reach out. We take all privacy inquiries seriously and respond within 30 days.