Privacy

Pinbora is a map of places recommended by people you know. This page says what we collect, why, who can see it, and what you can do about it. It is written in plain English on purpose. If anything is unclear, email hello@pinbora.com.

Who we are

Pinbora is run by its founder, in Australia. We are responsible for your data (in European terms, the data controller). Contact: hello@pinbora.com.

What we collect

• Your account: your email address, the name you give, and a colour we assign for your initials. If you set a password, our sign-in provider stores it scrambled; we never see it.
• What you add: places (name, category, position on the map), your level for each (Been there, Recommended, Must go), the year, a note, and tags naming friends who were with you; tips about a city; your want-to-go list and any link you saved a place from; asks you make; Worth it? questions and answers; trips you plan or join and what is on the board (ideas, plans, bookings with a reference, a cost and who paid); your page (a handle, a line, a link) if you switch it on; who you follow; your circles.
• From people without an account: on an answer page, a name and picks; on a Worth it? page, a name and an answer. That browser holds a secret so the person can change what they wrote.
• Forwarded booking emails: if you forward a confirmation to your trip's address, our email provider receives it and we read out a reference, a total, dates and a name, which we keep on the board. We do not keep the email itself, and we never keep the links in it; the provider holds a copy for a limited period, then deleted.
• How Pinbora is used: a log of kinds of action and timings (for example that an ask was opened, or how long adding a pick took), which never holds a place name, a note or an email address. Our hosting provider keeps ordinary server logs (your IP address and the pages requested) for its standard period.
• Cookies: only what signing in needs (your session) and a short-lived cookie that remembers a link you opened before signing in. No advertising or analytics cookies, so no cookie banner.

Why

• To run the service you asked for: your map, your friends' picks, your trips (the contract between us).
• To show your picks to the people you choose, and nobody else.
• To email you about your own activity and your friends' requests: a friend saving your pick, answers to your ask, a question about a place near where you have been, changes on a trip. Every email has a link that stops that kind of email, and your pop-up has a switch for each.
• To keep Pinbora safe and to see whether it works, from counts and timings only (our legitimate interest).

We do not sell data, and there is no advertising. Public signals on Pinbora cannot be bought.

Who sees what

These rules are enforced in the database, not only on the screen.

• Friends (people who accepted each other) see your Recommended and Must go picks, your tips and your name. Never your Been there visits (except a friend you tagged on one), your want-to-go list, your asks, your trips or your circles.
• People who follow you, only if you switched your page on, see the same as friends: your picks, your tips and your name. Not your Been there visits, your lists, your asks or your trips. You see their names, nothing else. Switch the page off and it all disappears from their maps at once.
• Asks: only you see the answers to your ask. A friend who answers signed in makes the pick their own, visible as their picks are.
• Worth it?: only you see the answers to your question; each person who answered sees their own answer. Friends who have been near the place are emailed; you never learn who, or how many.
• Trips: everyone on a trip sees everything on that board, bookings included, and the names of the other tripmates.
• Your page, if it is on, shows to anyone who has the link your name, your line, your link and the cities you have picks in with a count. Never a place name.
• Nobody else. There is no public browsing and no searching for people or places across accounts.
• The person who runs Pinbora can see the database as its administrator, for maintenance and support. Never through the app, and not as a matter of course.

Who helps us run it

These companies process data for us under their own terms and data processing agreements.

• Supabase: the database and sign-in, in the region chosen for our database project.
• Vercel: hosting, and the server logs.
• Resend: sends our emails, and receives booking emails forwarded to a trip's address.
• MapTiler: the map itself. Your browser fetches the map tiles directly, so MapTiler sees your IP address and the area of map on your screen.
• Komoot Photon and OpenStreetMap Nominatim: venue search and city lookup. What you type in a search box, or a position on the map, goes to them from your browser or our server, with the IP address of whichever sent it.
• Cloudflare: our domain's name records only. No traffic passes through it.
• When you paste a Google Maps, Instagram or TikTok link, our server fetches that page once to read the place's name. Nothing about you goes with it beyond an ordinary page request from our server.

Where your data lives, and for how long

• Your data is stored by Supabase in the region chosen for our database project. If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, any transfer outside your country is covered by Supabase's data processing agreement, which includes the standard contractual clauses.
• We keep your data while your account exists.
• Picks given on an answer page without an account stay with the person who asked, until they remove them. The offer to keep those picks on an account of your own lasts 7 days.
• Backups are kept for a short period, typically up to a week, then overwritten.
• Our email provider keeps a copy of emails sent and received for a limited period, then deleted.

Your rights, and where the buttons are

• See and take your data: your avatar, then Your data, then Download my data. One file with everything on your account, in plain words.
• Delete your account: the same place. Everything of yours goes at once: your pins, notes, lists, asks, trips you organised with nobody else in, your page and its followers, your email address and your sign-in. Places your friends also picked stay, without your name; boards you joined keep the things you added, without your name. Backups holding your data are overwritten within the period above.
• Correct anything: everything you added can be edited or removed in the app.
• Stop emails: the link at the foot of each email, or the switches under Emails in your pop-up.
• Ask or complain: email hello@pinbora.com. In Australia you can also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au); in the European Union or the United Kingdom, to your local data protection authority.

Children

Pinbora is not for people under 16. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 16, we delete it.

Security

Everything travels encrypted. Who sees what is enforced in the database itself. You sign in by an emailed link or a password. We never collect card details.

Changes

When this page changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change matters to you, we email you about it. See also the terms.