Privacy policy

Who operates HotThere

HotThere is an individual project based in Japan. For privacy questions, contact privacy@hotthere.com.

What we collect

You can browse HotThere in the app and on the website without an account.

We store your Apple or Google stable user identifier, your HotThere user ID, and your account creation time. We do not request your name or email address.

When you post, confirm, or report something, we store the place, tags, your short text, the time, and your user identifier.

Location and presence checks

When you add a place, it is created at your device's location at that moment. The place's name and coordinates are stored and public. Its link to your account is kept only internally for moderation, is never shown publicly or returned by the API, and is removed when you delete your account. The place remains public.

When you add a place, post, or confirm, the app also sends your current location once for a presence check. The proof stores only a distance band and an accuracy band relative to the place, plus a confidence score, not raw device coordinates. Proofs have a validity period; expiration does not itself delete them. This is separate from the public place coordinates stored when you add a place.

Nearby and map browsing sends the map location to our API to fetch places. Request logs record the route pattern, status, and duration, not coordinates.

To centre the heat map, the website may use the approximate city-level location Cloudflare derives from your IP address, or your device location only when you press “Show activity near me”. Coordinates are rounded to about 1 km and used in the page URL and API request, not stored as a location record by HotThere.

Location access is While Using only. We do not use background location, tracking, ads, data sales, or third-party analytics SDKs.

Where information is processed

The API and database run on servers operated by the project in Japan. Cloudflare provides network delivery, edge caching, and access protection. Apple or Google provides sign-in authentication.

Retention and deletion

Account data is kept until you delete your account. Older updates remain visible as older information; the place state becomes stale when there are no updates within the past two hours, unless a recent report takes precedence. An update's expiry field does not automatically hide or delete its content.

Account deletion removes your account record and sign-in identifiers, presence proofs, confirmations and disputes, and trust events. It unlinks updates and reports from your account and removes the internal account link on places you added. Places, updates, and reports are retained; no automatic deletion deadline is currently set. Unlinking does not remove personal information you may have included in the content.

Your choices and children

You can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your information by emailing privacy@hotthere.com.

Children under 13 should not use the service.