Privacy Policy

Last updated October 16, 2026

TRACE lets you leave messages at real places and discover what others left. That means location is central to how it works, so we keep what we collect small and tell you exactly what it is.

What we collect

• Account details: your handle, email, a securely hashed password, and an optional bio.
• What you post: Aero Grams and Echoes, whether you posted them anonymously, Saves, and reports you file.
• Location of your posts: when you drop an Aero Gram, we store the coordinates where you dropped it and a nearby place name (like a neighborhood). That’s the only time your location is saved.
• Waitlist: if you join, your email, interest and city.

How location is used

While the app is open, your browser shares your current position with TRACE so we can show messages within about 3 km and unlock those within 100 m. Your live position is used for that request and isn’t stored or tracked over time. We never collect location in the background.

Messages you can’t read yet are drawn slightly away from their real spot, so a pin alone doesn’t reveal exactly where someone stood. We still recommend never dropping a message from your home.

Anonymous posts

Anonymous Aero Grams and Echoes never show your handle to other people, and they never appear on your public profile. We do keep which account posted them, so we can enforce our rules and so you can delete them.

What’s public

Your handle, bio, public (non-anonymous) Grammafacts, and counts of your public posts. Messages can be read by anyone who goes to the place where they were left.

What we don’t do

• We don’t sell your personal information.
• We don’t run third-party ad trackers.

Services we use

Hosting (Vercel), database (Neon), maps (OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap), and place names (OpenStreetMap Nominatim, which receives the coordinates when you open the composer). Fonts load from Google Fonts.

Your choices

You can delete any of your posts at any time. You can delete your account in Profile; that permanently removes your account, every Aero Gram and Echo you posted, your Saves and your reports.

Children

TRACE is for people 13 and older.

Changes

If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we’ll update the date above and let account holders know in the app.

Home · Open TRACE · Privacy · Terms