Privacy Policy

The short version

MPinn turns a place into a short code. To do that it needs to know where the place is. It does not need to know who you are, and it is built so that it cannot learn.

We hold your email address, the country and region code you signed up with, and your timezone. We do not hold your name unless you type one, your street address, or your phone number. MPinn does not ask for a phone number anywhere — not for signing up, not for verification, not for recovery.

What we collect

When you create an account

• Your email address. This is how you sign in and how we send you a verification code and password resets. It is the only way we can contact you.
• Your country and the region code you are based in — a PIN code, a postcode, or its local equivalent. This is a rough area, not a street address.
• Your timezone, read from your device so dates display correctly.

When you create an MPinn

• The coordinates of the point, and how they were captured — a GPS fix on site, or a pin you dropped on a map. We record which, and we record the accuracy the device reported.
• The public label you write. Everyone who opens that code can read it, so write what a stranger would see on arrival, not who lives there.
• The region code you typed and, if you set one, an expiry date.

An MPinn record contains no name, no phone number and no address. It is a point and a label.

Automatically

• Standard technical logs from our hosting provider — IP address, browser, and the time of a request — kept for security and abuse investigation.
• An append-only record of significant actions, such as a code being issued or expiring, used to keep the registry consistent.

What we do not collect

• Phone numbers, in any form, for any purpose.
• Street addresses.
• Government identity documents or their numbers. We never ask for Aadhaar, a voter ID, a passport number or their equivalents anywhere else.
• Your contacts, your photo library, or your location in the background. Location is read only while you are actively creating or opening an MPinn, and only if you allow it.
• Advertising or cross-site tracking identifiers. There are no advertising cookies on MPinn.

Your location and your device

If you set the app's appearance to follow sunrise and sunset, your device works out the sun's position locally. That coordinate is never sent to us.

Your browser stores your appearance preference and your sign-in session on your own device. You can clear both by clearing site data.

How we use what we hold

• To run the service: issuing codes, resolving them, and showing you the places you created or saved.
• To contact you about your account: a verification code when you sign up, a password reset when you ask for one, and a notice before one of your codes expires. We do not send marketing email.
• To keep the registry honest: detecting abuse, duplicate points and automated misuse.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for advertising.

Who else sees it

• Our hosting and database provider stores the data on our behalf.
• Our map provider serves map imagery to your browser. Loading a map means your browser contacts them directly, which reveals your IP address and the area you are looking at, under their own privacy terms. We do not send them your account details.
• Our email provider delivers verification and password-reset messages.
• Authorities, where we are legally required to disclose something. We will tell you unless we are prohibited from doing so.

What is public

An MPinn and its label are public. Anyone with the code can open it and see the label, the point on a map and the recorded accuracy. That is the purpose of a code — it is meant to be handed to a courier, a driver or a guest.

Nothing on that page identifies you. Your email address is never shown with a code.

How long we keep it

• Account data: until you delete your account.
• Codes you created: a code is issued once and is never reassigned to a different place or person. When it expires or you delete your account, the code is retired — it stops resolving, and nobody else is ever given it.
• Labels and saved places: erased when you delete your account.
• The action record: kept, with your account reference removed, so the registry's history stays consistent without pointing at you.
• Technical logs: kept for a limited period for security purposes.

Your rights

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, and under the GDPR if you are in the EU or UK, you can:

• Ask what we hold about you and get a copy.
• Correct anything that is wrong — most of it you can edit yourself in your profile.
• Delete your account. The button is in your profile and it works immediately; you do not have to email anyone to be forgotten.
• Object to or restrict a particular use, and complain to your data protection authority.

Children

MPinn is not intended for children. We do not knowingly create accounts for anyone under the age at which they can consent to an online service in their country.

Security

Access to every record is restricted at the database level, not just hidden in the interface. Codes are issued only by our server; nothing in the app can mint one. We cannot promise perfect security — nobody honestly can — but we can promise that we hold as little about you as the product allows.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will say so in the app before the change takes effect. The version and date at the top of this page always reflect what is currently in force.

Contact

Write to privacy@mpinn.org for anything about this policy, including a request to see or delete your data.