Privacy Policy.

01What we collect

In shortYour account details, the content you post, your settings, and a small amount of technical data for security.

Account information

• Username and email address — to create and secure your account.
• Password — stored only as a salted bcrypt hash. We never see or store your actual password.
• Date of birth — collected once, used solely for age gating (see Minors). It is never shown to other users.

Profile & settings

• An optional display name, any nickname you set for yourself in a space, avatar, banner, bio, custom status, and the colors and font you choose for your name and profile — these are visible to other users wherever your name appears (a space nickname only inside that space).
• Activity (all optional, all off until you turn them on) — what you choose to show as “Playing”, “Watching” or “Listening to”. A hand-set activity is stored on your account until you clear it or it expires. Game detection in the desktop app checks which programs are running on your computer and compares them with a list of known games on your computer; the program list never leaves it — only the name (or Steam app number) of a matched game is sent, held in memory while you're connected, and never stored. If you connect Spotify, we store the access tokens Spotify gives us and your Spotify display name, and while you're online we ask Spotify what you're currently playing (track, artists, album art) — we don't store your listening history. Activity is shown only to people who can already see your online status, and never while you're Invisible.
• Client settings (theme, fonts, UI and notification preferences) synced to your account so they follow you across devices. Hardware device identifiers (like your microphone or camera selection) stay on your device only.

Content you create

• Messages in servers and direct messages, including edits, replies, reactions, pins, and checklists.
• Files and images you upload as attachments, avatars, banners, or server emoji, along with their owner, byte size, file type, and upload status so we can enforce storage limits and remove abandoned uploads.
• Voice notes you explicitly record, preview, and send are stored as audio attachments, with their duration and file metadata. They are visible to the people who can read the conversation, subject to the same attachment-link and retention rules as other uploads. Voice notes are separate from live calls; we never record calls.
• Saved messages and reminders are private to your account. We store references to the original messages and your reminder schedule, not separate copies of their text. The list syncs across your devices. You cannot read a saved message after it is deleted or you lose access to its conversation. References and reminder status remain until you remove them or delete your account. Reminders can generate in-app and push notifications with a generic reminder, without message text.
• Message search checks your current conversation permissions. Your personal search covers the servers you have joined and your own direct and group conversations.
• Reports and suggestions you submit.

Technical data

• Push subscriptions — if you enable notifications, your browser gives us a push endpoint, or the mobile app gives us a device push token, so we can deliver them. The iPhone app also gives us a call token (Apple's VoIP push token) while you are signed in; it is used only to ring an incoming call from a conversation you are in, and is removed when you sign out.
• IP address and browser user-agent — recorded in our internal audit log alongside administrative and security-relevant actions. We do not use them for profiling or analytics.
• Read states, mutes, per-channel notification levels, and which threads you follow — so unread badges and notifications work.
• Precise location — only if you switch on Location sharing in the mobile app, and only while it is on. See Location sharing for exactly what this means.

We do not run advertising, third-party analytics, or tracking pixels — not on this website, and not in the app.

02How we use it

We use your data for exactly four things:

• Running the Service — delivering messages, calls, files, and notifications to the right people in real time.
• Keeping you signed in and safe — authentication, age gating, and account security.
• Moderation and safety — handling user reports, enforcing our Terms of Service, and preventing abuse.
• Talking to you — service emails and, if you opted in, push notifications. No marketing spam.

We never sell your personal data, and we never share it with advertisers.

03Voice, video & screenshare

In shortCalls are live-only. We don't record them, and nothing is stored.

Voice, video, and screenshare streams are routed in real time through Cloudflare's Realtime infrastructure (an SFU — a relay that forwards streams between call participants). Streams exist only for the duration of the call: we do not record, store, or transcribe calls, and neither does the relay. The Service knows who is in which voice channel (that's visible to other members) but keeps no history of what was said or shown.

Watch Together. In a call, participants can put on a YouTube video or a direct video link for everyone in the call to watch in sync. To do that, our server passes the link, its title, who added it, and the shared play, pause and position state to the people in that call. It is held in memory only while the call is running and is discarded when the call empties — it is not recorded or stored, and nothing about what you watched is kept afterwards. Each person's own device loads the video: a YouTube video plays in YouTube's embedded player (served from youtube-nocookie.com), so YouTube (Google) receives that viewer's request — including their IP address and which video they watched — under Google's privacy policy; the player is labelled as a YouTube embed. To show a YouTube video's title, our server asks YouTube for it using only the video's ID, with no account details or names attached. A direct video link is fetched by each viewer's device from wherever it is hosted, and that host sees the request.

To keep calls working, the app reports technical call diagnostics to us during a call: connection states, track/codec names, packet counters, and error messages. This is metadata about the connection only — it never includes audio, video, or screen content — and is used solely to debug call problems.

04Who can see your content

In shortServer messages are visible to that server's members. DMs are private between you two — staff can access them only for moderation, and every access is logged.

• Server messages are visible to the members of that server, subject to channel permissions its moderators set.
• Direct messages are visible only to you and the other participant.
• Your profile (username, display name, avatar, bio, status) is visible to users you share a server or DM with.
• AutoMod in spaces — a space's moderators can set up AutoMod rules that check messages posted in that space (never direct messages) as they are sent. A rule can block a message, alert the moderators, or automatically time out, kick or ban the sender from that space. A copy of any message a rule catches is kept for that space's moderators. If a space uses an AI judgement rule, the text of messages that reach that rule is sent to TypeSafe for scoring (see Services we rely on).
• Platform staff can access content — including direct messages — only when investigating a report or suspected abuse. Every staff access of this kind is recorded in an immutable audit log.
• Uploaded files are served from our storage via unguessable links; anyone with a file's link can fetch that file, so treat attachments like anything else you share in a chat.

We disclose personal data to third parties only if required by law (for example, a valid legal request), or to protect the safety of our users or the Service.

05Location sharing

In shortOff by default, 18+ only, and only the people you pick can see you — friends and circles you choose, or a conversation, server map or event you deliberately share into. Turn it off and we stop collecting it.

The mobile app has an optional feature that shares your location with people you choose. It is off unless you turn it on, and while it is off we collect no location data at all.

• Who can use it — members aged 18 and over only. If your date of birth puts you under 18, the feature is unavailable and any sharing you had is switched off automatically.
• Who can see you — only people you have specifically granted access to: an individual friend, a circle you have switched sharing on for, (if you switch it on) your friends generally minus any exceptions you set, or the members of a room you deliberately share into (see the next point). Nothing is ever shared into a room unless you do it yourself, for that one room. There is no public map.
• Sharing into a conversation, server map or event — you can also choose to share with a room, which can include people who are not your friends:
  • a live location card you post in a direct message, group or text channel, which shows your moving position to the people who can read that conversation for the time you pick (at most 24 hours) and then ends by itself;
  • a server's map channel, where you appear to everyone who can view that channel for as long as you leave it on — only if the server has given your role permission to do so, and only once you switch it on yourself. It starts as an approximate area unless you choose exact;
  • an event you said you're going to, where people also going can see you're on the way, from an hour before it starts until it ends, and are told when you arrive at the venue.
  Only members aged 18 and over who can currently see that room are shown your location — anyone who leaves the conversation, the server or the event, loses access to the channel, or is blocked by you stops seeing it immediately. You can limit any room share to your friends only, or switch on "friends only, everywhere" to make every room share reach only friends. Sharing into a room never shows that room your history, your drives, or the names of your own places, and does not let anyone there ring or locate your phone. When a live location card ends it keeps the last position it showed, at the precision you chose, so the conversation reads sensibly afterwards; deleting the card removes it. Pausing hides you from every room at once; switching sharing off ends every live card and “on the way” share and deletes your last position. If you switched sharing on just to post a live card or to say you're on the way to an event, sharing switches itself off again when that ends and nothing else is using it. The app lists every place you're currently visible in, with a stop button for each.
• Circles — a circle is a group whose members can see each other, but each member decides for themselves whether the rest of it can see them, at what precision, and whether it gets their history. Being added to a circle never starts you sharing: your sharing with it is off until you turn it on, and that applies to the person who created the circle too. Its owner controls who is in it — not whether anyone in it is visible.
• Exact or approximate — each grant is either your exact position or an approximate area of roughly one kilometre, your choice, per person and per circle.
• Time limits and pause — a grant can expire automatically after a period you choose, and "Pause" hides you from everyone instantly while keeping your settings.
• What we store — your most recent position, and a location history (a trail) kept for up to 30 days. Your history is visible only to you unless you explicitly switch history on for a specific person or circle.
• Places — you can name an area ("Home", "School"). When you enter or leave one, the people who can see that place are told, and your position reads as “at Home” instead of coordinates. A place you make on your own is visible to everyone you share your location with. A place attached to a circle belongs to that circle: everyone in it sees it, it applies to every member, and the circle's owner and anyone they mark as an admin can rename or delete it. Nobody outside the circle can see it or is told it exists. You can switch off arrival and departure alerts for a circle without switching off sharing with it. A circle can also have its own group chat; if it does, and you share with that circle at exact precision, your arrivals at and departures from the circle's places are posted there as a short line. A server's map channel can have places of its own too, drawn by people the server allows; they belong to that channel and never become one of your places. Your place on your profile — if you switch it on, people who can already see your exact location also see the name of the place you're at (for example “At Home”) on your profile card. It is off by default.
• What we collect it with — while sharing is on, the app reports your position in the background as you move, at your phone's high-accuracy setting (roughly 10 metres, rather than the ~100 metres it used before). While you are not moving, your phone's precise location (GPS) is switched off: the phone's operating system watches a small area around where you stopped, using mobile and Wi-Fi signals, and only when you leave it does the app start reporting your position again. While you stay put, the app checks in about once an hour with your battery level and the fact that it is still running, but no new position — so the people you share with can tell a phone that is still at the same place from one that has stopped reporting. If your phone has been silent for about an hour, our server sends it a silent request to check in this way. A check-in or a report that shows you have not moved is not added to your trail; it only refreshes the time your phone was last seen and how long you have been at that spot, both of which the people you share with can see. Android shows a permanent notification for the whole time any of this is happening.
• Movement and drives — the position your phone reports includes its own accuracy estimate and, while you are moving, your speed. People you share with see both, and if you have also given someone access to your history, the app groups your saved trail into drives (start, end, distance, duration, top speed). This is worked out from the trail already described above — we do not record anything extra to produce it, and someone who can see only your current location never sees your drives.
• Ringing and locating a phone — anyone you share your location with as a friend (directly, through a circle, or through sharing with all your friends) can also make your phone ring (it sounds even if nobody picks it up, and on Android it is designed to sound through a silenced ringer), and can ask your phone to report its position straight away rather than wait for you to move. Both work without anyone touching the phone. The request to report a position happens silently: your phone is not notified and you are not shown a record of it. Neither action reveals anything the person could not already see — the position they receive is the same one they were already entitled to, at the same precision, so someone with an approximate share still only ever sees an approximate area. Both are limited to a few attempts every few minutes per person. People who can see you only through a conversation, server map or event cannot do either. If you do not want someone to be able to do this, stop sharing your location with them, pause sharing, or block them — any of those removes the ability immediately.
• Turning it off — switching sharing off stops collection immediately and deletes your last position. You can delete your entire location history at any time from the app, and it is deleted with your account.
• Blocking — blocking someone immediately ends any location sharing between the two of you, in both directions: direct grants are deleted, they are removed from your circles and you from theirs, and neither of you can re-share until the block is lifted. Unblocking does not restore what was revoked; it only allows contact again.

We do not use your location for advertising, profiling, or analytics, we do not sell it, and we do not share it with third parties.

Maps are provided by Google. When you open the map, the Google Maps service receives the map area being displayed and standard technical request data, under Google's privacy policy. Your stored location history is held by us and is not sent to Google, and viewing a map centred on a location does disclose that map area to them. Travel times: when you open a friend's card or a place on the map, our server asks Google for the travel time (and route) from your last shared position to that point. Google receives only those two points and the travel mode, from our server rather than your device, with no account details or names attached. Place names shown as “near…” are resolved on our own servers. If you tap a business or landmark on the map to get directions or send it to a friend, that one place is looked up from Google.

06Services we rely on

In shortCloudflare carries traffic, stores uploads, and relays calls. Giphy powers GIF search. Spotify and Steam are asked about your activity only if you turn that on. Google draws the Nearby map and works out travel times. YouTube plays videos you choose to play from it. TypeSafe scores messages in spaces that turn on AI moderation. Google Fonts serves fonts on this website.

• Cloudflare — sits in front of the Service (CDN/proxy), stores uploaded files (R2), and relays voice/video/screenshare (Realtime & TURN). Traffic and files pass through Cloudflare's infrastructure under their privacy terms.
• Google Maps — renders the map in the Nearby feature (web and mobile). Opening a map sends the displayed map area to Google, and a travel-time lookup sends the two points of the route (yours and the friend's or place's), via our server. We do not send them your account, anyone's name, or your location history.
• YouTube (Google) — only when you press play on a YouTube video embedded in a message, or are in a call where someone puts on a YouTube video with Watch Together. The video then plays in YouTube's embedded player (youtube-nocookie.com) on your device, which receives your request, including your IP address and which video you watched. Our server separately looks up a Watch Together video's title from YouTube using only the video's ID. We do not send YouTube your account, your name, or anything about the call. Vimeo videos embedded in messages work the same way when you press play.
• SMTP2GO — delivers account verification and password-reset emails. It receives the destination email address and the contents needed to deliver that email.
• TypeSafe — scores message text for spaces whose moderators have turned on an AutoMod “AI judgement” rule. Only the text of a message posted in such a space is sent, from our server, with no username, account details or IP address. Nothing is sent for direct messages or for spaces without such a rule.
• Spotify — only if you connect it. Our server asks Spotify what you're currently playing while you're online, using the permission you granted (read currently playing — it can't control playback or see your playlists). Disconnecting deletes the tokens; you can also revoke access from your Spotify account page.
• Steam — when the desktop app detects a Steam game, our server looks up that game's name from Steam's public store by its app number, and your client loads its cover art from Steam's image servers. No account or personal details are sent to Steam.
• Giphy — powers the GIF picker. Your GIF search terms are forwarded to Giphy through our server; your identity, IP address, and account details are not sent to them.
• Google Fonts — this website (not the app itself) loads fonts from Google's servers, which means your browser makes a request to Google when you visit these pages.
• Your browser's or device's push service — if you enable notifications, delivery goes through the push service built into your browser or OS (e.g. Mozilla, Google, or Apple's). Web notification payloads are encrypted end-to-end between our server and your device. For the mobile app, notifications are delivered via the Expo push service (our mobile push delivery provider) and then Google or Apple; an incoming call on an iPhone is sent by us directly to Apple (the caller's name and profile-picture link, a group call's group name, and internal ids — no message content — so the phone's call screen can show who is calling); the notification title and preview text pass through those providers — for a message notification that can include the preview text of the last few messages in that conversation, and each sender's display name and profile-picture link, so your phone can show them as one conversation with the sender's picture. The app keeps those recent previews on your phone only until you read or dismiss the notification, and the Android app is excluded from Google device backups and phone-to-phone transfers.

07Cookies & local storage

We use browser storage for one purpose: keeping you signed in and remembering device-local preferences (like which microphone you picked). There are no advertising cookies and no cross-site tracking of any kind.

The mobile app also keeps a temporary copy of the most recent messages of the conversations you opened last (up to 50 messages in each of up to 30 conversations) in its cache on your phone, so they appear instantly when you reopen the app. It is not included in device backups, is replaced with fresh data every time you open a conversation, is cleared when you sign out, and a conversation is removed from it if you lose access to it.

08Retention & deletion

In shortYour data lives as long as your account does. A few safety records outlive deletion — with your name detached where possible.

• Deleting a message hides it from everyone immediately. A copy is retained internally so moderators can still act on reports about it (e.g. someone deleting harassment right after sending it).
• Editing a message keeps its earlier versions internally for the same moderation reason (e.g. editing abusive content after it's seen). Prior versions are visible only to platform administrators, never to other members.
• Reported messages are snapshotted, along with surrounding conversation, at the moment of the report. That snapshot is kept as evidence even if the original messages are edited or deleted.
• Location data — your current position is deleted as soon as you stop sharing. Your location history is kept for up to 30 days and then deleted automatically; you can delete all of it yourself at any time.
• Deleting your account removes your profile, memberships, messages, DMs, settings, push subscriptions, friendships, any hand-set activity and Spotify connection, and all location data.
• Uploaded files — verified uploads that are no longer referenced are queued for cleanup after at least 30 hours. Files still referenced by someone else’s forwarded message or a remaining shared-space asset are retained with that content. Older uploads without reliable ownership records require manual review before erasure, to avoid deleting another person’s file. Backups expire within 30 days.
• What survives account deletion: moderation records (reports, warnings, bans) and audit-log entries, which keep a snapshot of the username involved but are detached from the deleted account. If you are under 16, sign-up is refused before an account is created, and nothing you entered (email, password, date of birth or IP address) is stored.

09Security

All traffic to the Service is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/WSS). Passwords are hashed with bcrypt and never stored in plain text. Administrative access is restricted to designated staff and every administrative action is recorded in an audit log that cannot be edited. No system is perfectly secure — if we ever discover a breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you as required by law.

10Minors

Translocate is not for children under 16. We collect your date of birth at signup to enforce this: sign-ups from anyone under 16 are refused without storing any of the details entered, an existing account found to be under 16 is fully blocked from the Service, and users aged 16–17 are automatically prevented from joining or viewing communities and channels marked 18+. Location sharing is restricted further still: it is available only to members aged 18 and over, and the daily age check switches it off for anyone who is not. If you believe a child under 16 is using Translocate, email [email protected] and we will act on it.

11Your rights

Wherever you live, we extend the same rights to everyone:

• Access & portability — ask us what data we hold about you and get a copy.
• Correction — fix inaccurate account data (most of it you can edit yourself in User Settings).
• Deletion — delete your account and data yourself, from Settings → Account in the app; it takes effect immediately (see Retention for the narrow exceptions).
• Objection — object to a use of your data you think is improper.

To exercise any of these, email [email protected] from the address on your account. We'll respond within 30 days. Depending on where you live (e.g. the EU/EEA, UK, or California), you may also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority.

12EU, EEA & UK: the formal bits

If you're in the EU, EEA or UK, the GDPR applies to us and this section spells out what it requires. It doesn't change what we do — section 11 already gives everyone those rights — it just states it in the vocabulary the law uses.

Who is the controller. Sterango, operator of Translocate, is the data controller for your account and everything described in this policy. Our legal identity, postal address and contact details are on our legal notice page. You can reach us about any data-protection matter at [email protected]; we have not appointed a data protection officer, as we are not required to.

Why we're allowed to process your data. Our legal bases are:

• Performance of a contract — running your account and delivering messages, calls and files. Without this data there is no service to provide.
• Consent — location sharing, and push notifications. Both are off until you switch them on, and withdrawing consent is instant and as easy as giving it (turn sharing off in the app; withdrawal doesn't affect what happened before it).
• Legal obligation — reporting apparent child sexual abuse material to NCMEC, and responding to lawful orders.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the platform safe and abuse-free, moderation records, security logging, and preventing ban evasion. We've weighed these against your rights and kept the data narrow and the retention short.

Your rights, named. In addition to access, portability, correction, deletion and objection in section 11, you have the right to restriction of processing, the right to withdraw consent at any time, and the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that produces legal or similarly significant effects — Translocate makes no such decisions about your account: platform-level action against an account (a warning, suspension or ban) is decided by a person. AutoMod rules that a space's own moderators set up can act automatically within that space only (blocking a message, or a timeout, kick or ban from that space). Those do not affect your Translocate account, and the space's moderators can reverse them.

Where your data goes. We are based in the United States, so using Translocate means your data is transferred outside the EEA and UK, to us and to the providers listed in section 06. Where a provider processes personal data on our behalf, that transfer relies on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (plus the UK Addendum) or, where applicable, the provider's certification under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

Complaints. You can complain to your national data protection authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office. We'd rather you told us first at [email protected] so we can fix it, but you don't have to.

13Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or how we use it, we'll update this page and its "Effective" date, and give notice in the app or by email for anything material. We won't quietly start doing something this policy says we don't do.

14Contact

Translocate is operated by Sterango, based in the United States. For anything privacy-related, email [email protected]. Our full operator identity and postal address are on our legal notice page.