Privacy
The short version: nearby knows only a ~100 m area around you, and it keeps your votes for 24 hours.
What leaves your phone
- Your phone rounds your location to a grid cell of about 100 m before it sends anything. Your exact GPS position never leaves your phone.
- Your account is anonymous. nearby does not ask for your name, email or phone number.
- The app shows alerts as a rounded distance and direction. A push alert carries the alert's ~100 m cell, encrypted to your phone, so your phone can work out the distance.
- A bot check (Cloudflare Turnstile) runs once when you start.
What nearby keeps
- Your last two grid cells. They count toward local alert thresholds and are deleted after 14 days without an update.
- A keyed hash of your network address, only to limit new accounts per network. It is deleted after 1 hour.
- Your reports and votes. They are deleted after 24 hours. Each alert keeps only its counts, and ended alerts are deleted after 24 hours.
- Your push subscription and alert settings, if you turn on alerts. Turn off "Alerts on this phone" in settings (⚙︎) to delete them.
- Daily counts per incident type, with no account or location data, to tune the thresholds.
What nearby never does
- nearby never sells location or cell data.
- nearby has no police or partner feed or API.
- nearby has no incident type or text field that describes a person.
- The owner can remove an alert, but can never create or boost one.
nearby is not an emergency service. In an emergency, call 911.