Mappendix Limited

Our Privacy Policy

Summary: We don't record any personally-identifying information (unless you email us).

Our business model is simply to sell apps for money. Unlike some "free to use" map apps we do not profit from users by recording your activity and selling that information to advertisers and other third parties. None of our apps require you to create an account with us or to supply an email address or similar information.

We receive limited information about the users of our apps from Apple, directly from the apps when they connect to our servers, and from your web browser when you view our websites. This is described in detail below. None of this information personally identifies you to us.

We use this limited information for the administration of the business, to monitor the operation of our servers, to detect and resolve problems and improve the operation of the apps, to understand how our apps are used in aggregate, and for similar legitimate business purposes. We may also share this information with law enforcement and similar bodies, and we may disseminate highly-aggregated data (such as lists of most popular maps) more widely.

In common with other app developers we receive the following information from Apple:

• Apple supplies information when you purchase, upgrade or re-install an app or make an in-app purchase. This includes the product, the date, the action (purchase, upgrade or re-install), the device used (iPhone or iPad), the version of the app, and your country of residence. We retain this information indefinitely, aggregated by week. None of this information personally identifies you to us.
• Apple supplies information about how frequently our apps are used but only for users who have enabled this in the Settings app. We may retain this information indefinitely. This information does not personally identify you to us.
• If an app crashes, Apple may supply us with a crash report but only if you have enabled this in the Settings app. We may retain these crash reports indefinitely. These reports do not personally identify you to us.
• If you purchased the app in response to an advertisment in the App Store, we may receive information from Apple about the search keywords that you used if you have not enabled "Limit Ad Tracking" in Settings. We may retain this information indefinitely. This information does not personally identify you to us.

We receive certain other information directly:

• When you download maps or other data from our servers, they record the date and time, the map that has been requested, the version of the app and the version of iOS being used, the device type (iPhone/iPad or Mac), the version of the app that you originally purchased, your very-approximate geographic location (i.e. at the level of country or state), and your IP address^*. The IP address is currently retained for 1 year; the other information is retained indefinitely. None of this information personally identifies you to us^*.
• If an error occurs while downloading a map, the app may try to report the error to us. This report may include the same information that is recorded for successful downloads, plus a description of the problem. This information does not personally identify you to us^*.
• When you view an app's online help or an app's website, we record your IP address^*, the date and time, the page that you have accessed, the page from which you followed a link to that page, and the web browser used to access the page. We currently retain this information for 1 year. None of this information personally identifies you to us^*. None of our web pages use cookies, or any other technique to track you.

^* Your internet service provider, and government agencies, could personally identify you from your IP address. We, however, do not have access to that data, so we do not consider IP addresses to be personally identifying; typically from an IP address we can identify only your internet service provider or other entity (employer, university etc.) providing your network connection.

Note that your map downloads may not be encrypted. This means that which maps your have downloaded could be observed by anyone able to spy on the network between you and our servers; this primarily means internet service providers and government agencies, but also providers of any WiFi networks that you use, e.g. hotels and cafes.

Within the apps:

• Your location is obtained when you turn on that feature, and used to display your position on the map. This information does not leave the app. You can disable this in the Settings app.
• Some of our apps can access your photos in order to display them on the map. The photo data does not leave the app. You can disable this in the Settings app.

We reserve the right to record additional non-personally-identifying information for the purposes of fraud detection and prevention.

If you contact us by email, we record those emails and our replies. We retain these communications indefinitely. Your email address is personally identifying; this is the only time that we normally record personally-identifying information about our users.

Please contact us if you have any questions about any of this.

Update History

February 2022: Updated to include "Device type (iPhone/iPad or Mac)" in the list of information that our servers record when maps are downloaded.

May 2024: Updated to include "very-approximate geographic location" in the list of information that is recorded when maps are downloaded. This is a consequence of our use of content distribution networks (CDNs) for some downloads; these report which of the CDN's regional data centers serviced each request.