Privacy

The short version

ChattyMaps does not require an account, email address, or password. It stores the poll content people submit, anonymous browser-session identifiers, nicknames, locations, and votes so the service can create and operate shared polls. Public polls appear in Discover. Unlisted polls do not, but anyone with their link can open them.

Anonymous browser sessions

The server creates a random session identifier and stores it in a necessary, httpOnly cookie for up to one year. The cookie lets the same browser retain creator controls and its participant identity. It is not an account and does not follow you across browsers or devices. Clearing it loses those controls; there is currently no recovery process.

Poll information

A poll can contain its title, description, creator nickname, candidate place names, addresses and coordinates, participant nicknames, votes, visibility setting, and lifecycle dates. Do not put confidential information, someone else's personal information, or anything unlawful in a poll.

In social voting mode, participant nicknames and individual votes are visible to people who can open the poll. In aggregate-only mode, viewers see their own row and group totals, but not other individual rows.

Public and unlisted polls

Public polls can be shown on the Discover page. Unlisted polls are omitted from Discover, but they are not password-protected or access-controlled. Treat an unlisted poll URL as a shareable secret.

Service providers and logs

Cloudflare runs the application and database and may process request metadata such as IP addresses for delivery, security, rate limiting, and operational logs. Place-search queries are proxied by ChattyMaps to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service. Map tiles come from OpenStreetMap. Those providers operate under their own terms and privacy practices.

Product measurement

ChattyMaps keeps coarse daily counters for successfully created polls, new participants joining, polls finalized, and successful share or copy actions. Counters can be grouped into broad bands such as public or unlisted, number of candidates or participants, deadline choice, time to a decision, and the type of sharing action. The metrics table does not contain poll or participant IDs, session cookies, URLs, names, poll text, search queries, addresses, or coordinates, and it cannot reconstruct an individual journey.

Retention and deletion

A creator can permanently delete a poll while their creator session remains available. ChattyMaps does not yet promise automatic deletion after expiry, a fixed retention period, account recovery, or restoration from deletion. A formal retention schedule and a verified operator contact must be published before the service is promoted as a public production product.

Contact and operator details

This deployment is currently an unannounced product preview. Verified operator identity, jurisdiction, postal details, and a privacy-contact channel have not yet been published. Those details are a release blocker, not information this page should invent.