Privacy policy

Last updated October 25, 2026

squidmaps is in beta, run by SQUIDMAPS, LLC, a New York limited liability company (“we” or “us”). This is a short policy for the beta; a fuller one will replace it before the beta ends. We collect what we need to run squidmaps, we don’t sell it or use it for ads, analytics are off unless you turn them on, and published maps are public.

What we collect

• When you ask for an invite: your email address, what you’d use squidmaps for, and where the link you followed came from.
• Your account: your email address, name and username, and the profile you choose to fill in (photo, bio, location, website and social handles). Your profile is public.
• Your maps: everything you put in them, including imported files, uploaded images and custom basemaps, and thumbnails we make of them.
• Your activity: maps you favorite, view counts (see below), and the emails we send you.
• Feedback: what you send us, with any screenshots, the page you were on, your browser and the map you had open.
• Technical information: like any website, our servers see your IP address and browser, which we use to deliver pages, prevent abuse and fix errors.

We use it to run squidmaps and the beta: to sign you in, save and publish your maps, send invitations and sign-in links, email beta participants updates on the beta (see the terms), follow up on feedback, keep squidmaps secure, and figure out what to improve. We don’t use your maps to train AI models.

Published maps are public

Maps are only shown to you until you publish them (but see files at private addresses). Once published, anyone with the link can see a map, it’s listed on your profile, and it can be embedded elsewhere. Anyone viewing it can also download its data, including properties that aren’t shown on the map, and the original files of its images, which can include where a photo was taken. Check your data before you publish.

Maps sent with an import link, by an AI assistant say, can be seen by anyone with the link until someone adds them to their account.

Files at private addresses

Some files aren’t locked behind your account, but kept at long, random addresses that can’t be guessed: your maps’ thumbnails (including maps you haven’t published), the images you upload, and screenshots you send with feedback. We only show these addresses to people who can see the map, or to the squidmaps team for screenshots, but anyone who has one can open the file. Don’t share them if you want the files kept private.

When a map changes, its thumbnail moves to a new address and the old one is deleted, so unpublishing a map replaces the thumbnail visitors saw. Images stay at their addresses until you delete their map, even after you unpublish it or remove them from a feature, so someone who saw a map’s images could still open them.

Who else sees it

• The squidmaps team, when needed to help you, look into a problem or report, or keep squidmaps secure. Invite requests, new members (with their email addresses) and feedback are posted to the team’s private Slack.
• Services that run squidmaps for us: Railway (hosting and database), Cloudflare (network and file storage), Resend (email) and Slack (team notifications), and PostHog only if you accept analytics.
• People involved in a report. If a map is reported or removed, we may tell its owner why. Copyright notices may be shared with the person whose map they’re about, and counter-notices with the person who sent the notice.
• Anyone the law requires us to share it with, or when needed to protect someone’s safety or squidmaps’ rights.
• Whoever runs squidmaps next, if it’s ever merged, acquired or sold; this policy would still apply to your information.

Your choices

You can edit your profile, unpublish, delete or export your maps, and turn analytics on or off at any time. To get a copy of your information, correct it or delete your account, email [email protected]. We may need to confirm it’s you first. Deleting your account deletes your maps, images and profile; copies in backups are kept for a limited time. We may keep removed content, reports and the information around them longer when we need to for legal reasons or to deal with abuse.

Depending on where you live, privacy laws (like those in California or the EU and UK) may give you more rights, such as to object to or restrict how we use your information, or to complain to a regulator. We’ll honor requests the law gives you a right to.

squidmaps isn’t for children under 13.

Cookies and analytics

Always on

These keep squidmaps working, so they don’t ask first:

Our network provider, Cloudflare, may set a cookie that tells people from bots, to protect the site.

Only if you accept: PostHog

With your OK, squidmaps uses PostHog to understand how it’s used, so we can fix what’s confusing and build what’s missing:

• Pages you visit and what you click, and heatmaps of where people click and scroll.
• What you do in squidmaps, like making a map, adding features, importing a file or publishing: what kind of thing and how many, never what your maps say or show.
• Errors you run into, to fix them.
• Recordings of sessions, to see where things go wrong. What you type is hidden from them, and so is the admin area.
• If you’re signed in, your account id and username, so we can follow up on what a beta tester hit. Never your email address.

PostHog stores a cookie and local storage named ph_… to tell visits apart. PostHog is a US company, and what it collects is stored in the United States, so if you’re in the EU or UK, accepting means your data is transferred there. PostHog protects such transfers with the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.

We never sell data or show ads. Nothing is loaded from PostHog unless you accept, and you can change your mind any time from Cookie settings at the bottom of any page (or in the editor’s menu). Turning it off deletes PostHog’s cookies and storage from your browser.

Maps embedded on other websites never ask, and never track.

Other services your browser contacts

Showing maps means your browser loads map tiles from Protomaps, which sees your IP address the way any website does. In the editor, searching for places uses geocode.earth.

View counts

To count a map’s views once per person per day, we keep a salted hash of your account, or of your IP address and browser if you’re signed out: never the address itself. It’s stored on our servers, not in your browser, and deleted after a day or two.

Questions

Email [email protected].

This policy will change during the beta. We’ll post small changes here with a new date at the top, without an announcement. For significant changes, we’ll tell you by email or in squidmaps before they take effect, and we won’t use information we’ve already collected in a materially different way without asking you first.