What Together collects, and why

When you open the live map with location sharing on, you appear as an unnamed dot at your nearest city of 100,000 people or more, or at your country. Our network provider, Cloudflare, works out that approximate location from your IP address. We snap it to the nearest large city so it can never point to a street or a small town.

We never store or show your IP address. While your dot is live, it can also show the last few pairs of large cities or countries you explored, so somebody can open a connection or follow along. This short trail sits only in the same temporary Live now entry as your dot. Your dot and trail disappear within a minute of you closing the page, and neither becomes a saved history. Location sharing is on unless you turn it off below.

If you press “Find me”, your browser asks whether to share your location. If you agree, your device turns it into the nearest city of 100,000 people or more, or your country, straight away. Your exact location is never sent to us, stored or shown, and we never ask for it unless you press the button.

Your name only appears if you choose to appear with one, and that is for adults only.

If you accept analytics, we use Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity to understand how people use Together, so we can make it better. They set cookies and receive information about your device and visit, including your IP address. Clarity can record how pages are used; we hide the names and places people type from those recordings.

We do not use analytics for advertising, we have turned off Google's advertising features, and we never use it to decide who you are introduced to. Analytics only load after you accept, and you can change your mind at any time.

The facts about places come from open data that we copy onto our own server. When you open a place, its Wikipedia introduction and photograph are fetched by our server, not your browser, so Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons never see your visit. The weather right now is fetched the same way, from MET Norway, for the centre of the city or country only.

If you share a comparison, the link contains only the two places you chose to compare. It says nothing about you.

Members give an email address, a password, a first name or nickname and, if they like, a place, a line about themselves, the languages they would write in, a map picture and a face photo. The email is stored encrypted and is used only for signing in; I do not send email yet. Passwords are stored only as a one-way scramble.

Letters and chat messages are stored encrypted. Pen-pal chats are seen only by the two pen pals; place rooms are seen by the visitors and members who chose to join them. Active place rooms can appear on the map with an aggregate number of recently active people. Moving dots can show that somebody is typing, but never who they are or what they are typing; the typing signal expires after a few seconds. If a message is reported, I can see a sealed copy in the moderation queue. Chat messages are screened for serious safety risks before delivery. A direct browser connection between members may tell another participant's device your network address while both of you have the chat open, but messages are still saved and screened by Together first. If that connection is unavailable, chat continues through our server.

Regional chat messages disappear after seven days. Pen-pal conversations remain until either pen pal deletes the conversation for both people. Letters are deleted 30 days after a pen-pal connection ends; waves expire after 14 days; resolved reports are deleted after 90 days. Pictures are re-made on our server, which strips hidden data such as GPS location. Map pictures are public; face photos are shown only to pen pals.

Allowing community chat sets a secure cookie containing a random visitor token for up to 30 days. The database holds only a one-way hash of that token, an automatic anonymous name or the temporary name you choose, your coarse city or country, and the regional rooms you joined. Temporary names cannot copy an existing member name. Turning community chat off removes the visitor identity and its room memberships; regional messages still disappear on their normal seven-day schedule.

Signing in sets a separate cookie that keeps you signed in, for up to 30 days of not visiting. It records which browser and device type you use, so you can recognise your sessions, but never your IP address. You can download everything or delete your account at any time from Your data in your account.

Public maps, town records, boundaries and reference facts are saved on this device for offline study as you explore. Facts are checked again after 30 days and boundaries after seven days when online. Expired copies remain available offline and after a failed refresh, with their cache dates shown. The study cache is limited to 64 MB; older material may be replaced when online. The offline app and basic terrain are saved separately. Chats, account details, live visitors and compared place pairs are not stored in this study cache.

Someone else using this browser could inspect the public places it has saved. Use “Clear saved study data” in the Offline study panel to remove them, or clear this site's storage in your browser to remove the offline app too. Browsers may reclaim storage themselves, so this is not a permanent archive.

Your privacy choices, and the name and place you last used on Live now, are kept in your own browser's storage so you do not have to type them again. “Leave and forget me” on Live now removes them.

The map layers you switch on or off are kept in the same storage. Your choice of light or dark and palette is kept in one small cookie, so the page opens in your colours; it holds nothing else and is never used to track you.

You can ask what we hold about you, or ask us to delete it, by emailing [email protected]. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.