Privacy policy

LocateImages is built so that your photo is not kept anywhere. This policy explains what happens to it when you analyse it, which technical data the website receives when you visit it, who receives them and what you can do about it. There are no accounts, no payments, and I sell no data.

Who is responsible

The controller is the company that operates LocateImages («I» or «me» in this policy). Its identification details are provided to anyone with a legitimate interest who asks through the contact form, which is also the way to write to me about your data.

Your photo

When you drop, choose, paste or try a photo, this is what happens, and nothing else:

• It reaches my server and lives only in memory. It is not written to disk or to any database. It is deleted as soon as the analysis ends, or after 15 minutes if nobody collects the result.
• Faces are blurred first. A detector that runs on my server finds faces and blurs them, without recognising anyone: it does not compare faces, does not estimate ages and builds no database of faces.
• A local second opinion. GeoCLIP, an open model that runs on my own server, compares the photo with places of the world to give a first guess. The photo does not leave my server for this.
• The blurred copy is sent to Claude, the AI of Anthropic, to be analysed. Anthropic receives it as a provider of the service, only to return the analysis, with no tools and no access to anything else.
• What the file says. If the photo carries metadata (GPS coordinates, date, camera), I read it to show it to you apart, and it is deleted with the photo. It is never used for the answer.
• The result is handed to you and deleted. I keep neither the result, nor its coordinates, nor the name of the place, nor the metadata.
• A hint, if you write one. The optional text you add («I think it is Portugal») travels with the photo to the AI and is deleted with it.
• The area, if you draw one. The circle you mark on the map before the analysis (its centre, its radius and, if you searched for a place to take the map there, its name) travels with the photo to the AI as the place where you say it was taken, and is deleted with it. Searching for a place only looks up a list of cities kept on my server.
• The exact search, if you ask for it. My server asks Mapillary, Panoramax and KartaView which street-level photos they have in the areas to search, sending them only the coordinates of those areas: never your photo or anything that identifies you. It downloads those street-level photos into its memory, compares them there with yours and shows you the one that matches, with its author, its licence and a link to its source. When the search goes through a city index, that comparison may be done, instead of by my server, by a server with a graphics card that I rent by the hour in a data centre in the European Union (through vast.ai): I send it a copy of your photo, already blurred, reduced to 1,024 pixels and without metadata, and the addresses of the street-level photos it has to compare; it downloads them, compares them in its memory and deletes everything when it finishes, without receiving your IP or anything that identifies you. To check that the computed spot does not fall inside a building, my server also asks OpenFreeMap for the building tiles of that area, which carry only coordinates. The areas, the street-level photos and the spot found are deleted with the rest of the analysis.

Basis: providing the service you ask me for (analysing your photo). For the people who appear in the photo incidentally, my legitimate interest in providing it, with the safeguards of this section: blurring first, immediate deletion and reduced precision when people or homes appear.

All that remains of each analysis is an anonymous count: at what level of precision and confidence it came out, whether the two models agreed, whether the precision was reduced, how long it took and, if you asked for the exact search, whether it found the spot, which service the street-level photo came from and how long it took. It holds no photo, no coordinates, no place names and nothing that identifies you.

The day's credits

To keep the tool free, each connection has some free credits a day: analysing a photo uses one, and the exact search uses more, the larger the area. To count them, my server keeps your IP address only as an encrypted fingerprint (a digest from which the IP cannot be recovered) together with the credits used that day, and deletes it after 2 days. Basis: my legitimate interest in keeping the free service from running out or being abused.

When you visit the website

• Technical data. Like any website, my servers receive your IP address, the description of your browser and the addresses you request. They are used to deliver the pages, keep the service secure and fix problems, and are deleted automatically after 7 days. Basis: my legitimate interest in a secure service.
• First-party measuring. The website sends short events (a page was opened, a photo was chosen, a result was copied) with the page, the website you came from (its name only), the type of device, the language and your country (a two-letter code taken from your IP, which is not stored with them). A random session number, kept in the browser tab, orders the steps of a visit and disappears when the tab is closed. Anything that looks like an e-mail address or a phone number is discarded before it is stored. Basis: my legitimate interest in understanding how the service is used, without identifying you.
• A visitor id, only if you accept. If you press Accept in the banner, your browser keeps a random id to tell one visit from the next. If you reject, it is not created, and you can change your mind at any time with the Cookies link at the foot of every page. Basis: your consent.
• The map. Your browser downloads the map tiles directly from OpenFreeMap, which receives your IP and the areas of the map requested, as any website your browser visits does.
• The aerial view. When the map shows aerial imagery (if you switch it to Satellite, and by itself when the exact search finds the spot), the open aerial photos of national and regional mapping agencies, the world satellite mosaic of EOX and Esri's World Imagery reach your browser through my server: it asks for them with its own address and only the coordinates of the map tiles, never your IP or anything about you. It keeps the open ones for a while in a cache on disk; Esri's it does not keep. My server does not log your IP next to the tiles you ask for.
• The street-level photos. My server serves them to you, so your browser does not contact Mapillary, Panoramax or KartaView, unless you open the photo on their website through the link in its attribution, as with any other link.

When you write to me

The contact form sends me your e-mail address, your name if you give it, the subject, your message and its language. I use it only to answer you and follow up. Basis: my legitimate interest in answering you.

Who receives your data

I use a few providers to make LocateImages work. Each receives only what it needs:

• Anthropic (United States): the blurred copy of your photo and the hint you write, to analyse it with Claude.
• Cloudflare: delivers the website and protects it from attacks; it handles your IP address and your requests.
• My hosting provider, which rents me the servers in the European Union where the website, the analysis and the measuring run.
• OpenFreeMap: the map tiles, which your browser requests from it directly.
• The mapping agencies, EOX and Esri (the latter in the United States) whose aerial photos the map shows (such as the national geographic institutes of Spain or France): only the coordinates of the tiles, which my server asks them for. They receive neither your IP nor anything that identifies you.
• Mapillary (by Meta Platforms), Panoramax (the open catalogue of street-level photos of the French IGN and OpenStreetMap France) and KartaView (by Grab): only if you ask for the exact search, and only the coordinates of the areas to search, which my server sends them to find out which street-level photos they have there. They receive neither your photo, nor your IP, nor anything that identifies you.
• vast.ai (United States), which rents me servers with graphics cards by the hour in data centres in the European Union: only when the exact search goes through a city index, the blurred and reduced copy of your photo, without metadata, and the addresses of the street-level photos to compare. It does not keep them, and it receives neither your IP nor anything that identifies you.
• My e-mail provider: the mailbox I answer your messages from, if you leave your e-mail address. LocateImages sends no automatic e-mails.

I do not sell or rent data, there are no ads, and I use no advertising trackers and no third-party cookies.

Some of these providers are outside the European Economic Area, mainly in the United States. Those transfers rely on the safeguards the GDPR provides for, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

How long I keep them

• Your photo, its hint, the area you draw and its metadata: as long as the analysis lasts, and 15 minutes at most.
• The street-level photos, the areas of the exact search and the spot found: in memory while the search lasts, and deleted with the analysis.
• The result: until it is handed to you, and 15 minutes at most. It is not kept afterwards.
• The fingerprint of your IP for the daily limit: 2 days.
• Technical server logs (the IP, the browser and the addresses requested): 7 days.
• Messages: as long as needed to answer you and follow up.
• Measuring and anonymous counts: kept to understand how the service is used over time. They hold no name, e-mail address, IP or photo.

Your rights

You can ask me for access to your data, its rectification or erasure, the restriction of or objection to its use, and to receive it in a portable format, and you can withdraw at any time the consent you gave for the visitor id. Since I keep neither your photos nor your results, and there are no accounts, I will usually hold nothing of yours beyond your messages. To exercise any right, write to me through the contact form.

If you believe someone is using LocateImages to locate you, tell me through the same form, choosing «Report misuse».

If you think I have not handled your data properly, you can complain to the data protection authority of your country; in Spain, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos.

Security

The website works only over HTTPS. Photos, yours and the street-level ones, are not written to disk and are deleted when the analysis ends; faces are blurred before the photo leaves my server; the IP addresses of the daily limit are kept only as encrypted fingerprints. Access to the servers is limited to what is needed for the service to work.

Children

LocateImages is not meant for children under 14. If you are younger, use it only with the permission of your parent or guardian.

Changes

I will update this policy when what I do with data changes. The date above shows the latest version; if a change is important, I will say so on the website.

See also the cookie policy and the terms.