Terrena · Legal
Privacy
Draft, last updated 14 November 2026. To be reviewed before launch.
What stays on your device
Your passports, home city, trip, map layers, filters and theme are kept in your browser's storage and in the page address (so a link you share carries them). They are not sent to us to be stored, unless you choose to save a trip to your account (below). Clearing your browser's site data removes them.
When the map needs data for a choice you made (for example the visa map for a passport, or a place's card), your browser asks our server for that data. The request names the passport or place, and nothing ties it to you.
What our server sees
Like any website, our server receives your IP address and browser details with each request. We use them only to serve the page and keep the service working. We don't keep them with anything else, and we use no advertising or tracking cookies.
Cookies and storage
Terrena sets no cookies unless you sign in, and then only the one that keeps you signed in. Your settings and the things you choose live in your browser's own storage, as described above, and never leave it unless you save them to an account. We don't track you across sites.
Anonymous usage stats, only if you say yes
Terrena asks once, after you've looked round for a couple of minutes, whether you'll share anonymous usage stats; you can change your answer any time in Settings → Data. Until you say yes, nothing is sent. Terrena works the same either way. If you say yes, your browser sends us:
- which features you use: a place card opened (which place), a layer or colouring switched on, a search used (not what you typed), the notebook or a trip's read mode or export used, and how the first-visit film ended;
- how smoothly the map ran: typical frame times while it moved, and the resolution it settled on;
- the kind of device (computer, tablet or phone) and its screen density.
With them we keep your browser's family (Chrome, Firefox, Safari…), your country as our network reports it, and the hour. We don't keep your IP address, an account, a cookie or anything you typed. Events from one visit share a random number your browser forgets when you close the tab, so visits can't be linked to each other or to you. We keep them for 90 days and use them only to decide what to improve; they're never sold or shared. Because nothing ties them to you, we can't find or delete yours afterwards: turning the setting off stops anything more being sent. Our legal reason is your consent.
Other services your browser contacts
Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Mapillary, and live data such as the aurora forecast, are fetched by our server and passed on, so those services never see you. Some map pictures can't be passed on that way, so your browser loads them directly, and the service that sends them sees your IP address and the area of the map you're looking at, as with any website:
- Close-up satellite imagery, from zoom level 8 in: Mapbox (api.mapbox.com). Map quality “Light” in Settings turns it off.
- Roads, streets and water close up: OpenFreeMap (tiles.openfreemap.org), built from OpenStreetMap.
- Close-up aerial photography over these countries, from their government mapping agency:
- United States: USGS The National Map (basemap.nationalmap.gov)
- Japan: Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (cyberjapandata.gsi.go.jp)
- France: IGN Géoplateforme (data.geopf.fr)
- Switzerland: swisstopo (wmts.geo.admin.ch)
- Netherlands: PDOK (service.pdok.nl)
- World Radio, only if you switch it on: each station you hear streams from the station's own server.
If you create a Community account
The map needs no account. A Community account is optional, and this is what it involves.
| What we keep | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your email address, display name and, if you sign in with Google, your Google account ID (we ask Google only for your name, email and picture) | To run your account and send sign-in links | Until you close the account |
| The date you confirmed you're 18 or over | To show we checked | Until you close the account |
| Your questions, answers, “helpful” marks, follows and reports | That's what Community is | Until you delete them or close the account (see the Terms) |
| A sign-in cookie | To keep you signed in. It's the only cookie, and it isn't used for tracking | 30 days, or until you sign out |
| The IP address and time of sign-ins and posts | To stop spam, abuse and account takeovers | 90 days |
| Trips you save to your account (stops, nights, start date and a name) | So you can open them on any device | Until you remove them or close the account |
| If you have Plus, your notes: what you write, and the places, photos (with their credits), map views (including a small picture of the map) and trips you add | So you can keep and reopen them on any device | Until you delete them or close the account |
| Countries you watch, the passports you chose when you started watching, and what their travel advice and entry rules said at the last check | To email you when those change | Until you stop watching (from the card or the email's link) or close the account |
| If you have Plus: your plan, its status and renewal date, and Stripe's customer reference for you | To give you Plus and manage billing | Until you close the account; Stripe keeps payment records as tax law requires |
| Moderation records (reports, decisions and reasons) | To handle appeals and meet legal duties | Up to 2 years after the decision |
Our legal reasons: providing the account you asked for (a contract with you); keeping Community safe and free of abuse (our legitimate interest, balanced against yours); and meeting legal duties such as handling reports of illegal content.
Who else handles it
- Email: Resend (resend.com) sends sign-in and notification emails, so it sees your email address.
- Google, only if you choose to sign in with Google.
- Payments: Stripe (stripe.com), only if you buy Plus. Stripe collects your card details and billing address on its own pages, and we never see your card number.
- Automatic checks: the text of each post is sent to OpenAI's moderation service to screen for abuse before it appears. Under OpenAI's API terms, it isn't used to train their models.
- Hosting: AlphaVPS (Nuremberg, Germany) runs our server and database.
- Network: Cloudflare (cloudflare.com) carries every visit to Terrena and stores the map files, so it sees your IP address and the pages you load.
- Backups: Hetzner (Helsinki, Finland) keeps our encrypted nightly backups.
Some of these process data outside your country, under the safeguards the law requires. We never sell your data and don't use it for advertising.
Your rights
You can see, download, correct or delete your data, and close your account, at any time, from your account settings or by writing to us. You can object to how we use it. If you're unhappy with our answer, you can complain to your data protection authority: in the UK the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk), in the EU your national authority, in India the Data Protection Board.
Contact
Questions or requests about your data: [email protected]. Run by Rahul Rajendran.