What does GPSLarp send from my Mac?
Some of what the app does works by contacting companies that are not us, directly from your own computer. Those requests do not pass through our servers, so we never see them — but your IP address and the contents reach whoever is on the other end, and you cannot see any of it from the interface.
This page is the plain-language version. The privacy policy is the complete and governing account, and where the two disagree the policy is right and this page is a defect. Section 5 there is the one that matches this page.
01Who is contacted, and when
Four things in the app reach outside your Mac to somebody other than us. Each happens only when you use the feature it belongs to, except the second, which is dealt with separately below.
01Searching for a place, or naming a pin
Goes to Nominatim, run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. It receives the text you typed, or the coordinates of the point you clicked, plus your IP address. Nothing else about you and nothing about your phone.
02The map you are looking at
Goes to Mapbox. It receives which map tiles you are viewing — in effect, roughly which part of the world you are looking at — plus your IP address. The map software also reports on its own, which is section 02 below.
03Planning a walking or driving route
Goes to one of two public routing services, and which one
depends on the mode you chose: a driving route reaches
router.project-osrm.org, a walking route reaches
routing.openstreetmap.de. Each receives the start and end
coordinates of the route you are planning, plus your IP address. Neither is
run by us and neither offers us or you any availability or privacy
commitment. So the mode you pick decides which company learns where
you are planning to go.
04The profile picture beside your name
Goes to whichever host stores that picture on your sign-in provider's
behalf — for an account linked to Google, that is
storage.googleapis.com. It is not one fixed address; the
provider chooses it per account, not us. It receives a request for your own
picture and your IP address, and nothing about you beyond the request for
it.
The pattern worth noticing
Panning the map to the place you intend to appear to be tells the tile provider which part of the world interests you, and planning a route sends its two endpoints to a public service. Those are the most revealing thing this application does over the network, and they are the part we have the least control over. None of it is joined to your account by us and none of it reaches our analytics — but it happens on your connection, from your IP address, and you would not know from looking at the window.
02The map is the noisy one
The map software reports to Mapbox on its own account, five times within about a second of the window opening, and before you sign in. What it sends has been measured rather than assumed — read off the bytes actually sent:
- an identifier that is newly generated on every launch;
- the version of the map software and how it was packaged;
- the address of the map style, the zoom level the map opens at, and the map projection;
- and a set of technical details about your machine: the user-agent string, your screen and window size, the display scaling factor, and the name and maker of your graphics hardware.
It does not send your location. Not the position you choose, and not your device's real one. That was established by reading the bytes rather than from a description of them.
We are not permitted to switch this off. The licence for that software forbids limiting what it sends, by modifying it or by any other means, so there is no setting for it here and there is not going to be one.
One thing we will not tell you
Because the identifier is new each launch, nothing is handed over that is designed to follow you from one session to the next. But the machine details in that same message are the kind that can single out a device on their own, so we will not tell you that your launches cannot be connected — only that we do not send anything built to connect them. That distinction is the honest one and we would rather state it than round it off.
03What comes to us instead
Separately from the four above, the app talks to our own servers for the things an account is for: signing in, checking what your account is allowed to do, and looking for an update. Those are a different subject with a different legal footing, and they are covered by How do I export or delete my data? and by the privacy policy in full.
Two facts from there are worth repeating because people assume the opposite:
- Analytics and session recording are opt-in and off by default. Nothing is collected under either heading unless you turned it on, they are separate choices, and either can be switched off again at any time.
- Downloading the app needs no account at all. Running it does. The installer asks for nothing — see What do I get without paying?
What the app cannot do without a network at all, and what it can, is its own question: Does GPSLarp need an internet connection?
04What is never sent
- Nothing goes onto the iPhone. No application, no configuration profile, no jailbreak — so nothing on the phone is reporting anywhere either. The whole of that is on What does GPSLarp actually change on my iPhone?
- Your Mac's administrator password is never seen, stored or sent. The prompt is macOS's own dialog and the app is handed a yes or a no — GPSLarp is asking for my Mac's administrator password.
- Your phone's identifier is kept off screens and out of logs. It is treated as personal data inside the app rather than as a debugging convenience.
- Your saved places are not uploaded. They are a plain file on your own Mac, which is also why a second Mac starts empty — Where are my saved locations kept?
05What you can turn off
Searching and routing: use them or do not. There is no switch, because the request is the feature. Typing coordinates directly rather than searching for a place name avoids the search request — see How do I set an exact latitude and longitude? — and not planning a route avoids the routing one.
The map: no. The window is a map, and the reporting described above cannot be limited under the licence we hold.
Analytics and session recording: yes, both, at any time, from your account page or the banner on this site. They are off unless you switched them on.
Everything held about you: export it or delete it. Both controls are in one place, and the half worth reading is what deletion does not remove — How do I export or delete my data?
The honest limit of this page: it lists the requests the application is written to make and what each carries, restated from the privacy policy. It is a summary of a document that governs it, so if you are making a decision on the strength of it, read section 5 of the privacy policy rather than this.