Who is responsible?

Tony David Sprotte, Hammer Steindamm 147, 20535 Hamburg, Germany, is the controller for SpotFinder. Contact support@spotfinder.work about privacy or your rights. See our Legal Notice.

Data we use and why

• Account: email, user ID, profile name, optional avatar, authentication information and preferences let us provide and secure your account (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)). We store accounts, sessions and password hashes in our own database; we never store plain-text passwords. If you sign in with Google or GitHub, that provider confirms your identity and shares your email, name and avatar with us.
• Contributions: reviews, ratings, images, spot submissions, blog contributions and their timestamps provide community content. Your name and avatar can appear publicly with contributions. Shared lists expose the information you choose to share; private lists and saved searches stay in your account (Art. 6(1)(b)).
• Location: map searches use the area you select. If you allow browser location access, coordinates help find nearby spots. We use a local MaxMind GeoLite2 database to estimate an initial area from your IP address; that lookup does not send your IP to MaxMind.
• Messages and email: contact-form name, email and message let us answer requests. Resend delivers service and enabled notification emails. You can change notification settings in your account and unsubscribe from saved-search digests (Art. 6(1)(b), or (f) for responding to other inquiries).
• Problem reports: the reported spot or review, reason, optional note and timestamps are visible only to moderators. Reports do not store your account identity or IP address; please do not include personal information in notes. Decisions are kept with the moderation records described below.
• Security and operation: request information, IP addresses, error logs, rate-limit identifiers and moderation audit records help prevent abuse and keep the service reliable (our legitimate interests under Art. 6(1)(f)).
• Optional analytics: only after your consent, Google Analytics and PostHog process page visits, browser/device information and online identifiers to help us improve SpotFinder (Art. 6(1)(a)). We disable PostHog session recording and automatic interaction capture.

Cookies and your choice

Essential cookies support sign-in, security and your preferences. Our consent cookie records your choices, policy version and decision timestamp for up to one year. Analytics and marketing default to off. We do not currently load marketing trackers. Dismissing the dialog gives no consent.

Use Cookie Policy in the footer to change or withdraw your choice at any time. Withdrawal stops analytics collection in this browser and removes its first-party analytics cookies; it does not undo processing already performed. Invalid, expired or older consent records require a new choice. Declining optional cookies does not prevent account use.

Service providers

We use these providers for the purposes below. Their services may process technical connection data such as IP addresses.

• Railway: hosting of the application and its database in the EU (Amsterdam), including accounts and sessions.
• Google and GitHub: sign-in, only when you choose to continue with them.
• Google Maps and Places: maps, place search and place details when you use map features. Google receives map requests and connection data.
• Google Analytics: optional visit measurement with your consent.
• PostHog: optional product analytics using its EU ingestion endpoint, with your consent.
• Cloudflare R2: storage and delivery of uploaded public images. Cloudflare Turnstile checks authentication, contact and report forms for automated abuse when enabled.
• Resend: outbound service, notification and authentication email, such as confirmation and password reset links.

Some providers operate outside the European Economic Area. Where applicable, transfers rely on an adequacy decision or contractual safeguards, including standard contractual clauses. Contact us for details about the safeguards applicable to your data.

Retention and deletion

We keep account data while you use the service. Deleting your account removes your account, sign-in methods and sessions, profile, profile/review uploads, likes, settings, saved searches, lists and contact messages matching your current email. Public spots, reviews and blog contributions remain with their author link removed. Public text can still contain details you wrote; edit or remove those details first, or contact us for removal assistance.

We keep a one-way hash of the deleted account ID to prevent a still-valid sign-in token from recreating the account. Security and moderation records may remain where necessary to investigate abuse or meet legal obligations. Contact correspondence outside the account is kept only as needed to resolve the request and any related obligations. Rotating backups can retain deleted data until replaced; deletion from the live service does not immediately rewrite backups.

Your rights and controls

Open your account to download a JSON copy of your data, change your email through confirmation, or permanently delete the account. The export covers the personal content and preferences stored in the app; for additional access requests, including provider-held records or correspondence under a previous email, contact us.

You may request access, correction, erasure, restriction or portability, object to processing based on legitimate interests, and withdraw consent. These rights are subject to their statutory conditions. You may complain to a supervisory authority, including the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. We do not make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you solely through automated processing.