Privacy

What the app collects

Your location, only while the app is open — and it only leaves your phone when you ask for a find-nearest.

The app uses Apple's standard "foreground-only" location permission. A fix is only used in three situations:

• You tap the ↺ Locate button — to drop the blue dot on the map.
• You use 🔭 Find nearest… (or the timeframe filter's find-nearest) — to ask "where's the closest sunny / shady bench, or place, from me?".
• When the app opens and you've already granted permission, it refreshes your position automatically — to place your blue dot and open the map at your local area. That automatic fix is used entirely on your phone; nothing is sent.

When you ask for the nearest bench or place, the search happens entirely on your phone. The app downloads map data for the surrounding area and compares it locally, so your coordinates are never sent anywhere. This used to be computed by our server, which needed your latitude and longitude; that server has been retired.

No background tracking, no continuous fixes, no movement history.

Crash reports

If the app hits an error, it sends a one-off crash report to our reports service, so the bug can be found and fixed. A report contains only the error and basic build context:

• Message and stack trace — what failed and where in the code.
• Build context — platform (iOS / Android), OS version, app version, and update-bundle id. None of it identifies you.

A report never includes your location, any device or advertising identifier, or any other personal data. Reports are written to the service's logs and never stored by us — they live only in the hosting provider's rolling log window (up to 7 days), are not linked to your IP address, and can't be tied back to you.

Bench and place reports

If you report a problem with a bench — or a place like a café or playground — that report goes to our reports service so the data can be corrected. A report contains:

• What you reported — that a bench is gone, in the wrong spot, or missing at a spot, or that a place is gone, in the wrong spot, or has the wrong details.
• A location — the bench's or place's coordinates, or the spot you marked for a missing bench.
• Your note — only the optional text you choose to type.
• Build context — app version, platform, and language. None of it identifies you.
• A random install id — an identifier made up on your device the first time you report, so the service can tell when several people report the same thing. It is linked to nothing, identifies no one, and resets if you reinstall the app.

There is no human reviewer. When enough independent bench reports agree, the map updates itself — a removed bench stops showing, a misplaced pin moves — within strict daily limits, and every change can be undone. Place reports aren't applied to the map automatically — they're only passed on to OpenStreetMap for the mapping community to review.

Your note may be published publicly to OpenStreetMap — the open map database the bench and place data comes from — so the mapping community can fix it at the source. Don't put personal information in a note.

Reports are kept for up to 180 days, and records of automated actions for 90 days after they are undone. No IP address is logged or stored with a report.

What the app does NOT collect

• No accounts, no logins, no profiles
• No analytics
• No cookies, no device fingerprinting
• No advertising identifiers
• No persistent user ID for using the map — bench and place reports carry a random, resettable install id (see Bench and place reports above)

For everything except a bench or place report, you are an anonymous, interchangeable HTTPS client to these services — we can't tell two requests apart, and we don't try to. A bench or place report is the one exception: it carries a random install id, on purpose, so reports that agree can be counted.

What we keep

• Bench data, building footprints, tree canopy — from OpenStreetMap, the Danish Datafordeler, and the Danish Map Agency's elevation model. Public data, no user information.
• Cloud forecast — fetched periodically from Met Norway by us, then published as plain files. Your phone never contacts Met Norway, so Met Norway never sees you.
• No request logs of our own — we no longer run a server, so there are no server logs we hold. The providers that host the files keep their own standard web logs; see “Where your data goes”.

Where your data goes

When you use the app, your phone talks to:

• GitHub Pages — serves the bench, sun/shade, weather and map-style files. The app downloads them by area, so a request names a map tile (roughly 5 km across) or a weather cell (roughly 11 km across). GitHub receives your IP address and which files you asked for, and keeps its own web logs that we neither control nor receive. It cannot see your exact position — only roughly which part of the map you are looking at.
• Cloudflare — serves the map's tile archive, and receives bench and place reports and crash reports. Same picture: your IP address and what was requested, in Cloudflare's own logs.
• Apple Maps (only when you tap a bench's "Walk here →") — opens with the destination bench's coordinates so Apple can compute walking directions from your current location.

No other third parties are contacted.

What changed. The app used to talk to a single server we ran, configured not to log coordinates. That server was retired so the app costs nothing to run. The trade is honest in both directions: these providers now see your IP address and roughly which area you browse — as any website you visit does — while your exact location no longer leaves your phone at all, not even for find-nearest. All the data being served is public map data; none of it is about you.

What is stored on your phone

The app keeps these on your device only:

• Your preferences — cloud tolerance, timeframe strictness, when the time slider opens (and where you last left it), where the map opens, language, appearance, your "Benches near…" filter, the region you picked, and whether you have seen the welcome screens.
• Your last map view — the map's centre and zoom, saved whenever you leave the app. The map starts there next time, and stays there if you chose "Where I left off". This is a location: the place you were last looking at.
• Your favorite benches — each saved bench's name and position, and when you saved it.
• A random install id — only once you have sent a report; it travels with your reports (see "Bench and place reports").
• Map data you have viewed — public map tiles, kept so the map loads faster and costs less to serve.

None of this leaves your phone, except the install id, which is sent with a report. Deleting the app removes all of it.

Legal basis

The little data described above is processed on two bases under the GDPR (Article 6):

• Your consent — for using your location (you grant the permission and trigger each fix yourself) and for submitting a bench or place report. Withdraw it any time: turn off location in iPhone Settings, and simply don't submit reports.
• Our legitimate interest — in keeping the service available and free of abuse (the in-memory rate-limit counter) and in finding and fixing bugs (crash reports). Neither stores personal data.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to the processing of your personal data, and ask for portability. Because the app stores almost nothing about you and never links data to your identity, most of these have little to act on:

• Stop sharing location: revoke permission any time in iPhone Settings → Bench de Soleil → Location. The app keeps working — only the "find nearest bench from me" features stop.
• Erase all on-device data: uninstall the app. Everything listed under "What is stored on your phone" goes with it.
• Your reports: a report carries only a random install id linked to nothing, so we genuinely can't tell which reports are yours — there's nothing to look up, hand over, or delete on request (GDPR Article 11). The id resets if you reinstall, and every report auto-expires within 180 days.
• Complain to a regulator: if you believe your data rights weren't respected, you can lodge a complaint with Datatilsynet, the Danish Data Protection Agency (datatilsynet.dk).
• Ask anything: see contact below.

Children

This app has no profile, no chat, no social features, no advertising. It also collects no data fitting GDPR's "personal data of children" definition. Children aren't a special category here because there's nothing special about anyone — we have no way to tell who you are.

Changes

If the app's data handling changes meaningfully, this page is updated and the date at the top revised. Active testers are notified by email at the same time.

Contact

Bench de Soleil is run by Jakob Storm Rodenberg (Denmark) — the data controller under the GDPR. For any privacy question, or to exercise one of the rights above: jakobrodenberg@gmail.com.