Popup is a map you explore. There are no accounts, no sign-ups and no analytics on it, and your location never leaves your device — it is read by your browser, used to draw where you are standing, and never sent to us or to anyone else.
Your location
When you ask Popup to find where you are, your browser asks you for permission and hands the answer to the page you are on. That answer stays in the page. It is used to move the camera and to work out how far you are from things, and then it is gone when you close the tab. It is not stored, not logged and not transmitted.
We have no server that could receive it. There is no Popup API behind this map: the whole app runs in your browser. Press P at any time and your position is snapped to a coarse grid, the way it would be before anything was ever stored.
You can take the permission back whenever you like, in your browser's site settings for popup.app. The map still works; it just starts where it always starts instead of where you are.
What is kept on your device
Popup uses your browser's own storage — not cookies — to remember a few things between visits, all of them on your device only:
- whether you want the readouts and the sound on;
- the popups you have chosen to keep;
- whether you have seen the entry card before.
None of it is sent anywhere, and none of it identifies you. Clearing site data for popup.app in your browser deletes all of it.
Cookies and tracking
There are none. No cookies, no advertising or analytics scripts, no fingerprinting, no third-party tags, no session recording, and no profile of you anywhere. Nothing on this site tries to work out who you are — which is also why you were not asked to accept anything on your way in.
Who else sees a request
The map is drawn from tiles fetched as you move, and the text is set in two web fonts. Those requests go to other people's servers, which — like every server on the internet — see your IP address and what was asked for:
-
OpenFreeMap (
tiles.openfreemap.org) serves the map tiles. Which tiles you fetch indicates roughly what part of the world you are looking at. -
AWS Open Data (
s3.amazonaws.com) serves the terrain data, the same way. -
Google Fonts (
fonts.googleapis.com,fonts.gstatic.com) serves the two typefaces.
Your precise location is not in any of those requests — a tile covers about half a kilometre, and we do not send coordinates. Each of those providers has its own privacy terms, which we do not control.
The site itself is served from Amazon CloudFront and Amazon S3. We do not have access logging turned on, so no record of your visit is written for us to keep. Amazon Web Services processes the request in order to deliver the page.
If you tap directions on a place, that opens Google Maps, which is Google's site and not ours.
Popups on the map
The popups currently standing in the world are invented — sample businesses, made up to show what the map is for, and labelled as samples wherever they appear. Nothing about them is real, and no real business's information is on this site yet.
When real popups do register, they will be putting their own business details on the map on purpose, and this page will say exactly what that involves before it happens.
Children
Popup is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect anything from anyone — which, as above, is nothing from anybody.
Your rights, including in California
California's privacy law gives you the right to know what personal information a business has collected about you, to have it deleted, to correct it, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. Popup has collected no personal information about you: there is nothing to disclose, nothing to delete, and nothing has ever been sold or shared, because there has never been anything to sell or share. We do not offer financial incentives and we do not discriminate against anyone for exercising a privacy right.
The same is true of the equivalent rights elsewhere — access, deletion, correction, portability, objection. If you want to exercise one anyway, or to check for yourself, write to us and we will answer.
Changes
This page changes when the app does, and the date at the top changes with it. The next substantial change will be the one that brings accounts, uploads and live location for registered popups; none of that exists today.
Contact
privacy@popup.app for anything on this page, or security@popup.app to report a vulnerability.