Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Roam is run by Roam Labs LLC, a New York limited liability company, 100 Sample Street, Suite 4, New York, NY 10001 ("Roam", "we", "us"). We are responsible for (the "controller" of) the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us about privacy at privacy@roam.app.

2. What this policy covers

This policy covers the Roam website and apps and the emails we send. It explains what information we collect, why, who can see it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights you have. It doesn't cover other companies' websites or apps that Roam links to; their own policies apply.

3. Information you give us

Your account. When you sign up we ask for your email address, a username, a display name and a password, or you can use your Google account instead of a password. If you set a password, we store it only in scrambled (hashed) form, so we can't read it. You can add a short bio and a profile photo. If you join through someone's invite link, we record that so your account can follow the person who invited you.

Signing in with Google. If you use Continue with Google, Google tells us your name, email address and Google account ID. We keep the ID and that email so you can sign in with Google again and see which Google account is connected. We don't get your Google password, contacts or anything else from your Google account. You can disconnect Google in Settings → Account → Sign-in methods.

Your age. We ask for your month and year of birth when you sign up, to check you're old enough to use Roam. We use it for that check and don't save it to your account.

Your home city. If you add a home city, we save it to your account and use it to suggest places near home. Only you can see it.

Your travel map and memories. Cities you've been to or want to go to, your verdict on each city (loved it, fine, or not for you), the scores and rankings that come from comparing cities, notes, trips (names and dates), visit dates, and photos.

Your activity with other people. Who you follow, comments (including edits), likes, memories you save, people you mention, and the invite link we make for you.

Your privacy settings. Your map setting (Everyone, Friends or Only me), which memories are Only me, cities hidden from friends, memories with comments turned off, your Discover sharing choices, and whether you've turned on location for nearby ideas.

Reports. If you report something, we keep the report: what you reported, the reason you chose and any details you add (up to 500 characters).

Messages to us. If you email us, we keep the email and our reply. If you use Send feedback in the app, we keep your message, any screenshots you add (with location and camera details removed) and, if you leave "Include device and app info" on, your app version, browser or operating system, screen size and the page you came from. We delete them from Roam 30 days after you send them, or right away if you delete your account. The email copy we receive is kept with our support email (see §15).

We don't ask for your phone number, your contacts, or health information. Please don't put sensitive details (such as health, religion or other people's personal details) in notes or comments; anything you write is shown to the people your settings allow.

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4. Information collected automatically

Sign-in sessions. When you sign in we create a session record with a simple device label (for example "Chrome on Mac"), when it was created, when it was last used, and when it expires. We don't save your IP address or your browser's full technical identity with it.

Technical logs. Like any website, our servers and hosting providers process technical information to deliver Roam, such as your IP address, device and browser type, the pages and data requested (including the rough location described in §6 when you ask for nearby ideas), and timing and error information. Our own error logs may include internal account, memory or photo ID numbers. These logs are kept for a limited time (see §15).

Your rough location, only when you've turned it on. See §6.

On your device. See §14.

4A. Information we get from other people

Other people can add information about you, for example when they follow you, comment on or like your memories, mention you, invite you, or report your content or account.

5. Who can see what

Your map setting decides who sees your map and memories. You can change it at any time in Settings → Privacy.

What an Everyone map's public page shows to anyone who doesn't follow you: your display name, username and profile photo (signed-in people also see your bio and when you joined); the cities you've been to, with your verdict, score, the date of your first visit and a photo; your map stats; and your journal: your trips with their names and dates, the cities on each trip with your visit dates, and the photos from those visits. It doesn't show your Want to go list, notes, comments, who you follow or who follows you, and visitors can't open individual memories. Cities you've hidden don't appear. A change to your settings reaches the public page within about a minute. Search engines may keep showing an old copy of a page for a while after you change it; we don't control that, but most let you ask them to refresh it.

Friends and Only me maps have no public page. People who aren't signed in can't see them (apart from an invite preview, below, if you share your invite link). If one of them opens a link to your Friends or private map, they see only your first name and that the map isn't public; if your map is Only me, they see only that the account exists. Signed-in people who can't see your map see your username, display name and profile photo, plus the items listed under "Always visible" below.

Per-memory controls:

• Only me on a memory. Only you can see that memory, including your verdict on the city. It doesn't count anywhere other people can see, such as friends' counts, verdict bars or other people's recommendations. It still shapes what Roam suggests to you.
• Hide a city from friends. Your verdict on that city is removed from what friends see and from their recommendations.
• Comments off. No one can comment on that memory.

Discover sharing. You can stop your verdicts appearing in friends' Discover, and choose whether your own pins show in your Discover, in Settings → Privacy.

Always visible to signed-in Roam users, whatever your map setting:

• your username, display name and profile photo, for example in search results;
• who you follow and who follows you;
• in people search, one city you loved (not if your map is Only me, and never a city you've hidden).

Your interactions. A comment you post on someone's memory can be seen by anyone who can see that memory. People who can see a memory can see who liked it. If you save a city from someone's memory, only that person sees that you saved it. When you follow, like, comment or mention someone, they get a notification showing your name, username, profile photo and, for comments, the first 200 characters. A notification keeps the name, photo and comment text from when it was sent: if you later edit the comment or change your profile, it isn't updated (deleting the comment removes its notifications).

Invite links. If you share your invite link, anyone who opens it, signed in or not, sees your name, profile photo and a preview of up to three of your city photos and pins. This applies when your map is Friends or Everyone, not Only me. The preview leaves out hidden cities and photos from Only me memories.

Roam staff. A small number of Roam staff can see reported content, who it belongs to and who reported it, so we can review reports. We don't tell the person you reported who reported them, unless the law requires it. Staff access other personal information only when needed to run and secure Roam, to help you when you ask, or to meet legal duties.

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6. Location

Roam has no live-location feature. It doesn't track you or show anyone your device's location. Places on Roam are cities, not exact spots. (What you post, such as a memory dated today, can still tell people where you are.)

Nearby ideas (optional). If you turn on location for nearby ideas, your device shares its location with Roam each time you open a screen with nearby suggestions, such as Discover. Before it leaves your device we round it to about 1 km, and our server rounds it again. We use it to sort suggestions by distance for that request, and then we don't save it: no coordinates, no place name, no history. The only thing we save is whether you've turned the setting on. You can turn it off at any time in Settings, and Roam then stops asking your device for its location on all your devices. You can also block location in your browser or phone settings.

Because the rounded location travels with your request, it can appear for a short time in our hosting providers' technical logs, which are deleted on a rolling schedule (see §15).

The "you are here" dot. When you use "Center on me", your device works out your exact position to draw the dot and move the map. That exact position stays on your device: Roam never receives it or stores it. As with any online map, your device then downloads map images for the area on your screen from our map provider, Mapbox (see §10).

Photos. We remove location data from photos you share (see §7).

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7. Photos

Location and camera details are removed. When you add a photo on the web, your browser re-saves it before uploading, which removes hidden details like GPS location and camera information.

What we keep. We keep the photo you uploaded privately, so you can re-crop it later. Other Roam users can't open it; in the app it opens only for you, through a link that expires after a few minutes. We also make smaller copies (for example at 400, 800 and 1,600 pixels wide) to show in Roam. The copies don't contain location or camera details.

How the copies are shown. Copies are stored at long, random web addresses that can't realistically be guessed. Roam shows them to people allowed to see the memory, and up to three of them in your invite preview if you share your invite link (see §5). Anyone who has a copy's exact address can open it.

• When you make a memory Only me, hide its city, delete it, or we hide it after a report, its photo copies move to a new address and the old addresses stop working.

Deleting photos. When you delete a photo, a memory or your account, we delete the photo and its copies. Very occasionally an error can leave a file behind for longer; we remove such files when we find them. If an upload fails partway, the private file may stay in storage until you delete your account.

8. How we use your information, and our legal reasons

We use personal information only for the purposes below. If you're in the EU or UK, the right-hand column is our legal basis under data protection law.

We don't use your content to train AI. If we ever want to, we'll ask you first.

We don't send marketing emails today. If we start, we'll ask for your consent where the law requires it, and every marketing email will let you unsubscribe.

If you don't give us the information needed to create an account (email, username, display name and password, plus your month and year of birth for the age check), we can't create one. Everything else is optional.

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9. Recommendations, automation and AI

Roam's suggestions follow fixed, explainable rules based on your map, the verdicts of the people you follow, information about each city (including the tags below) and, if you turn it on, your rough location. We don't build machine-learning profiles of you to rank people or places, and we don't make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

We use an AI service (Google Gemini) only to choose short tags for cities (for example "beach" or "street food"). It receives the city's name, country, region and map coordinates, and nothing about you or anything users have posted.

10. Services we use

We use the companies below to run Roam. Most of them process personal information only for us, under contracts or terms that limit how they may use it. Mapbox also handles the information it receives under its own privacy policy. We update this list when we add or change a service.

Only if you use the feature, and only once it launches:

Roam also reads a public US Department of State travel advisory list to decide which countries to leave out of suggestions. No personal information is sent.

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11. Other times we share information

• With the people you choose, as described in §5.
• For legal reasons, when we believe in good faith that the law requires it (for example a valid court order), and to protect the safety, rights or property of our users, the public or Roam, including to respond to an emergency where someone may be harmed. Where the law allows and it's safe, we'll tell you before sharing in response to a legal request. Law enforcement and other authorities can send requests to legal@roam.app; we check each one and share only what the request lawfully requires.
• If Roam changes owners. If Roam is involved in a merger, sale or similar deal, personal information may pass to the new owner. They must keep honoring this policy for information collected under it, unless you agree otherwise. We'll tell you before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
• With your permission, in any other case.

12. Selling, ads and partner links

We don't sell your personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we don't use it for targeted advertising. If that changes, we'll update this policy and tell you before it happens, and give you the opt-outs or ask for the consent the law requires.

Ads. Roam doesn't show ads today. If we introduce ads, we'll label them, update this policy and tell you before they appear. We won't use personal information to target ads without any consent or opt-out the law requires, and we won't show targeted ads to anyone we know is under 18.

13. If you buy something, send a postcard or leave a tip

Roam doesn't sell anything today. These sections apply only if we launch paid features and you use them.

If you buy something from us. We collect your name, email, billing address, what you bought, the price and taxes, and your order and subscription history. For physical products we also collect the delivery name and address, and a phone number if the carrier needs one. Card details go straight to our payment processor (or Apple or Google); we don't see or store your full card number. We share order details with the printing and delivery partners who make and send your order. We keep purchase records for as long as tax and accounting laws require (usually 7 years).

If you send a postcard. You give us the recipient's name and postal address. That's information about someone who may not use Roam, so we treat it carefully:

• we use it only to print and mail that card, and to deal with any delivery problem;
• we share it only with our printing and mailing partner, for that purpose;
• we delete it 60 days after the card is mailed, unless you choose to save the address in your Roam address book, which you can edit or clear at any time;
• we don't use recipients' addresses for marketing, and we don't sell them;
• a recipient can ask us to delete their details or not to receive cards through Roam by emailing privacy@roam.app.

Each card may carry a short line saying it was sent with Roam and where to find this policy.

If you leave a tip. We (or the payment service we use for tips) receive your name, email, the amount and payment details. The payment service handles your card details under its own privacy policy.

Subscriptions bought in an app are billed by Apple or Google, which share with us only what we need to give you the subscription (such as a purchase identifier and subscription status).

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14. Cookies, device storage and tracking

Roam uses only the storage it needs to work and to keep things you asked for, such as drafts. On the web, these are stored on your device:

• your sign-in token and username, so you stay signed in (kept in your browser's local storage);
• your light or dark theme;
• drafts of memories you haven't finished (including draft photos), and your recent searches, so you don't lose them;
• small markers, such as which tips you've already seen and when you last checked your notifications;
• after a failed age check, a note that the check failed (no birth date or identity), for 30 days;
• on pages with a map, items stored by Mapbox's map code: a random identifier (renewed every 24 hours) that it uses to count map loads, and saved map pieces so maps load faster.

When you sign out, we clear your sign-in details, drafts, recent searches and notification markers from that device.

No advertising or analytics trackers. We don't use advertising cookies, analytics tools or session recording. If we ever add analytics, they'll only run after you agree.

Third-party tracking. We don't allow advertising networks or analytics companies to track you on Roam. Mapbox, which draws our maps, receives your IP address, the random identifier above and map usage information when your device loads maps (see §10).

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. Because we don't track you across other websites or sell or share your information, there is nothing for a browser's Do Not Track signal to switch off, so we don't change anything when we receive one. If we ever sell or share personal information, we will treat a Global Privacy Control signal as a request to opt out.

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15. How long we keep information

We may keep information longer if the law requires it, or to deal with a legal claim, fraud or a safety issue, and only for as long as that need lasts.

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16. Children and teens

Roam isn't for children under 13. When you sign up we ask for your month and year of birth. If you're under 13, we don't create an account and we don't keep anything that identifies you; your device remembers for 30 days that the check didn't pass.

If we learn that we've collected personal information from a child under 13 (or under the minimum age where they live), we'll delete the account and its information. If you're a parent or guardian and think your child has a Roam account, email privacy@roam.app and we'll help.

Teens (13 to 17). Every new Roam map starts as Friends, not Everyone, and location for nearby ideas stays off until you turn it on. Remember that a Friends map can be seen by anyone who follows you, and today anyone with a Roam account can follow you. If that worries you, choose Only me in Settings → Privacy. You can also make your account private, so people can follow you only after you approve them. If you're under 18 when you sign up, your account starts private, so people can follow you only after you approve them. You can change this in Settings → Privacy. We don't show targeted ads to anyone we know is under 18.

17. Delete your account

You can delete your Roam account and its data at any time, without reinstalling anything.

In Roam: go to Settings → Account → Delete account and follow the steps. We'll ask you to confirm it's you. Your account is hidden straight away, and you can restore it by signing back in within 30 days. After 30 days we permanently delete it.

If you can't sign in: email privacy@roam.app from the email address on your account, with the subject "Delete my account" and your username. We'll confirm the request and delete the account.

What gets deleted: your profile, map, memories, notes, trips, photos, ratings, comments (including on other people's memories), likes, follows, invite link, your notifications and the ones your activity sent to others, and sign-in sessions.

What we keep, and why: reports you made, without your name, for safety (see §15); reports other people made about you or your content, without the link to your account; records we must keep by law, such as purchase records; and copies in backups and logs until they're overwritten on the schedule in §15. If someone saved a city from one of your memories, they keep the city, but it's no longer linked to you.

App-store subscriptions: if you subscribed through Apple or Google, cancel there as well. Deleting your Roam account doesn't cancel an app-store subscription.

18. Your choices and rights

Wherever you live, you can:

• see and correct your information: edit your profile, memories and settings in Roam at any time;
• delete content or your whole account (§17);
• control who sees your map and each memory (§5), and turn location off (§6);
• choose which emails you get in Settings → Notifications (security emails can't be turned off);
• download a copy of your data from Settings → Account → Export your data.
• ask us about anything in this policy, or for a copy of your information, at privacy@roam.app.

We'll reply within 30 days, or sooner if the law where you live requires. If a request is complex, we may need longer where the law allows; if so, we'll tell you why within those 30 days. We may need to confirm it's you before acting on a request, and we won't treat you differently for using your rights.

19. US state privacy rights

Depending on the state you live in (for example California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and others), you may have the right to:

• know what personal information we have about you and how we use and share it, and get a copy;
• correct it;
• delete it;
• opt out of its sale, sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising, targeted advertising, and certain profiling;
• limit the use of sensitive personal information;
• not be treated differently for using these rights.

What we do today: we don't sell personal information, share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, use it for targeted advertising, or use it for profiling that has legal or similarly significant effects. We don't share personal information with other companies for their own direct marketing. We don't use sensitive personal information to infer things about you.

How to make a request: use the tools in Roam, or email privacy@roam.app with "Privacy request" and your state in the subject. We'll confirm we got it within 10 business days and answer within 30 days (as in §18). If we need more time, we'll tell you why, and we won't take longer than your state's law allows (usually 45 days plus one 45-day extension). You can use an authorized agent; we may ask for proof that they're allowed to act for you, and ask you to confirm your identity.

Appeals: if we decline your request, you can appeal by replying with "Privacy appeal" in the subject. We'll answer within the time your state's law sets. If you're not satisfied, you can contact your state attorney general.

Categories (for California and similar laws). In the last 12 months we collected these categories: identifiers (email, username, account IDs, IP address); your content and activity on Roam (customer records and internet activity); approximate location (when you turn it on); photos (audio/visual information); your sign-in details (email or username with password, which the law counts as sensitive personal information; we use them only to sign you in and keep your account secure); and inferences limited to the recommendations described in §9. How long we keep each category is in §15. Sources: you, your device, and other users. Purposes: those in §8. We disclosed them to the service providers in §10 for business purposes, and to other users as you choose. We sold or shared none of them.

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20. If you're in the EU or the UK

Who is responsible. Roam Labs LLC (see §1) is the controller of your personal information.

Legal bases. See the table in §8.

Your rights. You have the right to access your personal information, correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, and receive it in a portable format.

Your right to object. Where we rely on legitimate interests (see §8), you can object to that use at any time, for reasons relating to your situation, and we'll stop unless we have compelling grounds or need it for a legal claim. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time; this doesn't affect what we did before. To use these rights, use the tools in Roam or email privacy@roam.app. We'll answer within one month.

Complaints. You can complain to the data protection authority where you live or work (in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office). We'd appreciate the chance to help first.

21. Where your information is processed

Roam is run from the United States, and our providers process information mainly in the United States (see §10). If you use Roam from another country, your information will be transferred to and processed in the US, where privacy laws may differ from yours. Where EU or UK law requires, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK's addendum), or on a provider's certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension. You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards at privacy@roam.app.

22. How we protect your information

We protect your information with measures that fit a service like Roam, including: encrypted connections (HTTPS); passwords and email codes stored only in hashed form; sign-in sessions you can end from any device in Settings → Account → Devices; private storage for original photos; and limits on who at Roam can access personal information. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong password you don't use anywhere else.

If a security breach affects your personal information, we'll notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

23. Changes to this policy

We'll update this policy when Roam changes. The date at the top shows the latest version, and we keep earlier versions available on request.

If we make a material change, we'll tell you in Roam or by email before it takes effect. Where the law requires your consent, we'll ask for it.

We won't use information we've already collected in a materially less protective way than this policy describes without your consent. For example, if we ever wanted to use your existing content for advertising or to train AI, we would ask first.

24. Contact us

Roam Labs LLC
100 Sample Street, Suite 4, New York, NY 10001
Privacy questions and requests: privacy@roam.app
Everything else: support@roam.app

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