Terms of Service

Last updated: Wednesday, April 1, 2026

LocationNotes provides Android and web features for map-based note capture, hierarchical note organization, account management, public discovery pages, and team collaboration. By creating an account, linking an external provider, joining a team, or using public publishing features, you agree to these terms.

Related product guides: What is a User?, What is a Team?, What is a Note?, and What is a Trackable?, and What is a 3rd Party?, and What is an Image?, and What is a Support Request?.

Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old to create a LocationNotes account, and older where local law requires a higher minimum age. By registering or completing first-time external sign-in, you represent that you meet that rule.

Your account

• You are responsible for keeping your user name, recovery email, password, and linked providers under your control.
• You must provide an email address you can access if you want to use password reset or email-change confirmation features.
• You must not attempt to access another person's account, provider credentials, or invite tokens without authorization.
• You are responsible for activity taken through your account until you secure it or notify support of a problem.

Your notes and visibility choices

• You are responsible for the legality, accuracy, and safety of the notes, coordinates, and profile or team blurbs you publish.
• You must not use LocationNotes to dox people, publish unlawful location information, reveal confidential information without authority, or otherwise violate law or safety obligations.
• You are responsible for choosing whether a note stays device-local, stays private, becomes a private team note, or becomes public.
• You understand that public notes may appear on public maps, public profile pages, public team pages, public note pages, and public search results.
• You understand that private personal notes are visible only to their owner, and private team notes are visible to their owner plus current active members of the associated team.

Images and upload rights

If you upload an image to a profile page, note, team page, trackable, or trackable group, you are responsible for having the right to publish that image and for making sure it fits the rules of the parent item.

• You must not upload pornography, exploitative imagery, graphic abuse, hateful imagery, harassment content, or material you do not have the right to share.
• You understand that LocationNotes may screen uploads before saving them and may reject images that appear unsafe.
• You understand that public parent pages can make their attached images publicly reachable, while private or team-limited parent pages keep attached images behind the same parent-page access rule.
• You may report an image later if it is unsafe, misleading, offensive, or attached to the wrong parent item.

Public pages and public indexing

LocationNotes may publish public profile pages under /Profile/{user-name}, public team pages under /{culture}/team/{team-name}, and public note pages under /{culture}/Note/{noteId}. If you choose public visibility for content, you authorize LocationNotes to display that content on those pages and to make it available to public search and public maps where applicable.

Public pages may be indexed by search engines and included in LocationNotes sitemaps. A public note may therefore appear under multiple localized page shells, while the user-generated content itself stays in the language in which it was saved.

A private or non-public profile page, team page, or trackable page restricts access to that page. It does not guarantee that the related user name, team name, or trackable name will be hidden from every other allowed listing, association, or trackable-history context in the product.

Trackables, secret codes, and active possession flows

LocationNotes can also be used to track physical or externally identified items through notes and maps. If you create, activate, share, scan, or log a trackable, you are responsible for using only identifiers and items you are authorized to manage.

• You must not use another person's secret code or private scan URL without authorization.
• Public codes are intended for public lookup. Secret codes and private scan URLs are possession-based credentials and must be protected accordingly.
• If you choose to publish a trackable publicly, you authorize LocationNotes to expose its public route, journey map, and allowed public metadata.
• You understand that a trackable may reveal saved location history drawn from journey stops created during note attachment, even when some underlying notes remain private to unauthorized viewers.
• You understand that the trackable journey is based on saved stop snapshots. If a linked note later moves or is removed, the earlier trackable path may still preserve the original stop location for logistics integrity.
• You also understand that attaching a trackable to a note can grant the note's required access scope, while current note access still follows the note's own visibility and scope rules instead of a permanent note pointer on the journey.
• If you post an anonymous trackable comment or anonymous direct map report by using an active trackable session or resending a secret code or private scan access token, you understand that the post cannot later be edited by you and can only be removed by the trackable owner or current team admins.
• Trackable owners and current team admins may delete trackable comments or direct reports for moderation, but they may not rewrite another person's words.

Trackable activation, groups, and management

A trackable may be unactivated when first created. Activation occurs at the individual item, not just at the group. A trackable may also belong to one group at a time, and a group can provide default item metadata until activation rules require item-specific values.

• Unactivated trackables cannot be used to place new journey activity on the map and cannot accept comments.
• If you activate a trackable to yourself, you become its active owner scope.
• If you activate a trackable to a team, the team becomes the ownership scope. Current team admins may manage that trackable, and the activating member keeps management authority while they remain on that team.
• A trackable can belong to only one group at a time. Changing groups requires removal from the old group before association with a new group.

Teams, invitations, and approval rules

Teams may be public or non-public, and their join policy can depend on the team page visibility chosen by the team. Team admins control team settings, membership approvals, invite links, and team content moderation.

• Join requests coming from a public team page always wait for admin approval.
• An invite issued by a current team admin may add the invited user immediately when that invite is accepted.
• If a non-admin invite is allowed by the product, that invite still remains pending until a team admin approves it.
• Single-use invite links stop working after one successful join. Reusable invite links stay active until a team admin revokes them.
• Single-use invite links can add one person immediately after sign-in. Reusable invite links always wait for team-admin approval.

Team content and account deletion

Team content is not treated as the personal export or personal deletion scope of any one member. If you contribute a note or activate a team-owned trackable for a team, that item does not automatically disappear just because you later leave the team or delete your account.

• If the team still exists, the team-owned note remains with the team subject to team visibility and admin controls.
• If a trackable still has activity from other users or a team, LocationNotes may retain the trackable while removing only the deleted user's removable personal activity.
• If a team-owned trackable needs a fallback when the team is deleted, LocationNotes may reassign that item according to the product's documented ownership rules instead of deleting it immediately.
• If a team is deleted, team memberships and team-only categories are deleted at that time.
• If a team is later deleted and the original creator still exists, the note converts back to that creator as a personal note and keeps its prior public or private visibility.
• If the original creator no longer exists when the team is deleted, ownerless team notes are deleted at that time.

Authentication and linked providers

LocationNotes currently supports local user-name-and-password accounts, Google sign-in, and Facebook sign-in. You may link multiple providers to the same account. When exactly one account already uses the provider email, LocationNotes may link that provider to that account and sign the user in. If more than one account shares that email address, the user must sign in by user name first and then link the provider manually.

If you unlink a provider, you are responsible for keeping another valid sign-in method on the account. LocationNotes may require the current password, a newly set password, or a password reset email before allowing that unlink action.

Third-party services, maps, and required disclosures

By using live maps, external sign-in, transactional email, or optional website analytics, you authorize LocationNotes to use the services required for whichever features are active for your account and the current visit. Signed-in users can save Latest and Greatest or No 3rd Parties plus a preferred map source, and consent-required visits can still force the stricter hosted-maps path. That includes the normal browser and network metadata those services must receive in order to respond, such as IP address, request headers, request time, and the requested map area or sign-in flow context.

You understand that a live browser map cannot be shown without loading map resources. Depending on the current privacy rule and saved preference, that can mean LocationNotes uses Google Maps Platform , OpenStreetMap , or same-origin hosted tiles served from /maps/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png. A linked-provider sign-in still has to redirect your browser to providers such as Google Identity or Facebook Login and receive the provider identifier and approved profile data in return. Review What is a 3rd Party? for the deeper operational explanation.

You also understand that LocationNotes may use Mailgun for transactional email delivery, may later enable Twilio Messaging for text delivery, and currently uses Google Analytics on this host for sanitized page-view and limited workflow analytics rather than note text, secret codes, exact coordinates, names, or email addresses only when the site is configured for analytics and the current visit still allows browser-side analytics. When the effective experience mode is No 3rd Parties or a consent-required visit has not granted consent, the browser analytics tag stays off. LocationNotes may also retain short-term operational logs, security records, database transaction logs, and backups after a deletion event for normal disaster-recovery, abuse-review, audit, or security reasons, and may preserve or disclose required records when a valid warrant, subpoena, court order, judgment, or similar lawful demand requires it.

Beta and pre-release software

Android beta APKs and pre-release features may be incomplete, unstable, or incompatible with older local device data. Use test devices when possible. Do not treat unsynced beta data as the only copy of important field notes.

Access to pre-release Android builds may be limited to approved members of the Beta Testers team or another designated release group.

Service changes and enforcement

LocationNotes may update the service, add or remove features, suspend abusive use, or restrict accounts used in ways that create security, privacy, legal, or operational risk. The product may also change public or team workflows as the service moves from proof-of-concept into broader deployment.

Exports and deletion

The website provides export and deletion paths. Deleting an account is permanent and cannot be undone. Review the export and deletion guidance before using that workflow, especially if you are a current team admin.

Public codes, secret-code possession flows, trackable groups, and team-owned trackables have separate retention and shared-control rules. Review the Privacy, Support, API documentation, and Delete Data pages if you need the operational details before using those features.

Trackable exports and retention flows may keep saved stop snapshots and note-link records as separate facts so later note edits do not rewrite earlier route history.

Portable account exports are also the restore-friendly handoff package for later recovery or cross-site transfer. The matching import flow is additive: it keeps the target account settings, skips identical matches, and does not automatically overwrite conflicting existing records.

Contact

Email: michael.kappel@locationnotes.com

Phone: (630)362-7576

Mailing address: 1331 S. 51st Ave, Cicero, IL 60804