ART CHASER PRIVACY POLICY

1. Information we collect

Account and profile information

When you create or use an Art Chaser account, we may process information such as:

• email address;
• username;
• display name;
• profile biography;
• profile photo/avatar;
• account identifiers;
• authentication provider information;
• profile visibility settings;
• account creation and update timestamps.

Passwords are handled through our authentication provider. Art Chaser does not maintain an application database containing plaintext passwords.

Google sign-in may also be available. If you choose it, Google and our authentication provider process information required to authenticate your account.

Location information

If you grant location permission, Art Chaser can access your device's foreground location to:

• find cultural places near you;
• calculate distances between you and places;
• improve location-based discovery.

Device latitude and longitude may be sent to our backend provider, Supabase, to perform a nearby-place search.

Art Chaser uses your device location only for location-based features such as showing nearby cultural places and calculating distances. We do not use your device location to block access to Art Chaser, determine account eligibility, restrict features based on your country or region, or make automated decisions about you.

Art Chaser does not provide continuous live-location sharing and does not intentionally maintain a continuous history of your device's precise GPS location.

Location permission can be controlled through your device settings.

Places themselves have stored geographic coordinates because location information is necessary to display and discover those places.

Visits

If you mark a place as visited, Art Chaser stores the visited place and a visit timestamp.

Visit information may therefore reveal or suggest places you have visited or been interested in. Visibility of visits depends on the privacy and social settings available in Art Chaser.

A manually marked visit should not be interpreted as independently verified proof that you were physically present at that place.

Social information

Depending on the features you use, we may process:

• followers and following relationships;
• follow requests;
• blocked-user relationships;
• likes;
• saved places;
• lists and list collaborators;
• visited places;
• list invitations;
• in-app notifications;
• profile visibility settings.

Some information may be visible to other users depending on the feature and your privacy settings.

Contributions

If you contribute content to Art Chaser, we may process:

• proposed missing places;
• suggested edits;
• place reports;
• photographs;
• descriptions;
• addresses;
• category information;
• source information;
• creator or attribution information;
• contribution timestamps;
• moderation status;
• user identifiers associated with the submission.

Approved contributions may become part of Art Chaser's public cultural-place database.

If your account is later deleted, approved place information may remain where necessary to preserve the integrity and usefulness of the cultural database. Account-linked personal identifiers are removed or anonymized where appropriate, while non-personal cultural information may be retained.

Photos

When you upload photos, Art Chaser may process:

• the image itself;
• file type and size;
• image dimensions;
• file hash;
• attribution or creator information;
• submission and moderation information.

Uploaded photographs may contain embedded metadata. You should avoid uploading photographs containing location metadata or other information you do not want to make public. Art Chaser processes uploaded images through its image-handling and moderation systems before publication, but you should not rely on the service as your only method of removing sensitive metadata.

You should nevertheless avoid uploading photographs containing information you do not want to make public, including addresses, identification documents, private individuals or other sensitive information.

Reports, moderation and safety information

If you report another user, profile, place or contribution, we may process:

• your user identifier;
• the reported user/content identifier;
• report category;
• report description;
• timestamps;
• moderation status;
• moderator notes;
• relevant evidence.

We may retain appropriate moderation records to investigate abuse, prevent repeated misconduct, protect users, resolve disputes and comply with legal obligations.

The person you report is not provided with your reporter identity through the normal reporting interface.

Search information

Search terms may be transmitted to our backend to return place, city or user results.

Art Chaser does not currently operate a behavioral search-history analytics system.

The app may store a limited list of recently selected/searched cities locally on your device to improve usability.

Technical information

When you use Art Chaser, limited technical information may be processed to operate and secure the service, including:

• IP address as part of ordinary internet communication;
• operating system/platform information;
• application or SDK version;
• request timestamps;
• authentication/security events;
• error and operational information.

We do not use this information for behavioral advertising.

Our infrastructure and service providers may maintain technical or security logs according to their operational and security practices.

2. Information stored on your device

Art Chaser may store information locally, including:

• authentication session information;
• selected language;
• theme preference;
• recent city selections;
• image/cache files.

Local storage may remain until it is cleared by the application, your operating system, cache expiration, sign-out, account deletion where applicable, or application removal.

3. How we use information

We use personal information to:

• create and maintain accounts;
• authenticate users;
• provide profiles and social functionality;
• provide nearby art and cultural-place discovery;
• calculate distances;
• save visits, likes, lists and preferences;
• process user contributions;
• display approved cultural content;
• operate moderation and reporting systems;
• prevent abuse, fraud, spam and misuse;
• secure Art Chaser;
• respond to support requests;
• investigate technical problems;
• comply with applicable legal obligations;
• protect the rights and safety of Art Chaser, users and others.

We do not use personal information for behavioral advertising.

4. Analytics and advertising

Art Chaser does not currently use third-party behavioral or product analytics SDKs.

Art Chaser does not currently contain advertising SDKs and does not use personal information for personalized advertising.

Operational, authentication, security and error logs are not considered behavioral advertising analytics.

If we introduce optional analytics, advertising or tracking technologies in the future, this Privacy Policy will be updated and consent or other legal requirements will be addressed where applicable.

5. Public information

Depending on your settings and activity, other users may be able to see information such as:

• username;
• display name;
• biography;
• avatar;
• public lists;
• approved contributions;
• certain social relationships;
• visits where permitted by profile/privacy rules.

Do not place sensitive personal information in public profile fields or public contributions.

6. Service providers and external services

Art Chaser uses third-party services necessary to provide the application.

Supabase

Supabase provides services including:

• authentication;
• databases;
• storage;
• backend functions;
• infrastructure supporting Art Chaser.

Personal information processed by Art Chaser may therefore be processed through Supabase infrastructure.

Google

If you choose Google sign-in, Google processes information necessary to authenticate you.

If you contact our support email through your email application, your email provider will process the message according to its own terms and privacy practices.

OpenStreetMap

Some cultural-place information may be derived from OpenStreetMap.

OpenStreetMap-related import services may process geographic queries used by Art Chaser administrators. We do not intentionally send a user's personal profile information, messages or authentication tokens to OpenStreetMap as part of ordinary place importing.

When you open an external OpenStreetMap link, your browser connects directly to the destination website.

Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata

Art Chaser may use cultural images and information sourced from Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

Where eligible, Art Chaser processes and stores a hosted copy of Wikimedia-sourced images through its own backend and storage provider rather than loading the original Wikimedia image for normal display. Original source, creator, licence and attribution information is retained where required.

In some cases, including fallback or source-access scenarios, Art Chaser may still load content from or link directly to Wikimedia services. When your device connects directly to Wikimedia, Wikimedia may receive standard network information such as your IP address and request information.

If you open a Wikimedia source or licence page, you leave Art Chaser and interact directly with that external service.

Other source websites

Art Chaser may provide links to original cultural data, photograph, licence or attribution sources.

When you open those links, the external provider's own terms and privacy policy apply.

7. International processing

Art Chaser and its service providers may process information in countries other than the country where you live.

This may occur because cloud infrastructure, authentication services, image providers or other technical providers operate internationally.

Where required by applicable law, appropriate legal safeguards for international transfers should be used.

The precise infrastructure and transfer mechanisms may depend on the providers and hosting configuration used at the time.

8. Legal bases

Where GDPR, UK GDPR or similar laws apply, processing may rely on one or more legal bases, depending on the activity:

Contract or steps requested by you: to create and operate your account and provide features you request.

Legitimate interests: to operate, secure and improve the reliability of Art Chaser, prevent abuse, moderate content and protect users.

Consent: where required for particular device permissions or optional processing.

Legal obligation: where information must be processed or retained to comply with applicable law.

Different legal bases may apply in different jurisdictions.

9. Location permissions

Location access depends on your device's permission system.

You can deny or revoke location permission through your operating-system settings.

Some nearby discovery and distance functionality may not work without location access.

Other Art Chaser features remain available without location permission where they do not depend on your current location, including browsing or selecting supported cities manually.

Granting an operating-system permission is a technical permission mechanism and does not necessarily determine the legal basis for every processing activity.

10. Data retention

We retain information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, including providing the service, maintaining security, resolving disputes, preventing abuse and meeting legal obligations.

Different categories of information may have different retention periods.

For example:

• active account/profile data is normally retained while the account exists;
• social and preference records may remain while associated with the account;
• approved cultural-place information may remain after account deletion when it forms part of the Art Chaser place database;
• moderation and security information may be retained where necessary for abuse prevention, investigations, dispute handling or legal obligations;
• infrastructure logs and backups may be retained for limited operational periods according to provider configuration.

Art Chaser should not retain personal information indefinitely where it is no longer necessary.

11. Account deletion

You can request deletion of your Art Chaser account through the account-deletion functionality provided in the application.

When account deletion is successfully completed, Art Chaser processes the account deletion by:

• delete the authentication account;
• delete or detach profile information;
• remove the active profile avatar where applicable;
• remove account-specific social relationships and personal activity where appropriate;
• remove or anonymize personal identifiers associated with retained cultural content where appropriate.

Some information may remain where necessary, including:

• approved cultural-place information;
• non-personal or anonymized contribution records;
• moderation/security evidence required for legitimate safety or legal purposes;
• information retained temporarily in backups;
• records required by law or necessary for legal claims.

Deleted accounts should not continue to appear publicly as active user profiles.

12. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights concerning your personal information, including rights to:

• access your information;
• correct inaccurate information;
• request deletion;
• request restriction of certain processing;
• object to certain processing;
• obtain portable copies of eligible information;
• withdraw consent where processing relies on consent;
• complain to an appropriate data-protection authority.

These rights can be subject to legal limitations and exceptions.

To make a privacy request, contact:

artchaserapp@gmail.com

We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.

13. Security

Art Chaser uses technical and organizational measures intended to protect information, including authenticated access, backend authorization, encrypted network transport, database access controls, moderation controls and restricted administrative functionality.

No internet service can guarantee absolute security.

Please protect your account credentials and contact us if you believe your account has been compromised.

14. Blocking and reporting

Art Chaser provides blocking and reporting tools.

Blocking relationships are treated as private application safety data. A blocked user may nevertheless infer that access has been restricted from changes in application behavior.

Reports are available to authorized moderators where necessary for review.

15. External links

Art Chaser contains links to third-party websites and services.

Their privacy practices are controlled by those providers, not Art Chaser.

We encourage you to review their policies before providing personal information.

16. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Policy as Art Chaser evolves or legal requirements change.

Material changes will be communicated through appropriate means where required.

The effective date at the top of this Policy indicates the current version.

17. Contact

For privacy questions or requests:

Art Chaser

Email: artchaserapp@gmail.com

Burcu Koyluoglu