The short version
- No real names: a nickname and a generated face. A first name is shared in one conversation, if you choose to, or never.
- No ads, no trackers, no cookies, no data sales.
- No phone number, and your email is never shown or kept.
- Your address is never shown to other neighbors.
- No feed and no archive: asks fade from the map at their end, 14 days by default.
- No pings you did not ask for, and no prices, ratings or paid placement anywhere.
Deleting your account is immediate, and does what it says. A feature that is not open to you yet keeps nothing about you.
Who is responsible
Kylala (the “we” on this page) operates the service and is responsible for the data described here; see our About page. For any question or request about your privacy, write to hello@kylala.com.
What we keep
When you join: a nickname, your generated face, the spot you place as home (exact, or blurred about 50 m if you prefer) and your address, which only you ever see. From a Google or email sign-in we keep one account reference, never your email. If you arrive through a link, you can start without a sign-in or an address and give the address only when you post something of your own.
While you use it: your asks and offers, with their words, photos and the spot you chose; your conversations, read only by the people in them; the hands you raise; your notifications; who you blocked and what you reported; and, if you turn notifications on, what your browser needs to receive them.
Counts, never people: how neighbors find Kylala, how far newcomers get and how many are active each day are kept as daily totals that tell nobody apart. The same goes for visits to this website.
What we never keep
- Your email address or phone number.
- Your real name, unless you typed it yourself into one conversation.
- Your live location: your phone sends a spot you placed, never where you are.
- Device fingerprints, advertising IDs or tracking pixels.
- Your connection address: our servers see it when your device connects, like every online service, use it only to protect against abuse, and never store it as such.
Who can see what
Neighbors see your nickname, your face, your offers and your asks, each with the spot you chose. An ask for the whole street can be read by any signed-in neighbor; an ask for a circle, by its members; an ask for a radius, by the homes inside it. Neighbors far away see an ask’s pin rounded to about 100 m. Nobody ever sees your home or your address.
Anyone with a link can open an ask you or a neighbor shared: its words, its photos and your nickname, never its spot, your address or who helps. A move-out’s page shows its things and the week it leaves, never the day. Home watch, parcel and circle asks cannot be shared, and a link stops working when its ask ends.
Search engines see an ask only when you list it on your city’s public page (kylala.com/c/…). The line is off by default, and a listed ask leaves the page when you turn the line off, when it ends, or with your account. A move-out stays listed until the end of the week of its last day, and things you mark gone that week still count as free there until then. City pages show a title, a kind and a week, never a nickname, a face, a spot or a street.
Lost and found: the pin of a search is where the animal was last seen, never your home, and it is blurred by default. Anyone who opens the search’s link can tell you they saw the animal, without an account and without typing a word; you alone see those sightings.
Services we rely on
We keep third parties to the minimum a map app can have. Our servers and database run on Cloudflare. Photos are stored with Wasabi in the European Union and reach you only through our server. Sign-in with Google or email goes through Auth0, in the United States. The map comes from OpenFreeMap (Esri for the satellite view), and address lookups go to OpenStreetMap’s services, which see what you look up and nothing about your account. The maps on the city pages are drawn by our server from OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap data, centered on the city and never on a listing, so your visit sends those services nothing. Your browser’s push service delivers notifications, encrypted so it cannot read them. When you share an ask, the app you pick receives what you send. None of these services receives your email, your address or your home.
How long we keep things
- Your account and its content: until you delete them.
- Asks: shown until their end (14 days by default, 56 at most), then kept only until deleted by you, by moderation, or with your account.
- Photos: as long as the content they belong to.
- Notifications: 30 days. Offers nobody confirms go to sleep after 90 quiet days.
- Reports, appeals and the moderation log: as long as needed to keep the street safe.
- Daily totals (no personal data): kept as the street’s history.
Deleting your account
Profile, Settings, Delete my account. It is immediate and deletes for real: your asks, hands, offers, conversations, photos, notifications and devices go with it, and your asks leave every page and link at once. Your circles pass to the next steward or close. If you would rather we do it, write to hello@kylala.com.
Writing to us
Mail to hello@kylala.com is read by a person, used only to answer you, and never added to any list. What you write to us inside the app stays there, read by us alone, and goes with your account.
Your rights
Kylala is operated from Geneva, Switzerland, so the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) governs how we handle your data wherever you live; if you live in the European Union, the GDPR applies as well. Under either law you can ask for access, correction, deletion, restriction, a portable copy, or object to processing: write to hello@kylala.com and we answer within a month. You can also complain to a supervisory authority: in Switzerland, the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC); in the EU, the authority of your country.
We rely on three legal bases: performing the service you asked for, our legitimate interest in keeping it safe and in knowing, as counts, how it is used, and your consent where you grant it (notifications, your browser’s location permission and an ask on your city’s public page), which you can withdraw at any time.
Cookies
We set no cookies, on this website, on the public pages, or in the app. The website remembers your language, your theme and, where the GDPR applies, that you closed the cookie notice, on your device alone. If you sign in with Google or email, the sign-in provider sets its own cookies on its own domain.
Children
Kylala is not directed at children and is not intended for anyone under 15.
When this page changes
We date every revision at the top of this page and keep the previous date beside it. A change that widens what we keep is announced in the app before it takes effect. The house rules that say what is welcome on Kylala are on their own page.