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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 16 October 2026

Operator: Andrey Greshnyakov, self-employed. Contact: admin@tentowl.com

1. General

TentOwl (tentowl.com) is a free map of places for tent camping and self-sufficient travel around the world. You can use it without creating an account or giving your name, email address or any other personal identifier. An account is optional: you need one to upload photos of places; if you are signed in, the places you add and the visits you mark are linked to it, and you see your places on any device (see sections 2, 4 and 5).

2. What data we collect

  • Contributor token (cookie). A random identifier created automatically the first time you add a place or mark a visit. It is not linked to your name or email address. It is used only to tell repeated submissions from the same visitor apart (protection against spam and repeated reports) and to let you see your submissions and the decisions on them in “My places” in the same browser. It is kept for 1 year.
  • Linking visits to an account. If you are signed in when you mark a visit to a place, the visit is stored together with your account’s internal number. This makes one person’s opinion of a place count once: when we calculate how much a place can be trusted, several of your visits count as one opinion. Visits marked without signing in are stored only with the contributor token. If the same place already has a visit from a signed-in user with the same token (that is, from the same browser), the anonymous visit counts as that user’s opinion when trust is calculated; in the database it is not linked to the account. The link between visits and an account is not visible to other users: publicly, a visit shows only its date and its content.
  • Linking places to an account. If you add a place while signed in, the place is stored together with your account’s internal number so that you can see it and the moderator’s decision in “My places” on any device. Places added without signing in are stored only with the contributor token and are not linked to an account automatically, even if you later sign in from the same browser. The link between a place and an account is not visible to other users.
  • IP address. Processed briefly by our web server infrastructure to limit how often requests can come from one source (protection against abuse), and kept for up to 14 days as part of standard server log rotation.
  • Data about places you submit. The coordinates, place type, description and photos you choose to provide when adding a place or a visit. This data describes a physical place, not you personally. Places near ecologically sensitive areas are shown on the public map with less precise coordinates to protect those areas.
  • Moderation decisions. For each decision about a place, photo, visit or report, we keep what was decided and when, a reason from a fixed list and, if the moderator left one, a comment. The author of the contribution sees the rejection reason and the moderator’s comment in “My places”; other users do not see them.
  • Reports about places. You can report a problem with a place without signing in. With a report we store the reason you chose, optional text you type yourself (up to 1000 characters), the contributor token and, if you are signed in, your account’s internal number. The IP address is not stored with the report; it is used briefly only to limit how often reports can be sent (see “IP address”). Only the moderator sees a report; the place’s author does not learn who reported it, and the person who sent the report is not notified of the outcome.
  • Messages sent through “Write to us”. You can write to us without signing in. With a message we store the topic you chose, the text (up to 2000 characters), the page language, the contributor token and, if you are signed in, your account’s internal number. We store an email address only if you enter it yourself so that we can reply; we use it only to reply to that message. The IP address is not stored with the message; it is used briefly only to limit how often messages can be sent.
  • Browser storage. The site stores in your browser a note that the map tip has already been shown, and a draft of the new place form while you are filling it in (until you close the tab). These are technical entries without an identifier; they are not sent to our server.
  • Backups. Daily copies of the whole database and copies of photo files. They are used only to restore the service after a failure. Where they are stored, how they are protected and for how long is described in sections 8 and 9.

3. What data we do not collect

Unless you choose to sign in (section 4) or enter an email address yourself for a reply in the “Write to us” form, we do not collect your name or email address. We never collect your phone number or any payment details, and there is no registration with a password.

4. Signing in with Google or Yandex (optional)

You never need an account to view the map, add places or mark visits. Signing in is needed to upload photos (section 5); if you are signed in, the places you add and the visits you mark are linked to your account (section 2). You sign in with an existing Google or Yandex account; TentOwl has no passwords of its own.

What the provider gives us. We request only basic profile permissions:

  • Google: “email” and “profile” (OpenID Connect) — your email address, name, profile picture and your Google account ID.
  • Yandex: “access to email address”, “access to username, first name, last name and gender” and “access to user picture” — your email address, display name, profile picture and your Yandex account ID. As part of this permission, Yandex also sends your username and gender; we do not store them.

What we store. Your email address, your name, a link to your profile picture (the picture itself stays with Google or Yandex), which provider you used and your account ID with that provider, and the date the account was created. The name and the picture link are updated from the provider’s data each time you sign in. We do not store the access tokens issued by Google or Yandex, and we never use your Google or Yandex account for anything other than signing in.

Session cookie. When you sign in, we set a cookie with a random session identifier (without your name or email address). It is valid for 30 days and is deleted when you sign out.

How it is used. To know that you are signed in; to link the places you add, the photos you upload and the visits you mark to your account and show them to you in “My places”; and to stop abuse: if unacceptable content is uploaded from an account, we may block it and end its sessions immediately. Your name, email address and profile picture are not shown to other users.

Legal basis. Performance of the service you requested (signing in, uploading photos) and our legitimate interest in protecting the service from abuse and in keeping information about places reliable (one opinion per person).

Recipients. Google and Yandex act as sign-in providers under their own privacy policies; they learn that you signed in to TentOwl.

Retention and deletion. Account data is kept until the account is deleted. You can delete your account yourself with the button in “My places”, after confirming; it is deleted immediately. You can also write to admin@tentowl.com from the email address linked to the account, or tell us which provider you signed in with — we will then delete it within 30 days. On deletion we delete the account, its sessions and all the photos you uploaded together with their files, and remove the link to the account from your places, visits, reports and messages; trust in the places you marked is recalculated without that link. The places, visits, reports and messages themselves remain, no longer linked to you. The moderation decision log keeps a record that the deletion happened, with the former internal account number and the number of contributions deleted and unlinked — without the email address or name. Deleted data may remain in backups for the periods given in section 8.

5. Photos of places

  • Uploading a photo requires signing in (section 4). You do not need an account to view photos.
  • Location and device data are removed before saving. Each uploaded photo is re-encoded on our server into two smaller copies (up to 2048 and 480 pixels on the long side). All embedded metadata is discarded in the process — EXIF, including the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken and the phone or camera model, as well as XMP. The original file is not kept. So a photo taken near your home or at a secluded spot cannot reveal the exact location or your device through its metadata. The only value we read from the metadata before removing it is the date and time the photo was taken, to show how recent the photo is.
  • Review before publication. The site operator reviews every photo before it is published; until then, no one but you can see it — you see your unpublished photos in “My places”. Files of rejected photos are deleted immediately.
  • Publication. Approved photos are shown publicly with the place they were uploaded to, without your name, email address or profile picture. In our internal data, each photo stays linked to your account.
  • Storage. Photo files are stored in Timeweb Cloud object storage, servers in Russia (region ru-1). The record of each photo (place, account, dates, moderation status) is stored in our database on our server in Poland (section 9).
  • Retention. A photo is kept until you ask us to delete it (admin@tentowl.com), your account is deleted, the place is deleted, or the photo is deleted during moderation. Copies of photo files are kept in a private backup storage and are deleted from it no later than 35 days after the photo is deleted.

6. Legal bases for processing

  • Legitimate interest in protecting the service from spam and abuse (contributor token, IP address).
  • Performance of the service you requested (publishing the place or visit you submitted).
  • Your request for a reply (the email address you entered yourself in the “Write to us” form).

The contributor token is strictly necessary for these core functions and does not require separate consent under the applicable rules on privacy in electronic communications; you are informed about it here.

7. Who has access

The site operator acts as the moderator: they review submitted places, photos and visits and handle reports in a moderation panel that can only be opened by signing in with a moderator account. In the panel the moderator sees submitted contributions, reports with their text and the decision log; for spam protection, also the last four characters of the contributor token that submitted a place and how many places it has submitted. Account email addresses and contributors’ names are not shown in the panel. The moderator sees “Write to us” messages in the panel in full — including the email address, if you entered one for a reply. Replies are sent from admin@tentowl.com.

The moderator receives an email summary no more than once every 15 minutes: the number of items in the queues, the names and types of new places, the reasons for new reports and the topics of new messages. The email does not include email addresses, names, contributor tokens, coordinates, the text of reports, messages or place descriptions, or links to photos. Emails are sent through the Timeweb mail service (servers in Russia), which processes them on our behalf.

8. How long we keep data

  • Contributor cookie: 1 year from creation.
  • Published data about places and visits: until deleted by their author or during moderation.
  • Reports: open reports — until reviewed; reviewed reports — 12 months after closing, then deleted automatically. Reports about a place are deleted together with the place.
  • “Write to us” messages — 12 months from sending, then deleted automatically together with the email address for a reply.
  • The rejection reason and the moderator’s comment on a contribution — as long as the contribution itself is kept.
  • Moderation decision log — indefinitely, so that decisions to publish and remove contributions remain verifiable. The log contains no email addresses or names.
  • Database copies on our server: daily copies — 14 days; copies made before a change to the database structure — 30 days.
  • Encrypted database copies in backup storage: daily copies — up to 40 days, monthly copies — up to 95 days.
  • Copies of photo files in backup storage: up to 35 days after the photo is deleted.

All copies are deleted automatically when their period ends.

9. Where your data is processed

Our server is located in Poland (European Union). We do not use third-party advertising services.

Yandex Metrica (visit statistics). A Yandex Metrica counter is built into the site’s code, but it is not enabled at the moment: the counter script is not loaded, and no data is sent to Yandex Metrica. Once we enable it, it will collect statistics on visits and navigation: which pages are opened, where visitors come from, which devices and browsers they use, and how many times the “sign in”, “add a place”, “upload a photo” and “mark a visit” actions are performed. We see these statistics only in aggregated (anonymized) form. To count them, Yandex receives technical data — IP address, browser and device information, page addresses — sets its own cookies (for example, _ym_uid) and processes this data under its own privacy policy. Your name, email address, account ID or the content of what you type are not sent to Yandex Metrica; session recording (Session Replay) and the click map are turned off.

Map search. When you type a query in the “Find a place or address” field, the query text and the approximate center of the current map view (to within about 10 km) are sent from the TentOwl server to the Photon geocoding service (komoot GmbH, photon.komoot.io). The request to Photon is sent by our server: your IP address, cookies and browser information are not passed on. Answers to identical queries are kept in our server’s memory for up to 24 hours, not linked to any user, so that we do not have to ask Photon again. We do not link search queries to your account.

The exceptions are photo files (section 5) and backups in backup storage (section 8): they are kept in Timeweb Cloud object storage, servers in Russia (region ru-1), with no public access. Database copies in this storage are encrypted; the key to decrypt them is held only by the operator and is not stored on any server. Copies of photo files are stored without additional encryption, like the photos themselves. The working database with places, visits, accounts and photo records, and its copies from the last 14–30 days (section 8), are on our server in Poland. Emails to the moderator (section 7) are sent through Timeweb’s mail server, servers in Russia.

10. Your rights

If the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to you, you have the right to request access to your data, its correction or deletion, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive your data in a portable format. Because our data is not linked to your identity, we can act on requests about a specific token only if you can provide that token (for example, from your browser’s cookie storage). To exercise these rights, write to admin@tentowl.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.

Users in Russia also have these rights under Federal Law No. 152-FZ “On Personal Data”.

11. Children

The service is not intended for children under 16.

12. Changes to this policy

If we make significant changes to this policy, we will update the “Last updated” date above.