Privacy Policy

Bupbokmuk Lab Ltd (“we”, “us”) is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. We are a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17292473, and we are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under registration number ZC191440.

For privacy questions: admin@localz.chat

The short version

• What we collect: your email, date of birth, what you post, and your location when you use Near me. Every post on Localz is pinned to a place, so the people who know that place can see it.
• Why: to run the service — show you questions and topics near you and in the areas you watch, deliver replies and chats, keep you signed in, and keep people safe.
• Your posts show a place. A question or topic shows where it is about. With Near me that is your street, at a spot about 200 metres across — never your exact position. Topics and questions have public pages anyone can read. Section 1 explains.
• Chats are not kept. Once a chat inside a topic ends, no person can read it — not the people who were in it, and not us — unless someone who was in it reports it. Our own AI model reads it to write a short summary for its card. Lines someone chose to keep, or marked as helpful, become public replies in the topic. Everything else is deleted 30 days after the chat ends.
• We do not sell or rent your personal data. Where the app shows promotions, they are labelled, and we do not hand your personal data to the business behind them. Everyone we share data with is listed in Section 3.
• Where it lives: the United Kingdom, wherever you are (a few providers in Section 3 process data elsewhere, under UK safeguards).
• Deleting it: Settings → Privacy deletes your account and your personal data permanently, at any time, without asking us. Replies and posts you left in a topic stay in the conversation with your name permanently removed — see Section 2.
• What you see is chosen for you: For you on Home is ordered using the topics and questions you post in, reply to, follow, open and skip. Chat messages and direct messages are never used for this.
• Your date of birth is used to check you are old enough to use Localz and to keep under-18s off the map. It is private: only you can see it, and it is never shown on your profile or to other members.

The rest of this page is the detail behind those points.

1. Data We Collect and Why

Account Data

Email address, display name, username, and password (stored as a one-way hash — we never see your plain-text password). Profile photo, emoji or letter avatar if you add one. If you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive the email address and name they share with us.

Name changes. You can change your display name every 90 days. Your previous display name is shown on your profile (“Previously …”) for a while so people know who they are talking to. You can change your username once; your old username is retired and never given to anyone else, and we keep it against your account to prevent impersonation.

Home city. You choose a home city when you sign up. It decides which city you post in, and you can change it at any time. Where your city has not opened yet, choosing it counts as your interest in it opening.

Date of birth — we ask for this once, when you sign up, to confirm you meet the minimum age for your country (see Section 5), and so that members under 18 are never shown on the map. It is private to you: you can see it, read-only, in your profile settings, but it is never shown on your profile, to other members, or in search. It cannot be changed in the app, so that the age check cannot be edited past; if you entered it wrongly, contact us and we will correct it.

Profile picture. Your picture is your buddy (a cartoon animal or star sign that grows up as people find your answers helpful) or, once you can use one, your own photo. A photo may be held for a check by a person at Localz before it is shown.

Legal basis: Performance of a contract for your account details; for your date of birth, our legitimate interest in making sure only people old enough use Localz, and complying with minimum-age laws where they apply.

Location Data

Near me — when you allow location and use Near me, we use your phone's or browser's location to show what is around you. We keep your last known location so Near me works; it is overwritten each time it updates and goes stale after 24 hours.

The place on a post — every new question and topic has a place. If you choose Near me, the post is pinned to your street, at a spot about 200 metres across, never your exact position. You can choose a named place or an area instead. The place is shown to everyone with the post, in lists, on the map and on its public page.

Areas you watch — the few places you save (for example home, work or your station), each with a name and an icon you choose. Only you can see them. We use them to show you what is new there and, if you allow it, to tell you when a chat starts in one or to send a weekly round-up. Other people may see how many people watch an area, as a number and only from five people up — never who.

Visit history — when you open a topic while you are at its place, we record it. You can see and delete it under Settings → Privacy. Each record is deleted automatically 90 days after the visit.

Areas you seem to know — so a question like “any good dentist in Kingston?” can reach people who can answer it, we work out which London boroughs you seem to know, from the questions about a place you have answered, the areas you watch, the topics you take part in, the places your posts are about, and the boroughs you post from or use the app in, over the last 90 days. It is a borough name and a score, worked out when needed rather than kept as a profile. It is never shown to other people; our staff can see it when reviewing an account. You can turn it off under Settings → Notifications → “Questions about areas you know”.

Under 18s are never shown on the map and never counted as being in a place.

Legal basis: Performance of a contract for Near me, the place on your posts, the areas you watch and your visit history; legitimate interests (getting questions to people who know the place) for areas you seem to know, which you can object to by turning it off.

Content You Create

Questions and their answers; topics (a discussion, something happening now, news, an event or a promotion) and their replies; chats you take part in inside a topic; photos and links you add; whether you are going to an event; and direct messages. Direct messages are visible only to the people in the conversation.

Topics and questions are public. Each topic and question has its own page that anyone can read without an account, with your username beside what you wrote. People can share those pages outside Localz (for example on WhatsApp), and search engines may find them. Treat anything you post in a topic or question as public. This does not apply to direct messages or to chats (see below).

Invitations and friends. When you invite someone with your invite link, we record who invited whom, and when they join the two of you become friends. Friends can invite each other to a topic or a chat; we record the invitation so it can be shown on Home, and it is removed when the chat ends.

Legal basis: Performance of a contract.

Chats Inside Topics

Anyone in a topic can start a chat — a live conversation for a while, inside that topic. Once someone else says they are in, it opens.

• While a chat is on, the people in it can read it, and anyone who can see the topic can join. A message that is reported while the chat is on can be reviewed by a person at Localz.
• When it ends, no person can read it — not the people who were in it, not other members and not Localz staff. The topic keeps a card saying when it was, how long it lasted, how many people joined and talked, and how many messages were sent.
• A short summary. If a chat had enough messages, our own AI model reads its lines shortly after it ends to write a two-sentence summary shown on its card (it may try a few times if a summary fails its check). The summary is checked automatically before it is shown, and the text is not sent to another company.
• Lines that are kept. While a chat is on, you can choose to keep a line you wrote (the topic's host can keep any line), and a line anyone marks as helpful is kept too. When the chat ends, kept lines become ordinary replies in the topic: public, with your username, and treated like any other reply (including being used to work out what the topic is about).
• The only exception is a report. Someone who was in the chat can report it from its card. A person at Localz then reads it to decide the report, and nothing else.
• Its messages are deleted 30 days after it ends, unless a report about it is still open; then they are deleted once the report is closed. Copies in our backups are overwritten within a further 30 days.
• Apart from kept lines and the summary, chat messages are never used to work out your interests or for anything else.

Legal basis: Performance of a contract; legitimate interests (keeping people safe) for reading a reported chat.

Your Interests and For You

For you on Home puts the topics and questions you are most likely to care about first. To do that we keep a list of your interests (for example “football” or “running”) with a score for each. It is built from what you do with topics and questions: posting, replying, following, opening, saying you are in a chat, the interests you pick in Settings, and skipping (which counts against something). Older activity counts for less, and only the last 90 days of activity are used; choices that last — what you are a member of and the interests you pick — count for as long as they stand.

To know what a topic is about, an AI model reads its title and text and the replies in it, with the usernames of who wrote them. We run that model ourselves; the text is not sent to another company. If we ever use an outside provider for this, we will list it in Section 3 first. Chat messages (other than kept lines) and direct messages are never read for this. We never work out sensitive things about you — such as health, religion, politics or sexuality — and drop them if a model suggests one.

Your interests are not shown to other members. Communities (groups for people who share an interest) are not open yet; if we use your interests to suggest them in future, we will update this policy first.

Legal basis: Legitimate interests — showing people what is relevant to them is what the service is for. You can object at any time (Section 4).

Other Uses of AI

Local news and picks. Our own AI model helps our team choose local news and events from public sources each day. It works on public articles and listings, not on anything members write. A person at Localz reviews every pick before it is posted.

Link previews. When you share a link, our server reads the page's public preview — its headline, summary, picture and date — to show it with your post.

Google Gemini. Some of our tools can use Google's Gemini API instead of our own model. Where they do, the text is subject to Google's Gemini API Terms, and it is not used to train Google's models.

Profile photos. When you upload your own photo, it is checked automatically by Amazon Rekognition, which looks for unsafe images and for drawings (most often a copy of someone's buddy). A photo that is flagged, looks drawn or could not be checked waits for a person at Localz before it is shown; a clearly unsafe one is refused.

Switched off for now. Scanning posters and photos, and AI checks for adverts, are switched off. If we switch any of them on, we will update this policy first.

Activity, Trust and Safety

What you opened. We record the topics and questions you open, so that Home can show what is new to you, Recently viewed can list them, and For you does not keep showing you the same things. We use the last 30 days and delete the records after 90.

Your helping record. Your profile shows how many people you have helped (answers someone marked “This helped”) and how often others backed your answers. Your buddy grows up as that number grows. It also shows messages Localz has confirmed broke the community rules in the last 90 days. Other members can see this record.

Trust score. Each account has a trust score from 0 to 100, starting at 50. It rises and falls with how your posts are received and with moderation outcomes. It decides things like how many questions you can ask a day and whether you can post links and photos. You can see your own score; other members cannot.

Automatic checks and posting pauses. To stop abuse quickly, messages are checked automatically against the community rules (by matching words and patterns, not with AI), and for signs of automation or copied spam. Links are checked against known harmful sites (only the link is sent to Google Web Risk for this). If several of your messages break the rules, are hidden after reports, or look automated, your posting can be paused automatically: 24 hours the first time, 7 days the second time within 90 days, and after that until a person reviews it. A pause only stops posting. You can always ask for a review, and a person at Localz decides it.

These are automated decisions. You have the right to have a person review any of them, to give your side, and to challenge the outcome: use the review button in the app or email admin@localz.chat.

Legal basis: Legitimate interests (keeping the service safe and useful), and performance of a contract for the features you use.

Device Data

Push notification token, app version, and OS version (iOS app). IP address received as part of standard HTTP traffic — not stored beyond security rate-limiting.

We also record the app version, build number, platform and OS version of the client you last signed in from, stored against your account. We use it to support you, to understand which versions are still in use, and to require an update if a released version turns out to be unsafe or broken. It is not used for advertising or profiling, and it is deleted when your account is deleted.

To stop people who were banned from simply making a new account, the apps also tell us which phone you use: its model, an identifier our apps share on that phone (it changes if you delete all our apps), and, on iPhone, a check with Apple's DeviceCheck service. DeviceCheck lets us keep two yes/no answers for your iPhone with Apple: whether a Localz account has been made on it, and whether an account on it was banned. Apple does not tell us who you are or give us a permanent device number, and we never see your phone's serial number or advertising identifier. If a new account is made on a phone where an account was banned, a person checks it before it can post, and you can ask for a review. We use this only to prevent abuse, under our legitimate interest in keeping Localz safe; never for advertising or profiling. Only Localz staff can see it, and it is deleted when your account is deleted (Apple's two answers stay with the phone and say nothing about you).

Diagnostics — if something errors, we send a diagnostic report to our error-monitoring provider (Sentry) to help us fix it. A report can include the technical details of the error, your account ID, and your IP address. We do not use Sentry to track your activity, and Session Replay (screen recording) is switched off.

Legal basis: Legitimate interests (operating a secure, reliable service).

Personalisation and Ranking

We use what you do on Localz — what you open, post, reply to and follow, the areas you watch, where you are when you use Near me, and your interests — to decide what to show you and in what order: what comes first on Home and in For you, and which notifications are worth sending. Where the Service shows promoted content, that content may be selected and ranked the same way.

This is profiling under UK GDPR and it is automated, but it produces no decision with legal or similarly significant effects for you — it decides the order of a list, nothing more.

Legal basis: Legitimate interests — a local app is only useful if it puts what is near you and relevant to you first. You can object at any time (Section 4), and where the profiling relates to direct marketing we will stop on request, without exception.

Local Knowledge and Aggregate Insights

Topics and questions are the raw material for local knowledge: what a topic concluded, what an area recommends, what is going on nearby. We produce this as aggregated, anonymised material about places — not about people. Names, handles and account identifiers are removed, and the result describes a neighbourhood rather than any individual. Chats are never used for this.

Once material is genuinely anonymised it is no longer personal data under UK GDPR. We may use, publish or share it — including with partners — to build and fund the Service. Because it cannot be traced back to you, deleting your account does not remove it.

Data that can still be linked to you is a different thing, and having your name stripped off does not make it anonymous. Profile and behavioural data remains your personal data, we do not sell or rent it, and if we ever wanted to share that kind of data with a partner for their own purposes we would ask your permission first.

Legal basis: Legitimate interests in producing anonymised material from topics and questions. UK GDPR does not apply to the anonymised result.

What We Do Not Collect

• We do not sell or rent your personal data to any third party
• No person reads a chat after it ends, except to decide a report
• We do not use chat messages or direct messages to profile you or to choose what you are shown
• We do not track you across other websites or apps
• We do not access your contacts or microphone
• We use your camera only when you take a photo to post, and your photos only when you pick one

2. How Long We Keep Your Data

When you delete your account, all personal data is permanently deleted within 30 days, except where we are legally required to retain it.

What happens to things you posted

Questions, answers, topics and replies you posted are not deleted with your account. They are permanently detached from you: your account is erased, and what you wrote is re-attributed to an anonymous Deleted User label shared by everyone who has left. There is no record kept that could link it back to you — not your name, not your email, not an internal identifier — and we could not restore the link if we wanted to.

We do this because a conversation with its messages cut out is worse for everyone still in it: replies end up answering nothing, and the local knowledge built on top of it stops making sense. Once detached, the content describes a conversation rather than a person, so it is no longer your personal data.

If you want something you wrote gone as well, delete it before deleting your account — you can remove anything you posted at any time. Direct messages are different and are always deleted with your account. Chat messages follow their own rule above.

3. Who We Share Data With

We do not sell or rent your personal data. We share it only with the providers below, who act on our instructions and may not use it for their own purposes:

We add providers as the Service grows, and keep this table current — material changes are notified in the app. Aggregated, anonymised insights that cannot identify you are not personal data; how those are produced and used is covered in Section 1.

4. Your Rights Under UK GDPR

To exercise any right, email admin@localz.chat. We respond within one calendar month. You can also delete your account at any time from Settings → Privacy in the app, which permanently removes your personal data. Topics and questions you started that other people have replied to stay in place, detached from you as described in Section 2, so the replies still make sense.

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

5. Children and Minimum Age

Localz is available to users aged 13 and over in most of the places we operate. In Australia the minimum age is 16, to comply with Australian law on minimum ages for social media. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up to confirm this, and we block accounts that declare an age below the minimum for their country.

Members under 18 are never shown on the map and never counted as being in a place, whatever their settings. Beyond that, the protections in this policy — we do not sell or rent personal data, we do not track you across other websites or apps, and we do not use chats or direct messages to profile you — apply to everyone. No other member can see your date of birth. If you discover a child under the minimum age has an account, contact us at admin@localz.chat and we will delete it immediately.

6. Where We Operate

Localz currently operates in London, in the United Kingdom. Your data is stored in the United Kingdom wherever you are, except where a provider in Section 3 says otherwise.

We have not launched anywhere else. If you are outside London you can still create an account and choose your city as your home city, and we will keep that interest on record — but you cannot post there until we launch. We decide where to launch next partly by where that interest builds up, and we cannot say in advance when or whether any particular city will follow.

Wherever you are, the rights described in section 4 are available to you in practice: email admin@localz.chat to access, correct, export or delete your data, and we will act on it. If you would rather we did not hold your data at all while your city is not served, tell us at the same address and we will delete your account.

Local law where you live may give you rights in addition to these. Where it does, those rights apply and nothing in this policy limits them.

7. Security

Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes. All data in transit is encrypted via TLS. File uploads are stored in private S3 buckets. Database access is restricted to the application server. Our own AI model receives only the text it needs for the job.

8. Changes to This Policy

We will update the date at the top when this policy changes and notify you in the app for material changes.

9. Contact

Bupbokmuk Lab Ltd
71-75 Shelton Street
Covent Garden
London
WC2H 9JQ
United Kingdom
Email: admin@localz.chat
Company number: 17292473
ICO Registration: ZC191440