Privacy Policy

Yearning Map (“Yearning Map,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is a digital platform that allows users to compose, store, schedule, and deliver personal messages at a future date and time.

We respect your privacy and are committed to explaining what personal information we collect, how we use it, how it is protected, and what choices are available to you.

This Privacy Policy applies to information processed through Yearning Map and its related features.

Yearning Map is a messaging platform, not a party to the personal communications between users. However, we recognize that messages and account information may contain personal or sensitive information and handle such information according to this Policy and applicable law.

By using the platform, you acknowledge that you have had an opportunity to read this Policy. Where consent is legally required, we will request it separately and appropriately.

We collect information necessary to operate the platform, provide scheduled messaging functionality, protect accounts, and maintain service security.

Profile and account information. Depending on the features you use, we may collect:

• Username (you may change it up to three times in total, with at least seven days between changes).
• Display name and profile biography.
• An optional profile photo, up to 5 MB, if you choose to add one.
• Account authentication information.
• Date of birth, to determine whether you meet the platform’s minimum age requirement.
• Time-zone preference, where used for scheduling or displaying delivery times.
• Account settings and messaging preferences.

Your date of birth is not displayed to other users as part of your public profile.

Messages and delivery information. We process the information required to create and deliver messages, including:

• Message content.
• Sender and intended recipient identifiers.
• The time a message was written and scheduled, which is shown to the sender and the recipient.
• Scheduled delivery date and time, and relevant time-zone information.
• Message status, such as scheduled, canceled, delivered, or undelivered, where supported, and whether and when a recipient opened or archived a message.
• An optional “Written at” place name that you choose to add to a message (see “Optional Location” below).

Message content is processed to provide the core service. It is not automatically public merely because it is stored on Yearning Map.

Social and interaction information. We may collect and maintain accounts you follow or connect with, accounts you block, messaging permissions and discoverability settings, notification preferences, and relevant message status and interaction records. We use this information to apply your settings, enforce blocking and messaging restrictions, and operate the service.

Invitations. If you create an invitation link, we record the link, when it was created, and simple counts of how many times it was opened, how many people joined through it, and how many connected. We do not ask for or collect anyone’s email address, phone number, or contacts to send an invitation. Opening a link does not connect anyone.

Optional email address. Providing an email address is optional where the platform permits registration without one. If you provide an email address and complete the required verification, we may use it for account-related purposes and notifications you enable. We do not intentionally send message content to an unverified email address. Email notifications are designed to inform you that a message has arrived without including the message text. If you do not provide a verified email address, certain notifications or recovery options may be unavailable.

Recovery information. Where recovery codes are provided, we store cryptographic hashes of those codes rather than the original codes themselves. This helps reduce the risk of exposure if the recovery-code database is compromised. You remain responsible for keeping your original recovery codes secure.

Policy acceptance and security records. We may maintain records of the versions of the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy you accepted, together with relevant acceptance timestamps. We may also process technical and security information necessary to prevent abuse, protect accounts, enforce rate limits, troubleshoot errors, and maintain platform integrity.

The precise categories of technical logs collected, including any IP addresses or device information, depend on the application’s implementation and hosting configuration. We will disclose those categories accurately once verified.

Location is off by default. If you turn it on in your privacy settings, a “Use my current location” button appears when you write a letter. Nothing is requested until you press it, and your device or browser asks for your permission each time.

When you press the button, an approximate position (rounded to roughly one kilometre) is sent to a location-lookup service, for operational purposes, to turn it into a place name such as “Lisbon, Portugal”. We do not store or log the coordinates. Only the place name is saved, and only if you keep it on your letter. You can edit or delete it before scheduling, or type a place yourself, without turning location on.

You can turn location off at any time. Letters never use your location for delivery, time zones, or recipients.

We use personal information only for purposes consistent with operating and protecting Yearning Map, including:

1. Creating and maintaining user accounts.
2. Authenticating users and supporting account recovery.
3. Storing messages until they are delivered, canceled, or otherwise handled according to the platform’s functionality.
4. Scheduling and attempting message delivery.
5. Applying following, blocking, discoverability, and messaging permissions.
6. Sending optional email notifications that you enable.
7. Maintaining account settings and user preferences.
8. Detecting abuse, spam, unauthorized activity, and security threats.
9. Investigating reports and enforcing our Terms and Conditions.
10. Complying with applicable laws and valid legal requests.
11. Maintaining, debugging, and improving the reliability of the service.

We do not claim ownership of your personal messages merely because you store or transmit them through Yearning Map.

We process message content as necessary to provide the service and for other purposes permitted by law and disclosed in this Policy.

Yearning Map is designed to preserve the privacy of scheduled messages before delivery.

Sender access before delivery. Before a scheduled message is delivered, the recipient cannot view its contents through the platform’s ordinary recipient-facing interface. After a message is scheduled, it is sealed: the sender is also prevented from viewing it through the platform until the sender cancels its delivery or it has been delivered. These interface restrictions do not mean that the message is technically inaccessible to every system or authorized operator.

Encryption. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest using protections provided by our infrastructure and service providers, subject to their configurations and the application’s implementation. Encryption at rest and in transit does not mean that messages are end-to-end encrypted.

No end-to-end encryption. Yearning Map does not represent its messaging service as end-to-end encrypted. Our systems must process message content to perform scheduled delivery. Consequently, authorized technical access may be possible for individuals or systems with the necessary permissions. Access should be limited to legitimate operational, security, troubleshooting, or legal purposes, subject to applicable law and our internal controls. You should not use Yearning Map to store information that requires a level of confidentiality the platform does not expressly provide.

Email notifications are optional and depend on your account settings and the features available.

If you add and verify an email address and enable the relevant notices, we may send an email informing you that a message has arrived. These notifications are designed not to include the actual message text. We do not intentionally send message content to an unverified email address.

You can disable optional notifications through the available settings. Disabling notifications does not necessarily disable essential security or account-related communications where those communications are necessary and lawful.

Email delivery may be delayed, blocked, filtered, or otherwise affected by email providers outside our control.

For operational purposes, Yearning Map relies on trusted external providers for hosting, database and authentication services, file storage for profile photos, location lookup (only if you use it), and transactional email (if enabled).

These providers may process personal information on our behalf or in connection with the services they provide. Depending on their configurations, the information processed may include account identifiers, database records, message data, profile photos, technical logs, and email addresses.

We do not treat the use of third-party infrastructure as a reason to disregard our privacy obligations. Where required, we will use appropriate contractual, organizational, and technical safeguards.

Providers may also process certain information independently under their own terms or privacy policies where applicable.

The providers, processing purposes, data locations, and applicable contractual arrangements should be reviewed periodically as the service changes.

Where applicable privacy law requires a lawful basis for processing, we rely on the basis appropriate to the activity, which may include:

• Contractual necessity: Processing needed to provide the account, message scheduling, delivery, and other requested services.
• Legitimate interests: Processing necessary for reasonable purposes such as platform security, abuse prevention, troubleshooting, and service integrity, where those interests are not overridden by applicable rights.
• Consent: Processing for which consent is legally required, such as certain optional communications or other optional features, including location.
• Legal obligations: Processing necessary to comply with applicable laws, regulatory requirements, or valid legal orders.

Where processing relies on consent, you may withdraw consent as permitted by applicable law. Withdrawal does not retroactively invalidate processing that was lawful before withdrawal.

The specific legal basis for each processing activity will depend on the applicable jurisdiction and the actual implementation of the service.

We do not make user messages publicly available merely because they are stored on Yearning Map.

We may disclose or permit access to personal information in the following circumstances:

1. Service operation: To infrastructure providers and service partners where necessary to operate the platform.
2. Security and abuse prevention: To investigate credible reports, protect users, or respond to suspected unauthorized activity.
3. Legal compliance: Where disclosure is required by applicable law, a valid court order, or another legally binding request.
4. Protection of rights: Where reasonably necessary and legally permitted to protect the rights, safety, property, or security of users, the public, or Yearning Map.
5. Business changes: In connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or transfer of the service, subject to applicable privacy requirements and appropriate safeguards.
6. Your direction: Where you request or authorize a disclosure.

We do not sell personal information as a business model under this Policy. If applicable law assigns a broader meaning to selling, sharing, targeted advertising, or similar activities, we will comply with the relevant requirements and provide any required notices or opt-out mechanisms.

We do not promise that information can never be disclosed under any circumstances.

We retain personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, meet the purposes described in this Policy, protect platform integrity, and comply with applicable legal obligations.

Messages. Under the current retention design, delivered, canceled, and undelivered messages are retained until the relevant account deletion or other applicable deletion process removes them. You can permanently delete your own canceled or undelivered messages at any time. If you delete a letter you have received, it is permanently removed from your account and cannot be recovered; this removes only your own copy, and the sender’s copy of what they wrote is not affected. The actual deletion behavior depends on the message’s relationship to the sender and recipient, the platform’s implemented rules, and any lawful retention requirements.

Account deletion. When you delete your account, the platform is designed to delete your profile, profile photo, settings, recovery data, follows, notifications, and messages you sent, subject to the application’s actual deletion logic. Deleting your account removes the messages you sent, including from the inboxes of the people who received them, but it does not by itself remove copies that others have independently saved. Deletion may be irreversible. You should save anything you wish to retain before confirming deletion. If a message has already been received, copied, exported, screenshotted, or otherwise stored independently by another user, deleting your account cannot guarantee removal of those independent copies.

Backups and legal retention. Some information may persist temporarily in backup systems, technical logs, or disaster-recovery infrastructure after deletion from active systems. Where retention is necessary for a lawful purpose, such as compliance with legal obligations or handling a security incident, the relevant information may be retained for the period permitted or required by law. We will not use these exceptions as a general justification for retaining personal information indefinitely.

Abuse and security records. Reports and security-related records may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary to investigate incidents, prevent recurring abuse, protect users, establish or defend legal claims, or comply with legal obligations. The retention periods and deletion criteria for these records must be defined and implemented before public launch.

Rate-limit counters. Routine rate-limit counters are intended to be purged after two days, subject to the actual system configuration and any applicable security requirements.

Yearning Map is an independently operated platform, and we reserve the right to discontinue, suspend, or permanently shut down the service.

If we decide to permanently discontinue Yearning Map, we will take reasonable steps to notify users in advance where practicable and legally required, and to permanently delete personal data and user-generated content from our active systems, including account information, profiles, messages, scheduled messages, and associated records.

We do not intend to retain users’ personal data after the service has been permanently discontinued. Any remaining copies held in backups, logs, or by infrastructure providers will be deleted or rendered inaccessible in accordance with applicable technical capabilities, provider retention practices, and legal requirements.

We will not retain personal data indefinitely merely because the service has closed. Any information that must be retained to comply with applicable law, resolve disputes, or meet legitimate legal obligations will be limited to what is necessary and handled in accordance with applicable privacy laws.

Once deletion is complete, we may be unable to recover accounts, messages, or other user content. Users are responsible for saving any information they wish to preserve before the service closes.

We will not guarantee a specific deletion deadline until the applicable systems, backups, and third-party provider retention policies have been verified.

Depending on where you live and which privacy laws apply, you may have rights to:

• Request access to personal information we hold about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate information.
• Request deletion of personal information.
• Request a copy of certain information in a portable format.
• Object to or request restrictions on certain processing.
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
• Complain to the relevant data protection authority.
• Opt out of certain forms of sale, sharing, or targeted advertising where applicable.

These rights are not absolute in every circumstance. Applicable law may permit or require us to retain or process certain information despite a request.

You may also be able to exercise the following controls directly through the platform:

• Change your discoverability settings and who can write to you.
• Block other users.
• Turn optional notifications and location off.
• Add, change, or remove your profile photo.
• Delete letters you have received. This is permanent and removes only your own copy.
• Delete your account.

We will respond to valid privacy requests in accordance with applicable legal deadlines and verification requirements.

Privacy contact: support@yearningmap.com

Yearning Map is intended only for individuals aged eighteen (18) and above.

We do not knowingly permit individuals under eighteen to use the service.

Date of birth is self-declared unless the platform implements additional age-verification measures. We do not claim that self-declaration independently verifies a person’s actual age.

If we become aware that an underage individual has used the service in violation of this Policy, we may take appropriate steps, including restricting the account and deleting personal information where legally required.

If you believe an underage person has provided personal information to Yearning Map, please contact us using the privacy contact details provided above.

Our infrastructure providers may store or process personal information in countries other than your country of residence.

Where cross-border transfers are subject to legal restrictions, we will implement the safeguards required by applicable law, which may include appropriate contractual protections, transfer assessments, or other lawful mechanisms.

The actual countries in which personal information is processed depend on the hosting, database, authentication, storage, and email configurations selected for Yearning Map.

Users should not assume that all information remains in their country merely because they access the platform from there.

We use technical and organizational measures intended to protect personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, loss, and destruction.

These measures may include infrastructure encryption, access controls, authentication safeguards, recovery-code hashing, and security monitoring, depending on the implemented configuration.

No online service or storage system can guarantee absolute security. We therefore cannot promise that every attack, vulnerability, system failure, or unauthorized access attempt will be prevented.

If a personal data breach occurs, we will assess and respond to it in accordance with applicable legal requirements, including notification obligations where required.

The application and its infrastructure may use cookies, local storage, session storage, session identifiers, or similar technologies to support authentication, maintain sessions, remember settings (such as dismissed suggestions), keep an unsent draft in your browser tab while you navigate, protect security, or measure service performance.

We also use privacy-friendly, aggregate analytics to understand how many people visit which pages and how the service performs, for operational purposes. This does not use cookies, does not track you across other sites, and does not receive the contents of your messages or forms.

The specific technologies used depend on the application’s implementation and its third-party providers.

Where consent is required for non-essential cookies or similar technologies, we will provide appropriate information and consent controls.

Before launch, this section should be updated to reflect the actual technologies, analytics tools, and tracking mechanisms used by the deployed application.

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to Yearning Map, our data-processing practices, applicable laws, or security requirements.

The latest version will be published on the platform with its effective date.

Where changes are material, we will provide notice and obtain consent where legally required.

Your continued use of the platform following an updated effective date will constitute acceptance only where permitted by applicable law. If you disagree with an updated Policy, you should discontinue using the service.

For questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or the handling of your personal information, contact:

Yearning Map Privacy Support — Email: support@yearningmap.com — Website: www.yearningmap.com

Please do not include passwords, recovery codes, or other authentication secrets in privacy requests.