LinkMeFam
Privacy Policy
Your family map and your privacy · Updated
Joining a family makes your name visible to its members. Your phone shares its location only after you choose Share my location and allow location access in iOS. Family members can see your latest shared reading, including members who do not share their own location.
Pavel Listopad operates LinkMeFam and is responsible for the information described here. For privacy questions or requests, email pavellistopad.dev@gmail.com.
Your profile and family
You choose a display name. You do not need to give the app an email address, phone number or address book. The service creates a random profile identifier and a device session so it can recognize your phone. It records when the profile was created and links it to your family, your role, your sharing status and the location permission your phone reports. Family members can see the family name, member names, roles, sharing status and reported location-access status. A profile stays on the server if you stop opening the app without deleting it. The server also counts newly created profiles to understand how many people start using the service.
An organizer can issue a family invitation. Anyone who has a valid invite can preview the family and organizer names and then join to see the family map. A separate personal recovery code lets its holder preview the profile and move it to another phone. The server stores protected copies of these codes so it can check them and show the current code to the authorized person. If you send a code through another service, that service and your recipient receive what you send.
Location, battery and Home
While you share, your phone sends latitude and longitude, the measurement time, estimated horizontal accuracy, whether the reading is approximate and, when available, battery percentage at measurement. The server also records when the reading arrived. With Precise Location off in iOS, your family sees an approximate area. Background updates require a separate choice and iOS permission.
The server keeps one latest reading per member in the database used for the family map. A newer accepted reading replaces the previous one. The app does not offer a route or trip history. A reading can remain as “Last known” until it is replaced or removed; its age is not an expiry timer.
The organizer can save one Home pin for the family. The server stores its coordinates and label, which may be a street address. It can show “Near Home” based on a recent, precise reading. Members can see Home even when the organizer has paused personal sharing. The organizer can edit or remove it.
Who handles the information
LinkMeFam sends family data over HTTPS to its server hosted by Hetzner. The server uses it to authorize access, provide the map and manage sharing and recovery. The operator can access service records to run the service and investigate problems. Location is not sold or used for advertising or tracking across other companies’ apps and websites.
The iPhone app uses Apple Maps to draw the map. When someone opens a member’s location details or the organizer positions Home, the app can send the relevant coordinates to Apple to look up an address or area. This can be the coordinates of a family member other than the person holding the phone. See Apple’s Maps privacy notice.
OpenAI Sites hosts the public website at linkmefam.dataart.work. Cloudflare provides its DNS and edge network. When you visit the site, these services process technical information needed to route and deliver the pages, such as IP addresses and request times. The app sends family locations and Home pins to the separate LinkMeFam API on Hetzner. Opening a public page does not send the family map to the website.
If you email support, Google’s Gmail service handles your email address, message and any attachments you choose to send. That conversation is separate from your app profile. Do not send recovery codes, invite links or anyone’s coordinates.
Pause, leave or delete
- Pause: Open My location and choose Pause sharing. Your phone stops sending new readings. When the pause reaches the server, it removes your latest reading, including its time, accuracy and battery. Your name stays in the family. When you resume, a new reading is needed before a pin appears.
- Change permission: You can change location access and Precise Location in iOS Settings. If your phone is offline, family members may still see an older reading until the change reaches the server and their app refreshes. A device can keep its last family map for offline use.
- Leave: Leaving or being removed takes you off the roster and deletes your reading from the active family map. You keep your profile and personal recovery code. Remaining members keep their family and Home.
- Delete: Open Family settings (or My profile on the welcome screen after leaving), choose Delete my profile and confirm. If you are the organizer and others remain, first choose a successor. Once the server confirms deletion, it removes your profile, display name, membership, latest reading, session and recovery records. When the last member leaves or deletes their profile, it also removes that family, its Home and its invites. Uninstalling alone does not request deletion.
Deletion does not reach back into a screenshot, an invitation someone forwarded, or a family map on someone else’s offline phone. That map updates when the app next connects.
Technical records and backups
Requests to the app’s API on Hetzner generate technical records such as IP address, request path and time, response status and error information. The service uses these to diagnose failures, protect access and limit repeated code attempts. It filters names, coordinates, codes and several other sensitive request fields from its application logs. On this server, ordinary nonempty application and web server logs rotate daily, with up to 14 rotated files retained.
The service also keeps limited receipts to prevent duplicate operations. These contain coded request fingerprints, timestamps and result references rather than a copy of the request or your location. They can remain after profile deletion and have no automatic purge schedule. Deletion affects the live service; it does not rewrite earlier database backups or delete support correspondence. Backup copies, if made while your data was present, may retain it. There is no documented retention period for database backups or support email. If you want a support email removed, contact us from the address you used.
Children, requests and changes
LinkMeFam is for people aged 13 and over. If you believe someone under 13 is using it, or that someone is sharing a location without permission, contact pavellistopad.dev@gmail.com. You can use the app controls above without contacting support.
You can also ask about your information or request access, correction or deletion by email. Because a profile has no email login, we may need to verify that it is yours before acting. Do not send your personal recovery code as proof. Your legal rights depend on where you live. Changes to this policy will appear on this page with an updated date.