sparrow

Privacy policy

Last updated: May 1, 2026

sparrow is a small social app for keeping in touch with friends about where you are and where you're heading. We collect only what we need to make that work, never sell your data, and never share it with advertisers or analytics services. This page tells you what we collect, why, and what your rights are.

What we collect

• Your account info: email address, name, and profile picture from the Google or Apple account you sign in with.
• Your profile: anything you fill in voluntarily — display name, bio, languages, social links, home town, profile photo (replaces the OAuth one if you upload it).
• Your travel info: trips you add (city, dates, optional note) and your current city. Your current city updates when you tap to update it or — if you opt in to background city updates in the iOS app — automatically as you travel. Either way we store only the city, never your coordinates (see "Keeping your city up to date" below).
• Your social graph: which groups you're in, who invited you, who you RSVP'd to which event.
• Notifications: a list of pushes we've sent you, so you can review them from the bell icon. Plus the device token your browser or phone gave us when you turned on push, so we can deliver future notifications.

What we don't collect

• No analytics tracking. No Google Analytics, no Mixpanel, no Segment, no third-party SDKs that watch what you tap.
• No advertising. No ads in the app, no ad-network integrations.
• No tracking across other apps or websites.
• No selling your data to anyone, ever.
• No precise-location storage. We never store your GPS coordinates — see "Keeping your city up to date" below for how the optional background feature works.

Keeping your city up to date

You can update your current city manually anytime by tapping "Update." In the iOS app you can also turn on background city updates — an opt-in feature that is off by default:

• You choose to turn it on. Nothing happens in the background unless you flip the toggle in your profile and grant location permission. It is off until then.
• City-level only — your coordinates never leave your phone.When your phone notices you've moved a meaningful distance, it works out which city you're in on the device itself and sends us only the city name (and its country/region). Your precise GPS coordinates are never sent to us and never stored.
• Shared only with the people you've already approved. Your city is visible to your group-mates and friends in your shared groups — exactly the same people who can see it when you update it by hand. No one outside your groups sees anything.
• You can see when it updated.When your city was set automatically, your home screen shows an "updated automatically" note so there's no mystery about where the value came from.
• Off anytime, two ways.Turn the toggle off in your profile — which immediately revokes the device's access on our servers — or revoke location permission in iOS Settings. Either one stops it.

Who processes your data

To run sparrow we use a small set of well-known infrastructure providers. Each only sees the slice of data they need to do their job:

• Clerk handles sign-in. They see your email, name, and OAuth identifiers.
• Vercel hosts the app and database connections. Standard request logs only — no message bodies.
• Neon stores the database (your profile, trips, events, RSVPs, etc.) in encrypted Postgres.
• Vercel Blob stores avatar images you upload.
• Apple Maps handles city search, reverse-geocoding (turning GPS coordinates into a city name), and the map tiles you see on the home screen. Apple sees search queries, coordinates, and tile requests for the regions of the map you view, but not your account.
• Apple Push Notificationsand your browser's push service deliver notifications. They see the device token and the notification text — sparrow notifications are short (under 100 characters) and don't include sensitive data.
• Google / Apple handle the sign-in flow itself. We only ever receive what you authorize: email + name.

Who else sees your stuff

The whole point of sparrow is sharing with friends. Specifically: your group-matescan see your profile, current city, upcoming trips, and any events you create that you scope to a shared group. People who aren't in any of your groups can't see anything.

The creator of an invite link can let new people into a group with you. Use those links carefully — anyone who has one can join until you delete the link.

Your rights

• Edit anything you put in: profile, trips, events, group memberships — all editable from inside the app.
• Leave a group: from the group page. Your group-mates immediately stop seeing your data within that group's context.
• Turn off notifications: from the You tab, or in your device settings.
• Delete your account: tap Delete account at the bottom of the You tab. Your profile, trips, events, RSVPs, and group memberships are removed immediately. Groups you created stay so other members can keep using them, but they no longer show you as the creator.
• Export your data: same email address, just ask.

Children

sparrow isn't designed for kids. Don't use it if you're under 13. We'll delete any account we discover belongs to someone under 13.

Changes

If we ever change this policy in a way that affects how your data is used, we'll send you a notification before the change takes effect. Small clarifications (typos, wording) we just update with a new "last updated" date at the top.

Questions

Email stijn.vanhaute@gmail.com and you'll get a real human reply.